– A Look at 2023
Through the Prism of Critical Mineral Resource Policy - 

In the waning days of December 2022, ARPN and others were gearing up for a watershed year in the critical minerals realm – a year which could be a “breaking point if there is to be an EV revolution/transformation,” and one that would give us a glimpse into the new world order in the Post Petro Age in which the sands of geopolitics have shifted.

We set out to track the following themes, all of which we found to be intertwined:

• A focus on the Super Criticals (see our Year in Review post for more info);
• the growing importance of geopolitics, with China taking center stage and alliances and partnerships continuing to be forged to reduce reliance on Beijing;
• the acceleration of the green energy transition which will require vast amounts of critical minerals;
• as well as industry’s efforts to sustainably green our future by harnessing the materials science revolution.

As we close out 2023 with ARPN’s annual attempt to take stock of what has happened on the critical mineral resources front in the past 12 months — to assess where we are, and, filled with hope for a New Year, where we are headed – we believe we picked the right themes.

2023 – Enter the Post-Petro Tech Age?

Early 2023

Geopolitics certainly took center stage on the critical minerals front with the Russia/Ukraine war continuing to place a strain on global supply chains and resource nationalism gaining a bigger foothold in particularly the Southern hemisphere.

As Peter Schechter and Juan Cortiñas had outlined in a February 2022 piece for Marsh McLennan’s Brink News ARPN featured at the time, the shunning of laissez-faire economics, particularly in Latin America, is not new. “What’s different this time,” they say, “is that these new interventionist policies are not only focused on the traditional energy sector. Instead, the region’s attention is turning to increasingly valuable minerals that are key to the new green economy quickly gaining momentum across the world.”  

Resource Nationalism 

In early 2023, we saw this trend play out in Chile, where President Gabriel Boric announced his plan to nationalize the country’s lithium industry to boost the Latin American nation’s industrial base and protect the environment.  While his plan fell short of full nationalization, observers called Boric’s announcement a “shock move”  – but it was one that tied into an overall trend in the region:

Chile’s move came on the heels of a comprehensive lithium nationalization plan enacted by Mexico which culminated in President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signing a decree handing over responsibility for lithium reserves to the country’s energy ministry in February of this year.

Bolivia’s ruling socialists have also favored state control over the nation’s vast untapped mineral resources but are relying on Chinese partners to harness them.

Meanwhile, some speculated at the time that had it not been for his ouster, Peru’s President Pedro Castillo, who won a narrow victory in 2021 and had initially pledged to nationalize much of the country’s mining sector, might have pursued an approach similar to Boric’s in Chile.

The moves tied into a bigger trend, as indicated by prior similar developments in Indonesia, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

 Tech War Theaters – Semiconductors and Critical Minerals 

Meanwhile, the Tech Wars between China and the West continued to intensify, and Western nations began taking steps to counter Chinese dominance in the critical minerals realm.

A key theater of the Tech Wars had emerged: Semiconductors, which have become indispensable components for a broad range of electronic devices. Semiconductors have been dubbed the “DNA of technology” which has “transformed essentially all segments of the economy” and are critical to national security where they enable the “development and fielding of advanced weapons systems and control toe operation of the nation’s critical infrastructure,” as the Department of Commerce-led chapter in the Biden Administration’s 100 Day Supply Chain Review report outlines.

While the U.S. took steps to impose new export controls to China’s access to advanced computing chips, its ability to develop and maintain super computers and manufacture semiconductors in 2022, Washington’s allies in Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia also took steps to reduce Chinese influence in their critical mineral industries. The governments of the Netherlands and Japan announced their intention to emulate the U.S. export controls in March.

A late 2022 proposal to bolster the Investment Canada Act (ICA) to empower government ministers to block or unwind critical mineral investments if these are considered as a threat to national security, considered a defensive measure against China which has invested $7 billion in Canada’s base metals sector in the past two decades, was expected to be finalized in the spring.

Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers in early 2022 blocked a request by a Chinese company to boost its investment in Australian REE company Northern Minerals via a prevention order, the first move of this kind since the Treasurer had expressed concerns over the “concentrated nature of the China-dominated critical minerals supply chain” elevated by the Russia-Ukraine war, and a move that some considered a “sign of what’s to come.”

West Bolsters Domestic Supply Chains 

While these steps were taken to reduce Chinese influence over domestic industries, the West also stepped up efforts to strengthen its own critical mineral policies and sectors.

The European Union released its long-awaited action plan to “ensure the EU’s access to a secure, diversified, affordable and sustainable supply of critical raw materials” on March 16. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA)  includes a comprehensive set of actions aimed at shoring up European critical mineral supply chains by streamlining the permitting process for raw materials projects and allowing for selected “Strategic Projects” to benefit from support for access to financing and shorter permitting timelines (24 months for extraction permits and 12 months for processing and recycling permits).  The Act – which was finalized later in the year, also requires EU member states to develop national programs for resource exploration.

Australia also forged ahead with its push to strengthen critical mineral supply chains for its own industries and for the benefit of its partners with the federal government in Canberra releasing guidelines for “new grants to help develop Australia’s critical minerals sector, support downstream processing, create jobs across regional Australia and support global efforts to achieve net-zero” in early 2023.

The Canadian government, which had launched the Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy in December of 2022 backed by up to $3.8 billion in funding, announced details on the implementation and a first round of funding for new critical minerals programs and initiatives.

The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), an initiative to bolster critical mineral supply chains while ensuring that “critical minerals are produced, processed and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realize the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments”  took its collaboration to the next level by formalizing and agreeing on guiding principles for how the MSP will develop projects around the world with local value-add, sustainability, and high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards front and center. Meetings were followed by bilateral trade agreements as well as U.S.-EU discussions to launch a “critical minerals club.”

And stateside, U.S. President Joe Biden once more invoked Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to strengthen critical mineral supply chains – and in doing so, effectively created a new category of Critical Materials – which ARPN has dubbed the Defense Criticals (see our post here). His February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination was followed by another DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5), designating airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

Mid 2023

We posited in early 2023, that against the backdrop of surging demand and geopolitical volatility, we could expect to see more active government involvement in the critical minerals sector – and the coming months certainly delivered.

China Tightens Export Ratches as West Gets Reality Check on Decoupling

In July, China upped the ante in the Tech Wars by placing export restrictions on gallium and germanium – key components of semiconductor, defense and solar technologies. Beijing’s move was considered a “show of force ahead of economic talks between two rivals that increasingly set trade rules to achieve technological dominance,” according to the Wall Street Journal. As Alastair Neill, board member of the Critical Minerals Institute, told the Wall Street Journal: “If you don’t send high-end chips to China, China will respond by not sending you the high-performance elements you need for those chips.” 

While some chipmakers downplayed fears of shortages, former Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wei Jianguo’s comments to the China Daily newspaper “that countries should brace for more should they continue to pressure China, describing the controls as a ‘well-thought-out heavy punch’ and ‘just a start,’”  prompted fears that more export curbs on critical materials, including on rare earths could be on the menu, and analysts called for  big investments on the part of the United States and its partners to reduce their reliance on China.

Later that month, China announced a new set of export controls — this one on certain drones and drone-related equipment — to “safeguard national security interests,” only to follow it up with restrictions on graphite later in October. The decision to require export permits for certain graphite products was seen by analysts as a play “to control supplies of critical minerals in response to challenges over its global manufacturing dominance.”

China’s moves also underscored the massive challenge of decoupling for Western nations.  In the case of graphite, which is the largest component by volume and mass in EV batteries and has been deemed the “unsung player” in the battery supply chain, China “is on track to retain over 85% of the global anode market share by the end of the decade,” according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

While momentum to decouple was continuing to build, a new report by the consultancy Rhodium Group and the German Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) pointed to the real-world challenges of decoupling from China from a European perspective:

European national governments and the EU may have worked to devise policies to strengthen domestic and regional critical mineral supply chains, but Chinese companies continued to invest in the region: Overall, Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU and the UK dropped, but, as Mary Hui writes for Quartz, “for the first time since 2008, the value of Chinese greenfield investments have exceeded that of M&A flows,” and was “mainly driven by several large-scale initiatives by Chinese battery giants to build factories in Germany, Hungary, the UK, and France.”

As the Rhodium report determined, “Europe has become a key part of China’s global electric vehicle expansions,” adding that “[b]attery investments are now the mainstay of Chinese investment in Europe.” The emerging conundrum is not lost on EU policy makers, who resolved to formally “recalibrate” the EU’s China policy, with an emphasis on “de-risking” by screening investments more closely and resorting to more robust export controls.

The West’s resolve to break China’s dominance may be building, but as Christina Lu wrote for Foreign Policy:

“(…) there are more questions than answers about how these efforts will pan out. As lawmakers continue to hammer out new agreements behind closed doors, it remains unclear how they align with global trading rules and what this momentum means for countries that lack free trade agreements with the United States. Engineering supply chains isn’t as simple as finding new mines, either; it involves an entire ecosystem of processing, refining, and manufacturing capabilities.”

The Rise of Geopolitical Swing States

As the West continued to assess its options against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive China leveraging its advantage in the Tech Wars, a new class of states have entered the spotlight in the context of the global geopolitical realignment – the “geopolitical swing states,” as Goldman Sachs’s Jared Cohen suggested this June, and their role could grow exponentially in the coming years.

Cohen defines a geopolitical swing state as “critical to the world economy and balance of power” but without “the capacity by themselves to drive the global agenda, at least for now.” He adds that “as long as the tensions between the U.S. and China continue to get worse, they will have outsized abilities to navigate geopolitical competition and take advantage of and influence it.” 

According to Cohen, there are four – often overlapping — categories of geopolitical swing states:

• Countries with a competitive advantage in a critical aspect of global supply chains;
• Countries with a unique ability to make themselves attractive for nearshoring, offshoring, or friend-shoring;
• Countries with a disproportionate amount of capital and willingness to deploy it around the world in pursuit of strategic objectives; and
• Countries with developed economies and leaders who have global visions that they pursue within certain constraints.

As Cohen concluded, “[t]he rise of geopolitical swing states may balance the great powers and help stabilize the global order. Their interest-based decision-making could be a source of consistency in uncertain times. Or their newfound prominence may increase global instability by putting more actors and variables in play. But even if today’s world is not yet multipolar, a rising group of countries recognize that they can determine the course of world events. Those geopolitical swing states are aware that their power may be unsustainable, or event fleeting and they are determined to take advantage of the current window of opportunity.”

While the rise of the geopolitical swing states has business implications for multinational businesses and investors, these trendlines are have real-world implications for U.S. stakeholders from a policy perspective, and, in the critical mineral resource realm, underscore the importance of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to securing critical mineral resource supply chains.

Fall/Winter 2023 

Critical Mineral Focus Grows, New Players Emerge

Meanwhile, real world challenges associated with securing supplies for the metals and minerals underpinning 21st Century technology prompted more countries to emphasize supply chain security and define their own sets of metals and minerals critical to their own domestic industries.

Perhaps most consequential in light of the fact that it has overtaken China as the most populous country in the world this year, may be India’s push onto the global critical minerals stage.  Following the release of a comprehensive Critical Minerals List, consisting of 30 metals and minerals deemed critical for India’s ambition for cleaner technologies in electronics, telecommunications, transport and defense, in the summer, along with a pledge to encourage public and private investment in exploration, mining and processing to secure the country’s critical mineral supply chains, India announced its consideration of an export ban on four key metals – lithium, beryllium, niobium and tantalum – in a move to ensure the country’s self-sufficiency in crucial minerals for India’s national security and technological advancements. In late November, the Indian government announced its first ever auction of critical mineral leases for commercial mining by the private sector.

But another player has arrived – perhaps in another indication that we have indeed entered the Post-Petro Tech Metals Age: Saudi Arabia.

As part of his Grand Vision 2030 plan to transform the Saudi economy, the oil giant’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is preparing to invest billions of dollars into the mining sector to harness the potential of more than $1.3 trillion worth of metals and minerals the Saudi government claims are buried in the kingdom, and effectively make mining the so-called “third pillar” of the economy next to oil and gas. Rumors of a deal with Tesla have been swirling, even though they have been denied by Elon Musk himself.

Analysts say that while the crown prince’s plans are met with plenty of skepticism, even if only partially successful, implications of Saudi Arabia turning into a metals hub could have far-reaching implications not just for metals mining, but geopolitics and trade, especially if the other component of the crown prince’s plan to buy up resources from elsewhere to be refined and processed at new facilities in Saudi Arabia.

As Bloomberg reports, the kingdom’s long game is to position itself as an alternative supplier to China for the metals and minerals underpinning the green energy shift and 21st Century technologies.  The news outlet cites Khalid Al Mudaifer, vice minister of mining affairs, who said in an interview that “Saudi Arabia needs more than one engine to achieve its vision,” and that to transform itself into an economic and industrial powerhouse, the kingdom needs minerals.

Global Tensions Mount – Gaza and Tech War Confrontation

If the watershed moment for geopolitics in 2022 was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this year’s defining moment was probably the Hamas-led incursion from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of neighboring Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, which initiated the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. Throwing a wrench into arguably efforts to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East, the conflict threatens domestic stability in many states in the region and has exposed the deep-rooted nature of obstacles to normalization.

While China has claimed neutrality and has called on both sides to exercise restraint, China, while criticizing Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza in response to the incursion, but never officially condemned the initial attack started by Hamas. Experts believe that the Israel-Hamas war is viewed in Beijing as a convenient opportunity to gain ground against the United States in the battle for influence in the Arab world, as tensions between China and the West, and specifically the U.S. continue to mount. 

As Hot Wars Rage, All Arrows Point to Escalation of Tech War 

 With hot wars raging in Central Europe and the Middle East, the question is, do we have bandwidth to focus on a war that’s metaphorical – for now, at least:  The Tech War pitting China versus the U.S.?

While the recent meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco last month was seen by some as a step towards alleviating tension between the two global powers, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s latest speech and subsequent comments at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California left no doubt that, at least on the trade front, all arrows very much point to confrontation.

The Secretary did not mince words, stating: “(…) make no mistake about it, China’s not our friend, and we need to be eyes wide open about the extent of that threat. I am ready to win, and I’m ready to do that with all of you, but it’s time to open our aperture and challenge the way we’ve done business in every way if we’re going to meet the threat China poses.”

When asked if there were other U.S. origin products or types of technologies that the U.S. Government was “looking at in a similar fashion right now” – i.e. would consider imposing export controls on, she said:

“Absolutely, in biotechnology, AI models, AI products, cloud computing, supercomputing. So short answer is yes.”

Unsurprisingly, China has already voiced criticism of Raimondo’s comments with officials lamenting the “Cold War mentality” on the part of the U.S. which showed its “desire for hegemony.”

Diplomatic efforts to improve ties between the countries in the wake of Raimondo’s remarks may continue but to the keen observer it appears all but certain at this point that we’ll be seeing a further escalation of the Tech Wars in the coming months, with the export control ratchet playing a central role.

The question is, which critical mineral will find itself in the crosshairs this time. 

Turning the Same Stone Twice

With more confrontation on the horizon, there are some silver linings, thankfully.  Not only are domestic policy stakeholders more attuned to the critical minerals challenge and are working on policy solutions including permitting reform, the mining industry itself has been stepping up its game.

In their quest to secure critical mineral supply chains against the backdrop of surging demand and rising geopolitical pressures, stakeholders are leaving no stone unturned – quite literally — and have in fact begun turning the same stone twice, harnessing the materials science revolution to unlock minerals that were previously bound up, and extracting minerals from unconventional sources such as rock piles and tailings.

In 2023, ARPN featured several of these initiatives:

• The “Atlas of Australian Mine Waste”, an Australian government mapping project of sites containing mine waste with reprocessing potential,
• The USGS’s solicitation for proposals for FY2023 grants to collect data on mine waste using funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in the context of the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI), in the context of which more than $5.8 million will go towards mapping critical-mineral resources in Alaska in partnership with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Minerals included in the context of USGS and the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Survey research projects Alaska are: Arsenic, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, graphite, indium, platinum group metals, rare earth elements, tantalum, tellurium and tin.
• Australia-based New Century Resources current operation of the largest tailings retreatment operation at its zinc tailings retreatment operation in Queensland,
• A Reuters lists of six major projects outside of China aimed at extracting the critical minerals from waste or byproducts, including Iluka Resources Ltd’s and VHM Ltd’s operations in Australia, Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd’s endeavor in northeast South Africa, Swedish state-owned LKAB’s plans to extract REEs from two existing mines, and two U.S. operations:

• Phoenix Tailings, a privately held U.S. company plans to launch operations using waste materials from a former iron ore mine in New York using its own processing technology.

• U.S. Energy Fuels, originally focused on uranium production, started acquiring monazite, a byproduct of mineral sands, to extract REEs with plans to open its own separation plant by 2024.

• Global miner Rio Tinto’s production of tellurium at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah, where roughly 20 tons of the material are generated from by-product streams generated during the copper refining process; and the company’s partnership with CR Minerals Co. LLC to extract a material called pozzolans from Rio Tinto’s Boron California operations, which can be substituted for or combined with cement to decarbonization construction materials. Meanwhile, in Canada, the miner is producing scandium from titanium waste, becoming the first North American producer of scandium in the process.
• The October 2023 Fortune Minerals/Rio Tinto announcement of a collaboration to develop technology to improve the recovery of cobalt and bismuth from co-product streams of minerals recovered at Rio Tinto’s Kennecott smelter in Utah which will be processed at Fortune Minerals’s smelter operations.

As the materials science revolution marches on and continues to unlock new technologies allowing for the safe and commercially viable recovery of mine waste tailings, harnessing this – to date largely untapped — potential could play a significant role in a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to bolstering critical mineral supply chains.

U.S. Supply Chain Initiative, Plan to Release National Defense Industrial Strategy

On the policy front, the Biden Administration recently announced new steps to bolster supply chains for U.S. domestic industries. One highly anticipated component with implications for the critical minerals sector is the Department of Defense’s release of a first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), which, according to the White House, “will guide engagement, policy development, and investment in the defense industrial base over the next three to five years.”

2023 – Metals in Focus

From Battery Criticals to Defense Criticals, and Copper’s Rising Star

In keeping with last year’s trend lines, ARPN-dubbed Battery Criticals – Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Nickel and Manganese – continued to dominate the critical minerals discourse (along with the Rare Earths) against the backdrop of surging needs of the green energy transition.

See our coverage of these materials here.

As previously outlined, however, President Biden’s invocation of Title III of the DPA effectively created a new category of Critical Materials – which ARPN has dubbed the Defense Criticals – a whopping list of 35:

See our post with more context here.  

Meanwhile, one mainstay metal’s star has continued to rise in 2023 – Copper. 

Copper prices may have dropped, however demand for the metal, which is not only a key mainstay metal, but also an indispensable component in green energy technology, is expected to increase drastically to keep pace with the material requirements of the global push towards net zero carbon emissions.

According to the Financial Times, its growing application in this field will result “in it being dubbed the ‘metal of electrification’, with forecasts that it will double to a 50mn tonne market by 2035 compared with 2021 levels, according to S&P Global, which predicts a ‘chronic gap’ between supply and demand.”

While U.S. import reliance for copper hovered around 30 to 35 percent in the 2010s, that number has gone up to more than 40 percent in the 2020s, according to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. 

Miners are pointing out that a confluence of complex permitting timelines, rising inflation and the fact that the commodity is “harder to find in high quantities in the ground” may have led to a situation “where it’s likely there won’t be enough copper to meet decarbonization goals in the next few decades.”

While Copper is a key component of technology in the context of decarbonization efforts, the material was left off the overall U.S. government’s critical minerals list. Congressional efforts to change this may have not succeeded in 2023, but the Department of Energy designated the material a critical material as part of its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment, further raising the material’s clout.

Meanwhile, on December 16, 2023, the Australian government released an update to its list of critical minerals deemed essential to the nation’s energy and security requirements, and also released a new Strategic Materials List of commodities with plans to scope the creation of Strategic Critical Minerals Hubs around the country.   Bearing testimony to the material’s strategic and economic value, Copper made the Australian Government’s Strategic Materials list (along with nickel, aluminum, phosphorus, tin and zinc), a list that identifies commodities which, while not currently considered at risk of supply chain disruption, are essential for the energy transition and the Australian government “will continue supporting the extraction and processing of these minerals and monitoring their market developments.”

It remains to be seen whether the Australian developments will provide a further boost to U.S. domestic efforts to afford copper Critical Mineral status, but it is clear that with or without government action, the material’s star is not going to fade anytime soon.

Conclusion

Time may tell whether 2023 was in fact a watershed year in the critical minerals realm. It appears that we have indeed entered to Post-Petro Tech Age, and it was certainly a year in which tensions between two key global players – the U.S. and China – have reached new heights. Whether or not China overplays its hand in the long run is almost beside the point, as, in the short- to medium term its chokehold in the sector is strong, and we know that the country does not shy away from confrontation.   To not fall behind in the Tech War, decoupling the West’s critical mineral supply chains from China must be the name of the game.

As the West continues this quest, a wary realization appears to have emerged — that the need to coordinate Critical Mineral policy coexists with the growing awareness that even increased supply of essential metals and minerals may not keep pace with rising demand.

How the U.S. and its allies navigate this new resource relationship – multiplied across several score of Critical Minerals – may be one of the principal commercial, diplomatic and national security challenges of this century, and will be a guiding question for 2024.

The post ARPN’s Year in Review – 2023 appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Its conductivity makes it a key component of decarbonization and electrification technology ranging from solar power to hydro, thermal and wind energy, as well as energy storage and transportation.

The looming copper gap, to which ARPN called attention years ago, has prompted industry and academia to once more harness the materials science revolution providing advances in materials exploration and development, to join forces to identify sedimentary hosted copper deposits.  According to a newly-founded consortium of stakeholders led by the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET), these deposits offer a “promising and more sustainable alternative for meeting the increasing global demand for this energy transition critical mineral.”

According to mining.com, the deposits “account only for 20-25% of the world’s total copper production today and offer several advantages compared to non-sedimentary alternatives (…) being globally more widely distributed [and] present ESG opportunities by promoting economic distribution and reducing transport emissions.”

The sedimentary deposits are said to require less energy-intensive processing methods, and, as an added benefit in light of surging demand of battery critical materials against the backdrop of the green energy transition, sedimentary hosted copper deposits also contain significant amounts of cobalt.

The consortium, which also comprises the University of Warsaw, First Quantum Minerals, Teck Resources, BHP and Getech, a locator of subsurface resources, has launched a three-year Kupferschiefer project to create maps of promising areas within the Central European Basin using “proprietary gravity and magnetics data, as well as Globe earth model and spatial analytical expertise.” 

The materials science revolution appears to once more deliver, and the project is a promising endeavor with long-term prospects.  However, as followers of ARPN well know, the looming copper gap warrants immediate action.

The Financial Times predicted that copper’s growing application in this field will result “in it being dubbed the ‘metal of electrification’, with forecasts that it will double to a 50mn tonne market by 2035 compared with 2021 levels, according to S&P Global, which predicts a ‘chronic gap’ between supply and demand.”

U.S. import reliance for copper hovered around 30 to 35 percent in the 2010s, but in the 2020s, that number has gone up to more than 40 percent in the 2020s, according to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. 

In addition to looking to turning to newly unlocked (courtesy of the materials science revolution) deposits the Wall Street Journal outlined earlier this fall that mining companies are also targeting “a new but also old source – closed mines, also known as brownfield sites.”  The Journal points to Sweden-based miner Bluelake Mineral, seeking to reopen a mine site in northern Norway that closed 25 years ago, as well as to Rio Tinto’s Resolution Copper project near Superior, Arizona.

As ARPN outlined earlier, the project is considered one of the most significant undeveloped copper deposits in the world and would reuse the historic Magma Mine which started production in 1910 and operated until 1996. While the project has strong support from the surrounding community, and began the permitting process in 1997, it is still awaiting permits to begin operation.

For all its uses and growing demand profile, copper incredulously has not (yet) been added to the overall U.S. government’s critical minerals list (though the Department of Energy recently designated the material a critical material as part of its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment).

However, with demand and geopolitical volatility surging, securing key mineral supply chains becomes more pertinent than ever, and stakeholders should look to embrace a multitude of opportunities – both traditional and new – to diversify away from our adversaries and unleash our domestic mineral potential where possible.

The post Old Metal, New Uses, New Demand Profile, New Technologies – A Look at Copper appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

However, as followers of ARPN well know, there is more to the story, and more than one battery technology, and, as Jessica Cummins outlines in a recent piece for Stockhead, demand for one of the lesser-known raw materials and one of the five minerals ARPN has designated as “battery criticals” – manganese – is on the rise.  Writes Cummins:

“An afterthought in global commodity markets for the last few decades, almost half of today’s lithium-ion batteries include manganese, and CPM’s projections have that figure jumping above 60% by 2030.

With its ability to increase energy density, equating to longer driving range in the case of electric vehicles, and the added benefit of combustibility reduction, manganese is fast emerging as a vital material to the future of the EV industry and automakers are cashing in.” 

In recent years, automakers increasingly expanded their battery material focus to include manganese, and while Volkswagen’s 2021 announcement of the company’s intention to incorporate high-manganese cathodes into its EV batteries was considered surprising, other automakers have since followed suit.

Cummins believes, however, that the ‘third wave’ of battery technology development, called lithium-manganese-iron-phosphate (LMFP) battery technology, might have the biggest impact going forward.

She points to recent research which has found that the incorporation of manganese into an upgraded version of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries (LFP), which represent the dominant battery chemistry in China, can double the range for a single charge from roughly 500km to up to 1,000km.  A Chinese supplier for Volkswagen says its LMFP technology has a life cycle of 4,000 charge-discharge cycles and over a lifetime can reach a range of up to 4 million km.

Element 25, owner and operator of Australia’s biggest onshore manganese resource, is building a battery plant in Louisiana and will be supplying Stellantis and General Motors. Cummins cites the company’s managing director Justin Brown, who says:

“What we’re seeing is the shift away from cobalt, which has meant that the proportion of nickel has been increasing, however nickel has become problematic because all significant nickel supply comes from laterite processing in Indonesia, which is energy intensive and an environmentally destructive process.”

Brown adds:

“Manganese is now the go-to metal and while the transition isn’t going to happen overnight, I’m told by the OEMs that the factories they are building now will be able to switch across to high manganese cathode materials without any significant re-tooling. It has become a really important part of their planning and over the next two years, when we get into production, I think you’re going to see a completely new landscape.”

With the importance of manganese growing – industry insiders already see LFMP batteries overtaking LFP in China – there is a looming supply shortage in the high-purity manganese market which is set to “really heat up” in 2028.

BloombergNEF expects demand from manganese from the battery segment to surge ninefold by 2030.  These developments have prompted a series of U.S. domestic efforts to secure manganese supply chains.

As ARPN outlined earlier this year, Nevada Silver Corporation, a U.S.-based mineral development company announced that its Minnesota-based subsidiary North Star Manganese received the required permits to commence drilling at its Emily Manganese Project.   Located in the Cayuga Iron Range of Central Minnesota, the Emily District “may contain the largest and highest-grade manganese deposits in the Northern Hemisphere” according to USGS. Drilling has begun and the company has already constructed a processing plant on site.

Further down the development path is the Arizona-based Hermosa Project, owned by major global manganese miner South32’s U.S. subsidiary, which the company calls its first “next generation mine” based on a design that uses automation and targets carbon-neutral mining operations in support of South32’s goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  Hermosa is “multi-Critical,” hosting not only manganese, but what may be the world’s largest zinc deposit, which is a key material in solar and wind power systems.

With demand for EV technology surging, and developments as the ones outlined by Cummins underway, the days when manganese flew under the radar are a thing of the past.

Expect to see and hear more about the material going forward, because, as Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Simon Moores phrased it last year, manganese represents an “EV supply chain bottleneck that can no longer be pushed into tomorrow by battery and automakers.”

The post Move Over, Lithium – Manganese Emerges as a Key Player in the EV Revolution appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With the world having become increasingly interconnected and interdependent in the years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, fears that globalization is dead are likely overblown, but, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out earlier this year, it is certainly changing.

The world is becoming more fragmented, and, as Jared Cohen, president of Global Affairs and co-head of the Office of Applied Innovation at Goldman Sachs wrote earlier this month, “in the 2020s, everything is geopolitical.”

As he outlines: “Each great power has a privileged position in the global economy, and they all face new risks and uncertain futures.” 

He elaborates:

“The United States is leaning more into its status as the holder of the world’s reserve currency, using the dollar and related payment systems to sanction adversaries and competitors. China is leveraging dependency on its position in supply chains. And Russia—with nowhere near the power of China or the U.S., but with more appetite for risk—has wielded energy to intimidate and coerce its neighbors and limit global support for Ukraine. There is no country or multilateral organization that has the capacity to arbitrate these tensions.”

With the above-referenced events at the top of this decade and the accelerating global push towards net zero carbon emissions a new class of states have entered the spotlight in the global geopolitical realignment – the “geopolitical swing states,” and their role could grow exponentially in the coming years.

Goldman Sachs’s Cohen defines a geopolitical swing state as “critical to the world economy and balance of power” but without “the capacity by themselves to drive the global agenda, at least for now.” He adds that “as long as the tensions between the U.S. and China continue to get worse, they will have outsized abilities to navigate geopolitical competition and take advantage of and influence it.” 

According to Cohen, there are four – often overlapping — categories of geopolitical swing states:

• Countries with a competitive advantage in a critical aspect of global supply chains;
• Countries with a unique ability to make themselves attractive for nearshoring, offshoring, or friendshoring;
• Countries with a disproportionate amount of capital and willingness to deploy it around the world in pursuit of strategic objectives; and
• Countries with developed economies and leaders who have global visions that they pursue within certain constraints.

As Cohen concludes, “[t]he rise of geopolitical swing states may balance the great powers and help stabilize the global order. Their interest-based decision-making could be a source of consistency in uncertain times. Or their newfound prominence may increase global instability by putting more actors and variables in play. But even if today’s world is not yet multipolar, a rising group of countries recognize that they can determine the course of world events. Those geopolitical swing states are aware that their power may be unsustainable, or event fleeting and they are determined to take advantage of the current window of opportunity.”

While the rise of the geopolitical swing states has business implications for multinational businesses and investors, these trendlines are have real-world implications for U.S. stakeholders from a policy perspective, and, in the critical mineral resource realm, underscore the importance of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to securing critical mineral resource supply chains.

As Cohen closes:

“For years, geopolitics mattered more to certain industries than others. Now they matter to everyone.”

The sooner U.S. policy stakeholders realize this and pursue a comprehensive “soup-to-nuts” approach that embraces nearshoring, offshoring, and friendshoring, while also focusing on bolstering the domestic critical minerals framework, the better.

The post Rise of “Geopolitical Swing States” Underscores Need for All-Of-The-Above Approach to Mineral Resource Security appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

They are not only “the material basis for integrated circuits that are essential to modern day life” – the “‘DNA’ of technology” which has “transformed essentially all segments of the economy,” they are also essential to national security, where they enable the “development and fielding of advanced weapons systems and control toe operation of the nation’s critical infrastructure,” as the Department of Commerce-led chapter in the Biden Administration’s 100 Day Supply Chain Review report outlines.

As such, they sit at the heart of U.S.-Chinese tech competition, and have been dubbed “the next frontier in the tech battle between the U.S. and China” for good reason.

In his State of the Union address last month, U.S. President Joe Biden touted last fall’s passage of the CHIPS and Science Act allocating new funding for research, development and production of semiconductors, which has spurred private investment in the sector. Following on the heels of the new law, the Commerce Department in October applied new export controls to China’s access to advanced computing chips, its ability to develop and maintain super computers and manufacture semiconductors.

As Shubham Dwivedi and Gregory D. Wischer wrote last month for RealClearEnergy, “[t]he subsequent chip measures were clinically targeted at critical chokepoints in the global chip supply chain, and have since been backed by important partners, including Japan and the Netherlands, two key players in the advanced semiconductor ecosystem.” 

But the semiconductor space is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Write Dwivedi and Wischer:

“Semiconductors require various minerals such as silicon, gallium, arsenic, cobalt, and more. Silicon is the most common foundational material for chips today, while gallium arsenide is the second most common. Cobalt is increasingly important for advanced chips too.”

As long as China controls critical mineral supply chains – and a look at the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries leaves no doubt about that, semiconductor supply chains – and as such national security will still be jeopardized.

In their quest to alleviate “undue geopolitical leverage,” U.S. allies like Canada, and more recently Australia, have taken steps to reduce Chinese influence in their critical mineral industries.

A proposal to bolster the Investment Canada Act (ICA) to empower government ministers to block or unwind critical mineral investments if these are considered as a threat to national security, considered a defensive measure against China which has invested $7 billion in Canada’s base metals sector in the past two decades, is expected to be finalized this spring. Prior to the unveiling of the proposal, Canadian officials had ordered Chinese companies to sell their stakes in three Toronto Stock Exchange-listed companies last fall.

Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently blocked a request by a Chinese company to boost its investment in Australian REE company Northern Minerals via a prevention order, the first move of this kind since the Treasurer had expressed concerns over the “concentrated nature of the China-dominated critical minerals supply chain” elevated by the Russia-Ukraine war.

When Dwivedi and Wischer published their piece in February, they lamented that the CHIPS and Science Act represents a missed opportunity to strengthen the U.S. domestic critical mineral industry, and urged Congress to take up legislation to not only provide funding for domestic critical mineral projects, but rather also reform the cumbersome permitting system.

Since then, House Republicans have put forth the  Transparency, Accountability, Permitting and Production of (TAPP) American Resources Act, H.R. 1 which seeks to bolster U.S. critical mineral supply chains by reducing red tape, entry barriers and redundancies, and reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to provide industry with clearer timelines and more certainty, and would emulate, to an extent Canada’s and Australia’s approach to curbing Chinese influence by seeking to limit Chinese and other “bad actors’”involvement in the U.S. critical minerals industry.

H.R. 1 will only be an opening salvo in the discourse over securing the supply chains underpinning 21^stCentury technology, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the West has woken up to the seriousness of its over-reliance on Beijing, and the tech arms race is heating up.

The post Tech Arms Race to Heat Up as Western Nations Take Steps to Counter China on Semiconductors, Critical Minerals appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

We’re talking about manganese. It’s certainly not the first metal that comes to mind when we think of EV batteries, and maybe not even the second or third one. It is, however one of the two battery criticals (the other is graphite) for which the United States is currently 100% import dependent.

In the battery segment, manganese serves as a stabilizing component in the EV battery cathode by virtue of its density increasing property. Its addition improves driving range and decreases the combustibility of the battery pack.

The 12th most abundant element is primarily sourced from South Africa, Australia, Brazil, India and Gabon.  As is the case for many critical minerals, China dominates the processing segment with 95% of the chemical refining of battery grade material occurring there. (For an overview of China’s overall battery supply chain dominance followers may wish to refer back to our post from last October featuring a handy graphic by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.)

Automakers, including Tesla and Volkswagen, have stressed the potential for manganese-based batteries going forward.  With demand for manganese from the battery segment expected to surge ninefold by 2030 according to BloombergNEF, and automakers seeking raw materials deals and pushing for the acceleration of the development of domestic critical mineral materials, prospects for U.S. production are increasing in the context of efforts to reduce supply chain reliance on China.

Efforts to do so are currently underway. Just this week Nevada Silver Corporation, a U.S.-based mineral development company announced that its Minnesota-based subsidiary North Star Manganese received the required permits to commence drilling at its Emily Manganese Project.   Located in the Cayuga Iron Range of Central Minnesota, the Emily District “may contain the largest and highest-grade manganese deposits in the Northern Hemisphere” according to USGS. Drilling has begun and the company has already constructed a processing plant on site.

Further down the development path is the Arizona-based Hermosa Project, owned by major global manganese miner South32’s U.S. subsidiary, which the company calls its first “next generation mine” based on a design that uses automation and targets carbon-neutral mining operations in support of South32’s goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  Hermosa is “multi-Critical,” hosting not only manganese, but what may be the world’s largest zinc deposit, which is a key material in solar and wind power systems.

With the green energy transition accelerating and demand for EV technology surging, the days when manganese flew under the radar are a thing of the past. Expect to see and hear more about the material going forward, because, as Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Simon Moores phrased it last year, manganese represents an “EV supply chain bottleneck that can no longer be pushed into tomorrow by battery and automakers,” and it is encouraging to see that there are domestic developments to improve the supply picture.

The post Under the Radar, Yet Highly Critical – A Look at the Battery Critical Manganese appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

While the number of metals and minerals for which the U.S. remains 100% import dependent may have dropped by two from 17 to 15, the number of materials for which we are more than 50% or more import dependent has actually gone up over last year.

When cross-referencing the U.S. Net Import Reliance chart with the 2022 Final list of Critical Minerals, the United States was 100% net import reliant for 12, and an additional 31 critical mineral commodities (including 14 lanthanides, which are listed under rare earths) had a net import reliance greater than 50% of apparent consumption.

Recent policy developments, such as the Biden Administration’s invoking of the Defense Production Act (DPA) for the five “battery criticals” — graphite, lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese –  as well as the rare earths, declared DPA priority materials during the Trump Adminstration, plus the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the energy provisions of which contained EV tax credits observers said would send important signals to investors and industry that the U.S. was serious about domestic supply chains, provide hope for a positive change.

But, after decades of dwindling domestic resource production and rising import reliance, no one ever said turning an aircraft carrier this size would be easy.  As Morgan D. Bazilian of the Colorado School of Mines and Gregory Brew from the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University argue in a recent piece for Foreign Affairs, while this general trend represents “welcome and overdue progress, (…) implementing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could be stymied in part by a material obstacle: the procurement of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper that are essential to clean energy systems,” which in their words have so far been “myopic.”

At the same time, as scholars at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Center have pointed out, “the Biden administration’s efforts to free up federal funds for domestic mining activities has highlighted the inherent conflict between accessing the minerals needed for climate action and the administration’s commitment to environmental and social justice.” 

Developments like the recent Biden administration halt on progress on the Ambler Road project in Alaska, which proponents say would unlock access to critical minerals and create new jobs, or the cancellation of the two mineral leases held by Twin Metals Minnesota LLC which seeks to mine copper, nickel and other commodities near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, point to conflicting viewpoints between the President’s stated objectives and his Administration’s policy.

This week’s State of the Union Address to both chambers of Congress could have provided important impetus to strengthen critical mineral supply chains. However, while professing that his administration understood the importance of making sure that “the supply chain for America begins in America,” the President’s speech never once referenced the terms “critical minerals,” “mining,” or “processing.”  

That is in spite of the fact that there are promising developments underway – especially for the “battery criticals.”  Over the next few weeks ARPN will be looking at each of these materials, now deemed under President Biden’s DPA determination to be “essential to the national defense,” and the U.S.-based projects working to urgently needed new supply into production.

Let’s start with graphite, one of the materials for which USGS noted an ongoing 100% import dependence this year.

As the key raw material in the battery anode, graphite is the largest component of lithium-ion batteries by weight. In light of “phenomenal demand growth from the EV battery sector and delays to new capacity as well as rising power costs,” the graphite supply chain represents a significant and growing challenge for automakers looking to reduce the carbon footprint of the materials they use for their EVs.

However, that’s not for lack of known graphite resources.  As USGS noted in February 2022 in its updated U.S. Mineral Deposit Database, the Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska – being developed by Graphite One, Inc. — is America’s largest graphite deposit.

Graphite One recently announced it is cooperating with two U.S. national laboratories under the Department of Energy umbrella in an effort to establish a mine-to-manufacturing all-American graphite supply chain.

In January, the company announced that it had entered into an agreement to have active anode material and other materials sourced from Graphite Creek tested to verify conformity to EV battery specifications by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Aside from these public private partnerships according to Metal Tech News’s Shane Lasley, at least three automakers to date have also taken notice and are currently testing Graphite One material for use in their EV batteries.

In keeping with the new generation of miners looking to harness the materials science revolution to responsibly green our energy future [see ARPN’s post series on mining companies’ sustainability initiatives here], the company is also collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to explore the lab’s award-winning green extraction methods to recover materials other than graphite from Graphite Creek – providing, in Lasley’s words, an opportunity to “provide an ancillary income stream for Graphite One while maximizing the Alaska deposit’s potential to supply minerals critical to the U.S” or – to use the President’s State of the Union verbiage — an opportunity to make sure that “the supply chain for America begins in America.”

As ARPN recently pointed out,

“If U.S. Government efforts to develop an American-based EV and lithium-ion battery supply chain have any hope of succeeding, looking for ways to help projects like Graphite Creek down the path to production will be, in a word…. Critical.”

The post As Critical Mineral Dependencies Persist, Promising “Battery Criticals” Projects Provide Opportunity to Ensure that “the Supply Chain for America Begins in America” – A Look at Graphite appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

After receiving two grants from the U.S. Department of Defense Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to the tune of $200,000 to study the domestic production of military-grade antimony trisulfide in the context of its Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho in September 2022, mining company Perpetua Resources Corp. was awarded $24.8 million to complete environmental and engineering studies to obtain a Final Economic Impact Statement, a Final Record of Decision, and other ancillary permits on December 19, 2022.

The $24.8 award was made through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy’s Defense Production Act (DPA) Investments program and the Air Force Executive Agent.

Acknowledging the growing national security implications of rising critical minerals demand, the Department of Defense in recent months has stepped up its efforts to secure its supply chains, and the DPA Investments Program award to Perpetua Resources Inc. is the first critical minerals award using Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations.

Why would, as InvestorIntel’s Dean Bristol phrased it, the Department of Defense start the “Invest in Critical Minerals Strategy with the letter ‘A’”?

There is good reason.

Writes Bristol:

“Antimony trisulfide is essential to national defense as a key component for munitions and primers used in every branch of the armed services. Additionally, every military uniform is coated with antimony to provide fire protection and minimize infrared detection. It is also a useful material for the energy transition as a glass clarifier in solar panels or as a metal strengthener to wind turbine components.

More recently, antimony is gaining recognition as a battery metal for its role in liquid metal battery technology. Yet, the U.S. has no domestic antimony production at present. Even more challenging, roughly 90% of global antimony production is controlled by China, Russia, and Tajikistan. Not exactly, the names you want at the top of your list of a ‘must have’ commodity.”

Halimah Najieb-Locke, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience put it in broader terms in the official DoD award announcement, stating that “[t]he Department’s DPA Investments Program is delivering on its core mission to restore domestic industrial capabilities essential to the national defense by enabling the warfighter,”and adding that “[t]his action reinforces the Administration’s goals to increase the resilience of our critical mineral supply chains while deterring adversarial aggression.”

As the Pentagon points out, Perpetua’s “Stibnite Gold Project” produced antimony trisulfide for the defense industrial base during World War II and the Korean War. Operations were abandoned in the mid 1950s. Recognized as the “sole domestic geologic reserve of antimony that can meet Department of Defense (DoD) requirements,” the Stibnite Gold Project, according to Bristol, “ is designed to apply a modern, responsible mining approach to restore an abandoned mine site and produce both gold and the only mined source of antimony in the United States.”

In keeping with the mining industry’s current efforts to sustainably green our future, the Project will “be powered by the lowest carbon emissions grid in the nation” and will supply a portion of the antimony produced at the site to U.S.-based Ambri, a company which has developed an antimony-based, low-cost liquid metal battery for the energy storage market.

In light of the increasingly volatile geopolitical global landscape, it is reasonable to expect a stronger focus on the national security implications of mineral resource security on the part of U.S. stakeholders in the coming months.  ARPN will be keeping tabs on U.S. government awards to strengthen critical mineral supply chains for our national defense sector, as well as the ones underpinning our economic wellbeing and green energy future as they are announced.

The post “A” for Antimony — Defense Logistics Agency Zeroes in on Material Critical to U.S. National Security appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

In what effectively amounted to a “coronation,” as the Wall Street Journal editorial board phrased it, the CCP’s move has effectively “confirm[ed] China’s combination of aggressive nationalism and Communist ideology that is the single biggest threat to world freedom.” 

Mr. Xi’s confirmation to another term was hardly a surprise, but in his landmark speech addressing the CCP Congress, he emphasized the the need to increase China’s self-sufficiency in technology and supply chains, and reaffirmed China’s commitment to attaining control over Taiwan — a key point of contention in the country’s relations with the United States, which have already starkly deteriorated in recent years.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the “coronation” “all but guarantees an era of confrontation between China and the U.S.”

Aware that “China has big footed a lot of the technology and supply chains that could end up making us vulnerable if we don’t develop our own supply chains,” as U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm phrased it earlier this summer, the United States and its partners have stepped up efforts to decouple from China.

These may become all the more pressing in light of current fears, as Damon Kitney reports for The Australian, that China may seek to retaliate after the U.S. Department of Commerce announced sweeping limitations to semiconductor and chip-making equipment sales to Chinese customers this fall.

Speaking to a private forum in Melbourne, earlier this month, Australia’s former Ambassador to the U.S. and federal Treasurer Joe Hockey told attendees:

“In terms of critical minerals, my concern is – and there has started to be a few reports in the US suggesting this – is that after the midterm elections, and with a re-empowered (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, as of next year China will start to turn down the tap on the supply of critical minerals to the US and other places.”

Followers of ARPN have long known that China is no stranger to playing politics with its near-total rare earths supply monopoly, and just last year, we saw the country threatening to limit rare earth shipments to U.S. defense contractors over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Thankfully, U.S. domestic efforts to bolster supply chains can be complemented with leveraging close cooperation with allied nations including Canada and Australia.

Australia is ready to step up its rare earths game and challenge China in this segment.  As Phil Mercer writes for BBC News, Sydney, “Australia, a superpower exporter of iron ore and coal with rich mining traditions believes it is well-placed to join the race to exploit minerals that provide critical parts for electric vehicles and wind turbines.” He cites John Coyne of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who — while warning that China will not easily surrender its dominance of the sector — says:

“Australia has the world’s sixth-largest reserves of rare earth minerals. However, they remain largely untapped with only two mines producing them.  There is significant potential in the establishment of multi-ore mineral-processing hubs in Australia. After all, there is no point in creating supply chain resilience for [rare earth] ores if miners must still send them to China for processing.”

Mercer points to the U.S. Defense Department’s deal with Australian miner Lynas Rare Earths, which has been contracted to construct a REE processing facility in the U.S..

In the same vein,  the Canadian government has inked an agreement with Rio Tinto to jointly invest $737 million to modernize the company’s Sorel-Tracy, Quebec metals processing plant, with  Rio Tinto’ chief executive Jakob Stausholm warning of the “excesses of globalization” in critical mineral supply chains. The move is said to strengthen “North America’s first production capacity for titanium metal, a lightweight but strong material important to aerospace and defense groups such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.” 

Stateside, the U.S. Department of Energy has just announced the first round of funding under the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure act for projects aimed at “supercharging” U.S. manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and electric grid — another important step in the decoupling from adversaries like China.

With a newly-emboldened Mr. Xi reportedly seeing the possibility of a showdown with the West as “increasingly likely”in the context of his goal to “restore China to what he believes is its rightful place as a global player and a peer of the U.S,” as the Wall Street Journal writes, these efforts could not be more urgent.

The post President Xi Jinping’s “Coronation” Adds Fuel to the Fire to Decouple Critical Mineral Supply Chains from China appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

National Clean Energy Week is billed as an annual week-long “celebration of clean energy innovation” to “help solve the world’s most pressing challenges in nuclear, solar, wind, wave, hydropower, geothermal, natural gas, biomass, carbon capture, storage and waste-to-energy technologies.”

The bipartisan event organized by Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) and sponsored by a broad list of sponsors ranging from industry groups over trade associations and advocacy groups, culminates in a virtual Policy Makers Symposium with presentations from the Biden Administration, Members of Congress from both sides of the political aisle, as well as industry experts discussing the challenges and opportunities for America in the context of the green energy transition. Among other issues, panels have and continue to focus on

• critical minerals, supply chains and domestic manufacturing;
• innovation and emission reduction in carbon-intensive sectors;
• U.S. competitiveness; and
• workable solutions for nature.

From an ARPN perspective, it was good to see that the forum kicked off with a discussion focused on critical mineral supply chains and domestic manufacturing, because, as our followers well know, “without massive investments in base metals and key minerals, Europe and North America will fail to meet their carbon emission targets and face a new form of energy insecurity,” as Forbes contributor Wal van Lierop wrote last month.

The Biden Administration has taken several steps to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, including the invocation of the Defense Production Act for the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese, and recently enacted provisions in the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are expected to send a strong signal to industry that the United States are serious about confronting the critical minerals supply chain challenge head-on.

With much more remaining to be done, lawmakers have used the occasion of National Clean Energy Week to highlight additional legislation aimed at promoting responsible clean energy development and strengthening critical mineral supply chains and we will continue to monitor if and how these proposals make their ways through Congress in the coming weeks.  After a bipartisan passage of the IRA, partisan politics is rearing its head again with the congressional midterm elections only weeks away.

As Shane Lasley, author of the must-read “Critical Mineral Alliances 2022” outlined, we have a broad arsenal from which we can draw, but it will take a concerted, bipartisan effort:

“[t]he optimum solution to laying the foundation for the next epoch of human progress will only be discovered through the forging of unlikely alliances between the woke and old school, environmental conservationists and natural resource developers, liberals and conservatives, national laboratories and private sector entrepreneurs, local stakeholders and global mining companies, venture capitalists and innovators, and everyone else with visions of a cleaner, greener, and high-tech future.”

As we stated before, “from where we stand, the challenge of the 21st Century’s Tech Metals Age begins with a change in mindset toward mining.” 

The post National Clean Energy Week Underscores Importance of Critical Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.