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As ARPN outlined earlier this week, the European Union has dropped its response to the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act passed last summer: the just-dropped Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) paired with sister legislation, the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA), which aims to support investment in manufacturing capacity in ‘net zero emissions’ technologies in Europe.

The CRMA not only seeks to streamline the permitting process for raw materials projects, floats the idea of a critical raw materials “club,” sets benchmarks for domestic resource diversification, and updates the bloc’s critical raw materials (CRMs) list.

The CRMA also creates a separate category of “strategic raw materials” (SRMs) which includes a set of materials considered “of high strategic importance, taking into account their use in strategic technologies underpinning the green and digital transitions or for defence or space applications, that are characterized by a potentially significant gap between global supply.”

The new classification of strategic raw materials includes bismuth (metallurgical grade), cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, lithium (battery grade), magnesium metal, manganese (battery grade), natural graphite (battery grade), nickel (battery grade), platinum group metals, rare earth elements for magnets, silicon metal, titanium metal and tungsten.

All of these, as Connor Watts notes in his discussion of the Act for RethinkResearch.biz, are included within the EU’s CRM list, which further included s antimony, arsenic, bauxite, barite, beryllium, coking coal, feldspar, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, hafnium, helium, heavy rare earth elements, light rare earth elements, niobium, phosphate rock, phosphorus, scandium, strontium, tantalum and vanadium.

As ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty noted earlier this month, the U.S., albeit less explicitly, has also seen the creation of new categories of critical minerals in recent months, including most recently via the grouping of certain critical minerals in the context of yet another Presidential Determination invoking Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to strengthen supply chains in February of this year, a grouping ARPN has dubbed the “defense criticals.” This development followed President Biden’s March 2022 designation of what ARPN calls the “battery criticals.” President Biden also invoked Title III for Platinum and Palladium in a DPA Presidential Determination in June 2022.

The classification of a more narrow subset of critical minerals underscores their increased importance in the context of rising demand as geopolitical tensions soar and the green energy transition marches on, and will allow for more targeted policy approaches and specific measures designed to strengthen their supply chains — and ARPN will keep tabs on further developments in this space on both sides of the Atlantic.

As for the EU’s two laws in response to the United States’ IRA, they will now head to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union before they can be adopted and enter into force, and can either be strengthened or watered down along the way.

These initiatives come at a critical juncture in time.  With geopolitical tensions getting higher and China and Russia cozying up to one another, the stakes are ever-increasing, but recent measures on both sides of the Atlantic show that the West has realized the urgency of its critical mineral conundrum.

Sometimes hailed the “fuel of the green revolution,” lithium has been the posterchild of the “battery criticals.”  Start with the fact that the leading battery technology underpinning the shift towards net zero carbon emissions is called “lithium-ion.” With its high electrochemical potential and light weight, the commercialization of the lithium-ion battery has transformed and accelerated the renewables shift.  Lithium is a key component of the battery cathode, and the EV market and demand for renewable energy storage are key drivers for soaring lithium demand.

Meanwhile, as global lithium production has quadrupled since 2010, the U.S. share of production has dropped significantly. Once the largest producer of lithium in the 1990s, the United States’ share of production has dropped to 1 percent of the global total, as Australia, Chile and China dominate the field.

As we previously pointed out, China may only account for 13% of total production, but It has not only consistently developed domestic mining capabilities — it has also acquired lithium assets in countries like Chile, Canada and Australia, and, one link down the lithium supply chain, it is now home to 60% of global refining capacity. In light of skyrocketing demand projections, the country has stepped up its involvement in the electric game, and has recently beat out automaker Tesla in a bid to mine for lithium in Nigeria.

As for the United States, according to the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, “[c]ommercial-scale lithium production […] was from one continental brine operation in Nevada. Lithium was also commercially produced from the brine-sourced waste tailings of a Utah-based magnesium producer. Two companies produced a wide range of downstream lithium compounds in the United States from domestic or imported lithium carbonate, lithium chloride, and lithium hydroxide.”

Big picture, the U.S. simply cannot realize its aspirations to be a global player in the renewable revolution while producing 1% of worldwide lithium supply.

Efforts to strengthen the lithium supply chain are underway. Followers of ARPN are aware of the green energy-related provisions of 2021 congressional infrastructure package, as well as the 2022 invocation of the Defense Production Act for lithium and the battery criticals and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

[Lithium is the latest in ARPN’s feature series reviewing the battery criticals against the backdrop of the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. View our posts on graphite, manganese, cobalt, and nickel.]   

In January of this year, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced a conditional commitment to Ioneer to advance the domestic production of lithium and boron at its Rhyolite Ridge project.

Rhyolite Ridge would become the second lithium mine in the United States, but – while DOE is providing a 9-digit loan guarantee – the project is still pending approval from DOI, the Department of the Interior, where it is mired in the inherent irony of the green energy transition, with environmentalists opposing the project on grounds that Thiem’s buckwheat, a rare wildflower found on the proposed mine site, was added to the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service only a few weeks ago.   We have seen this paradox elsewhere. As Reuters columnist Andy Home phrased it: “public opinion is firmly in favour of decarbonisation but not the mines and smelters needed to get there.”

Also in January, General Motors announced that it would jointly invest with Lithium Americas Corp. to develop the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, which is the largest known source of lithium in the United States, and is considered the third largest in the world.  With a $650 million equity investment, this would represent the “largest investment by an automakers to produce battery raw materials” in GM’s own words. Under the agreement, GM will have exclusive access to the lithium once the investment is complete. The company expects that once the mine is operational in the second half of 2026, the batteries bearing Rhyolite Ridge lithium could power up to 1 million EVs.

Not surprisingly, the Thacker Mine, too, is embroiled in a high stakes legal battle, with environmentalists and tribal leaders attempting to block the project near the Oregon line.  Just last week, however, a federal judge – for the third time in two years – sided with the Biden Administration and Lithium Americas, denying the opposition’s request for an emergency injunction until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can hear their latest appeal.  Based on the judge’s decision, construction could begin as early as this week.

In addition to projects pursuing lithium as a primary material, Rio Tinto’s U.S. Borax Mine in California has recovered lithium from 90-year old waste piles.  The effort has leveraged a public-private partnership linking Rio Tinto with DOE’s Critical Materials Institute, to work through processing challenges.  It’s the kind of unconventional thinking that finds a 21^st Century tech material in the mine tailings of the 1920s, turning a “waste stream” into a “work stream” in a world hungry for lithium.

Achieving global (and domestic) decarbonization goals while at the same time strengthening our supply chains and reducing our over-reliance on critical minerals from China will require a comprehensive “all of the above” approach across the entire value chain, and,  ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty has consistently  pointed out, “we don’t have the luxury of time” anymore.

 In this post, we continue our review of the “battery criticals” (lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese) against the backdrop of the just-released 2023 iteration of the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries.  Next up:  cobalt. With the material accounting for up to 20% of the weight of the cathode in a typical lithium-ion EV battery, cobalt was considered the highest [...]

It is essential to the production of iron and steel. It is a key component of certain widely used aluminum alloys.  It’s considered a Critical Mineral by the U.S. Government, “essential to the national defense,” under the terms of the long-standing Defense Production Act.  And, perhaps most importantly today, it is one of the five battery criticals, with the [...]

 For all the talk about reducing our over-reliance on foreign critical mineral resources against the backdrop of soaring demand, strained supply chains and increasing geopolitical tensions, last week’s release of the annual USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries report still paints a sobering picture. While the number of metals and minerals for which the U.S. remains 100% import dependent [...]

Earlier this week, USGS released its latest iteration of the annual Mineral Commodity Summaries, a much-cited report that every year gives us a data-driven glimpse into our nation’s mineral resource dependencies. It’s fitting that ARPN reviews the report on Groundhog Day, February 2nd, because just like in the Bill Murray classic movie, in which the clock jumps [...]

It may not make headlines as much as some of its U.S. Government Critical Minerals List peers, especially the battery criticals lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese, and as such you may not have heard much about it — but antimony has entered the spotlight and has garnered the attention of Pentagon planners. After receiving [...]

Happy New Year! For most of us, the first week of January means it’s time to go back to the grind after an extended period of family time, food coma, rest and – hypothetically, at least — reflection.  It also means trying shake the brain fog and mental rust that has settled in order to dive [...]

  2022 surely was as fast-paced a year as they come. Didn’t we just throw overboard our New Year’s Resolutions?  We blinked, and it’s time for another review of what has happened in the past twelve months. So with no further ado, here is ARPN’s annual attempt to take stock of what has happened on the [...]

As the global push towards net zero carbon emissions accelerates, the understanding that critical minerals hold the key to achieving climate goals has grown.   With EV battery technology at the heart of the green energy transition, the “Battery Criticals” (lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and manganese) have entered the spotlight.   While initially the main focus was on the cathode materials [...]