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We’re “on a highway to climate hell.” The picture UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez is painting of current efforts in the climate fight is – expectedly – bleak. As such, it is no surprise that nations have been doubling down on their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the Biden Administration is no exception.

Followers of ARPN have long known that the path to net zero leads through the critical minerals sector, and U.S. stakeholders have begun to realize that there is no greening our energy future without vast amounts of rare earths, the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, and manganese (as well as scores of other metals and minerals once considered mainstay or niche).   These “super-criticals” – the five battery materials, plus a sub-set of five rare earths required for permanent magnets (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium and samarium) – comprise a group of 10 Criticals within the 50 Critical Minerals on the official U.S. Government list.

In an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, critical mineral security is more than just a gateway to the green energy transition, it is also a national security imperative.  While the United States is fortunate to have vast mineral riches beneath our own soil, we have fallen behind in the global race to secure supply chains and have yielded much ground to adversary nations like China who have cornered many segments of the value chain.

First steps to decouple supply chains from China have been taken, but more must be done.

Tying into this context, the White House has explicitly acknowledged the importance of developing critical minerals and cutting greenhouse gas emissions while promoting Indigenous rights, national security and the environment in its recently-released National Strategy for the Arctic Region — a region rich in metals and minerals to which the United States stakes its claim via Alaska, which in turn is home to many of the materials deemed “critical” by the U.S. Government.

According to the National Strategy, U.S. Government agencies “will seek to strengthen the resilience of U.S. supply chains by exploring the potential for sustainable and responsible critical mineral production in Alaska while adhering to the highest environmental, labor, community engagement, and sustainability standards.” In the broader Arctic region, agencies “will work with our allies and partners—including through the potential use of relevant U.S. Government mechanisms and development programs, such as the Export-Import Bank, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and U.S. Trade and Development Agency—to expand private sector-led investment and pursue sustainable economic development in the Arctic, including in critical minerals.” 

While both U.S. Senators from Alaska lament that the National Strategy falls short (both point to the fact that recent Administration decisions regarding specific Alaska resource projects run counter to the expressed strategic goals), the fact that critical mineral security is considered a formal strategic objective, is a positive development on which stakeholders can build.

With geopolitical tensions rising and climate pressures mounting, the focus on the Arctic — a region in which Russia accounts for half of the landmass — is both unavoidable and highly warranted.  The United States Government would be well advised to follow through on the strategic objectives outlined in the strategy, and harness the vast mineral potential it can unleash in Alaska.

A case in point, as we recently outlined:

“Right now, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. is 100% import-dependent for graphite.  But that’s not for lack of known graphite resources.  As USGS noted in February 2022 in its updated U.S. Mineral Deposit Database, Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska is America’s largest graphite deposit.  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.”

***To keep up with Alaska critical mineral developments, be sure to follow North of 60 Mining News’s Shane Lasley, whose work ARPN has featured frequently.***

As global leaders direct their focus towards the COP27 climate change summit kicking off in Sharm El Sheikh this upcoming Sunday, pressures on critical mineral supply chains – particularly those for the “battery criticals”underpinning EV battery and energy storage technology — continue to mount.

While for some time, much of the “battery critical” focus was primarily on lithium, this has shifted. See our recent pieces on graphite and cobalt here and here, respectively. Now, with Indonesia’s investment minister hinting at the possibility of Jakarta pursuing the creation of an OPEC-like cartel for nickel (and other key battery metals) the spotlight is falling on nickel.

As the largest nickel producer with the largest known reserves of the material, Indonesia is considered the “nickel capital of the world.”

As the Financial Times reports, the country’s investment minister Bahlil Lahdalia declared in an interview that the Indonesian government is studying “the possibility to form a (…)  governance structure [similar to OPEC] with regards to the minerals we have, including nickel, cobalt and manganese” adding that he saw “the merit of creating OPEC to manage the governance of oil trade to ensure predictability for potential investors and consumers.”

Observers were quick to point out that “any attempt to form a cartel to control global prices for nickel would be far from straightforward.”

Writes Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com:

“Unlike the oil resources of OPEC’s producers, the mining operations in Indonesia and other major nickel producers are controlled by various private companies or Chinese entities. Moreover, the biggest producers and holders of nickel deposits are a diverse group of countries with very different political and market conditions and unlikely to have common ground and interests in forming a cartel.”

However, the looming specter of battery material cartelization – first introduced earlier this year by South American Lithium producers — should be reason enough for U.S. stakeholders to kick the buildout of domestic battery supply chains into high gear wherever possible.

As recent U.S. developments suggest, efforts are already underway.

The first recipients of federal funding disbursed under the 2021 infrastructure law to “supercharge” U.S. manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the electric grid included the Tamarack Nickel Project in central Minnesota.  As ARPN has noted, the project had previously been awarded  $2.2 million  to fund an effort to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes.  Bringing the supply chain home could not only inoculate the U.S. from trade issues on the critical minerals front, but could also help reduce the industry’s — arguably large — carbon footprint.

With talk of nickel cartels and resource nationalism on the rise, the establishment of a secure U.S. nickel supply chain can’t come soon enough.

It’s Halloween – time for trick or treating, spooky storytelling and scary visuals.  Here’s a real scary one if you’re still looking to frighten the policy wonks among your Halloween party guests. Courtesy of our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, it’s an infographic that should send a serious chill down policy makers’ spines, and it’s not even gory: While [...]

“Solar power, electric cars, grid-scale batteries, heat pumps—the world is crossing into a mass-adoption moment for green technologies,” writes Tom Randall for Bloomberg.  Citing Bloomberg research, he argues that “clean energy has a tipping point, and 87 countries have reached it.”  The mass-adoption of green technologies, as followers of ARPN well know, requires drastically increased amounts of critical [...]

The global push towards net zero carbon marches on, and with sales of EVs continuing to soar even as prices rise, analysts suggest that the “world could be nearing a critical electric vehicle sales tipping point, when volatile adoption trends are overtaken by mainstream demand.”  With skyrocketing demand, the mineral intensity of the green energy transition [...]

With the coronavirus pandemic and growing geopolitical tensions having shone a light on U.S. over-reliance on foreign sources across our nation’s critical mineral value chains and its implications for our national and economic security, domestic stakeholders have stepped up their efforts to decouple U.S. supply chains from reliance on our adversaries. While for “battery criticals” [...]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent additional supply chain challenges have prompted the European Union — already grappling with strained supply chains in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic — to step up its critical minerals game. During her State of the Union address on September 14, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced [...]

Against the backdrop of ongoing supply chain challenges around the globe, the urgency of untangling and securing critical mineral supply chains essential to a net zero carbon emissions future is becoming increasingly clear. Following on the heels of the Biden Administration invoking the Defense Production Act for the “Battery Criticals” – lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese [...]

In a new piece for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Niall Mcgee discusses China’s quiet but systematic campaign to corner the critical minerals segment in Canada and stakeholder reactions in Ottawa, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Citing the 2019 acquisition of the Tanco Mine in Manitoba, known as one of the world’s few sources of cesium [...]

As pressures continue to mount, U.S. stakeholders are beginning to realize the urgency of building supply chains “that are safer, more secure and not beholden to a country that has multiple human rights violations, predatory lending practices, and vast national security complications.”  For now, however, too often, automakers still have to turn to Chinese suppliers to meet [...]