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In its just-released 100-Day Supply Chain Report, the Biden Administration has committed to an “all of the above” approach to critical minerals — a “wrap-around strategy” that includes recycling, substitution, as well as new mining, as Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told U.S. Senators earlier this month.

While investing in “sustainable production, refining, and recycling capacity domestically,” the Administration will also seek to “diversify supply chains away from adversarial nations and sources with unacceptable environmental and labor standards” by working closely with allies and partners.

With recent studies having made clear that the global shift towards a green energy future will require massive material inputs, it makes sense to see the goal of decoupling from “adversarial nations” like China in a North American context. U.S. domestic production and processing can and should be strengthened, but we are in the fortunate position to also leverage close relations with allied nations.

Enter Canada — a resource-rich nation that is not only on our doorstep, but the linkage with which legally codified, at least in terms of national defense.

As ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty outlined in a piece for Investors’ Business Daily:

“The linkage [between the U.S. and our neighbors to the North] is enshrined in U.S. and Canadian law. Unlike any of America’s other allies, Canada has long been part of a special relationship, linking the two country’s defense industrial bases as one.

The defense union dates back to the months preceding America’s entry into World War II: In 1941, FDR and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King agreed to allow American-made war materiel produced in Canada to flow to embattled Britain under Lend-Lease. As the war wore on, Canadian aluminum production ramped up at the massive Saguenay, Quebec, complex, eventually accounting for 40% of all allied aluminum production.

U.S.-Canada industrial collaboration continued through the Cold War and beyond. Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. federal code formally recognized Canada as a part of the U.S. National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB) for national security and defense planning purposes.

As a result, our two countries share the world’s most integrated defense industrial base. And in a nod to our long alliance, the Canadian air base at Bagotville, Quebec — built in 1942 to protect the aluminum production facilities during World War II — is today part of the joint U.S.-Canadian North-American Air Defense network, better known as NORAD.”

While as such, our relations with Canada will be the most natural fit for critical mineral resource cooperation, the U.S. also has a strong ally in Australia, with whom the U.S. has also entered into cooperative agreements, and will able to leverage another framework for allied cooperation — the National Technology Industrial Base (NTIB), which originally established to strengthen technology links between the U.S. and Canada in 1993, which was expanded in 2016 to include the United Kingdom and Australia.

As ARPN’s McGroarty noted in an opinion piece for The Hill in 2018, when discussing the findings of the DoD’s then-released Defense Industrial Base report:

“This four-country economic colossus — with a combined GDP of more than $25 trillion — constitutes a vast reservoir of economic might to draw on for collective national security. With defense technology driven by the rapid development of materials science, the four NTIB nations also host production or known resources of all 35 of the minerals and metals on the U.S. Government’s newly-established Critical Minerals List. As the DIB report notes, Congress has ordered ‘DoD to [develop] a plan to reduce the barriers to the seamless integration across the National Technology and Industrial Base.’ Given the dangers of what the Pentagon Report calls China’s ‘economic aggression,’ it’s time to put this integration into overdrive.”

Strengthening domestic resource production as well as processing and closer cooperation with our friends and allies should not be considered mutually exclusive strategies. Striking the right balance will be key as the Administration moves forward to implement the recommendations from its 100 Day Supply Chain Report.

What ARPN’s McGroarty told members of Congress about a decade ago still rings true today:

“We cannot maintain our modern economy without a steady supply of metals and minerals. Those we do not possess here at home, we must source from other countries. But those we possess but choose not to produce perpetuate a needless foreign dependence – leverage that other [adversarial] nations may well use to America’s disadvantage.”

With the release of its 100-Day Supply Chain Report, the Biden Administration has sent a strong signal that it is serious about stepping up U.S. efforts to secure domestic supply chains — especially for the four areas covered by the report: semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging; pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and, of particular interest for followers of ARPN, large capacity batteries, as well as critical minerals and materials.

In its commitment to ensure a stable supply for these tech sectors, the Administration has embraced an “all of the above” approach to critical mineral security, which spans all segments of the supply chain and a broad array of strategies. In the run-up to the Report’s release, there were news reports that the Administration would focus on expanding domestic processing and rely on allies and other nations to mine the minerals and metals. However, both the 100-Day Supply Chain Assessment and subsequent statements by Administration officials like Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm have made clear that the “all of the above” referenced by DoD, or the “wrap-around strategy” Sec. Granholm has touted, would not only include recycling and substitution as well as partnering with close allies such as Canada and Australia, but also new domestic mining — with the caveat that it be “sustainable” and “responsible.”

This is good news for the mining sector, which has recognized “[its] responsibility and trying to meet the increased expectations of consumers, society and governments” to contribute towards the push towards a greener energy future and has increasingly been harnessing advances in materials science and technology to meet the challenge of developing a domestic critical minerals supply while maintaining and advancing responsible mining practices.

Over the past few months, ARPN has been highlighting initiatives by mining companies to sustainably green the future, ranging from overhauling supply chain policies to ensure suppliers conform to certain environmental and social standards, to incorporating renewable power sources into their operations to offset some of the carbon costs of resource development. With the 100 Day Report focusing a new level of attention on critical minerals supply chains, ARPN is spotlighting several new initiatives across the entire spectrum of the supply chain, from upstream to downstream.

- DoE has provided funding for BHE Renewables’s lithium extraction efforts from geothermal brine at its operations in the Salton Sea, California, where the almost $15 million award will go towards constructing a demonstration plant to convert lithium chloride into battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

- U.S.-based precious metals producing and processing group Comstock Mining has partnered with others to “deploy novel [clean energy] technologies for gold processing and extraction across its portfolio” and aims to “efficiently reprocess and renew silver and other strategic metals as part of a ‘clean energy transition’ towards ‘climate-smart mining.’”

- Having developed a patented process for recycling cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries, Canada-based American Manganese, an industry member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI), is working with U.S. National Labs to “promote a circular economy for the lithium-ion battery supply chain and set the standard for high recovery and purity of cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries.” American Manganese’s battery recycling work even received a “shout-out” in the White House’s 100 Day Report.

- Rio Tinto has announced plans to construct a new plant to recover tellurium, a co-product of copper refining and a material critical to the green energy transition, at its Kennecott mine in the Utah. By harnessing an innovative extraction processes at an already existing mine site, the company is able to reduce waste while adhering to federal and state environmental standards and minimizing the carbon footprint of the operation – achievements that align well with the 100 Day Report’s objectives.

- Epiroc, a Europe-based developer/producer of drill rigs, rock excavation and construction equipment, has updated its North American underground mining market strategy to reflect “increasing demand for electrification solutions that deliver savings on maintenance, ventilation and cooling while lessening environmental footprint.” The strategy seeks to support North American mining operations through battery-electric, zero-emission equipment.

- Clean energy start-up Heliogen has announced a partnership with Rio Tinto to deploy its solar technology at the the largest open pit mine in California, Rio Tinto’s borate project in Boron, California. Using artificial intelligence and computer-vision-controlled mirrors, Heliogen will harness the power of the sun to power operations while cutting the project’s carbon footprint.

- And more is happening at Boron: Drawing on its longstanding partnership with DOE’s CMI, Rio Tinto has begun producing battery-grade lithium at a demonstration plant located at the operation using a new extraction process developed on-site. As part of the company’s full-value mining strategy, the global miner seeks to recover lithium out of waste piles stemming from more than 90 years of mining at the site.

- Barrick Gold Corporation is looking to reprocess tailings at the currently-closed Golden Sunlight Mine in Montana. The project would focus on removing and concentrating sulfur (iron pyrite) —a source of potential water pollution from the mine site. The sulfur would then be sold to and used in gold production by Nevada Gold Mines (NGM). According to Barrick company statements, the combination of rehabilitation with value creation would serve as a model for Barrick’s future mine closures.

Of course, more can and should be done. But, as Secretary Granholm told U.S. Senators last week:

“This is the United States. We can mine in a responsible way. And many places are doing it. And there are some places where there are more challenges, but we can do this.”

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