In a piece posted at Oilprice.com Mark P. Mills (via Zerohedge) takes a deep dive into this question.  As Mills points out, with America’s longstanding bond with cars showing no signs of weakening in spite of soaring cost, the push towards widespread adoption of EVs is running into significant challenges in practical application and underlying physics, and, as followers of ARPN well know, a complex mix of chemistry, geology and geopolitics.

Mills laments that the underlying premises of the “ostensible inevitability, the enthusiasm, the subsidies, and the mandates for EVs are anchored in (…) claims (…) that are simply wrong ” –  EVs are not simpler than conventional cars, they just have a complexity of their own, they do not entail less labor to build but rather shift where the labor takes place, and the upstream supply chains, i.e. the sourcing of material inputs, happens “elsewhere since the mines and refineries are not in America.”

Meanwhile, the mineral challenges are significant, says Mills:

“While copper is the long pole in the tent, it is only one of the mineral challenges. The realities of costs and emissions for EVs is dominated by a simple fact: a typical EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds to replace the fuel, and the tank weighing together under 100 pounds.  That half-ton battery is made from a wide range of minerals including copper, nickel, aluminum, graphite, cobalt, manganese, and of course, lithium. And to get the materials to fabricate that half-ton battery requires digging up and processing some 250 tons of the earth somewhere on the planet. Those numbers, it’s important understand, are roughly the same no matter what the specific battery chemical formulation is, whether it’s lithium nickel manganese, or the popularly cited lithium iron phosphate.”

As the piece points out, the sheer quantity of materials needed “has led proponents to claim that there are, after all enough minerals on the planet and there’s nothing to worry about” – an argument that becomes irrelevant when you consider that “the data show that, overall, the mines operating and planned can’t supply even a small fraction of the 400% to 7,000% increase in demand for minerals that will be needed within a decade to meet the ban-the-engine goals.” 

Ultimately, Mills concludes, that “the realities of physics and engineering mean that politicians pushing for an all-EV future run a high risk. Quite aside from the eventual discovery that EVs will disappoint with only a tiny impact on global CO2 emissions, the bigger impacts will come as consumers find vehicle ownership costs and inconveniences both escalating.”

While this may be true, it appears that, to stay with transportation analogies, the train has left the station.  Politicians are all in for the EV revolution — but to lessen the blow to consumers, they will need to embrace frameworks that will bolster the domestic supply chains for the critical minerals underpinning this shift, across all segments of the value chain.

As the horse and carriage gave way to the “motor carriage” with its superior horsepower, EVs are inexorably redefining the driving experience, even as internal combustion engines co-exist in some manner.  The pace of change will certainly rest on the understanding of the role a host of Critical Minerals play in this transformation – and the willingness to extract them in ways old and new.

The post The EV Transition is Here – But Its Enthusiasts Ignore Its Political and Economic Implications appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

A case in point: The recent Fortune Minerals/Rio Tinto announcement of a collaboration to develop technology to improve the recovery of cobalt and bismuth.

As part of the partnership announced earlier this month, co-product streams of minerals recovered at Rio Tinto’s Kennecott smelter in Utah will be processed at Fortune’s planned cobalt and bismuth refinery operations in Alberta, Canada, with testing set to take place at both locations.

The agreement ties into the overall context of the buildout of a comprehensive North American critical minerals supply chain, which was agreed upon by the U.S. and Canadian governments in 2020 with the signing of the Joint Action Plan on Critical Mineral Collaboration.  Cobalt and bismuth, both sustainable energy materials, feature on both countries’ critical minerals lists.

With geopolitical pressures and resource nationalism on the rise, looming supply chain challenges have prompted more and more companies and even governments to begin to “turn the same stone twice.” 

In addition to the above-referenced partnership, Rio Tinto already produces tellurium as a co-product at its Kennecott operations where roughly 20 tons of the materials are generated from by-product streams generated during the copper refining process. The company also began partnering with CR Minerals Co. LLC in an effort to extract a material called pozzolans from the facility’s tailings, which can be substituted for or combined with cement to decarbonization construction materials. Meanwhile, in Canada, Rio Tinto is producing scandium from titanium waste, becoming the first North American producer of scandium in the process.

Acknowledging the potential held by mine waste and tailings, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earlier this spring solicited proposals for FY2023 grants to collect data on mine waste, using funds from Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in the context of the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI).

Many other efforts have sprung up in the past few years, and ARPN has, and will continue to feature examples on our blog.  (See ARPN’s recent coverage on the industry’s effort to “turn the same stone twice” here and here)

As ARPN stated before,

“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.”

The post More Efforts to Turn Same Stone Twice – Companies Announce Partnership to Improve Recovery of Cobalt and Bismuth from Co-Product Streams appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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 material supply chain risk for electric vehicles by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2021.

While geopolitical challenges and rising demand in the context of the green energy transition are a factor for the supply scenario for all battery criticals, the cobalt conundrum differs in that more than 70% of the world’s material is supplied by the Democratic Republic of Congo, and labor practices in the country have long been scrutinized by the global community, including the United States.

In 2009, the Department of Labor first placed cobalt, specifically referred to as “cobalt ore” on its List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor, and a year later, Congress included language in the Dodd-Frank financial law targeting the sale of conflict minerals from the DRC to address profits from commodities mined in Congo, but stopped short of including cobalt, and only focused on gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten.

In 2016, Amnesty International released a report on child labor at the DRC’s so-called “artisanal” informal mine sites, increasing international scrutiny, but fast forward to 2022, and child labor persists in the DRC, prompting the U.S. Department of Labor to include lithium-ion batteries into its “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” – a list of 158 goods from 77 countries assumed to be produced in violation of internationals standards regarding child or forced labor.

The added scrutiny of labor practices for cobalt also increased urgency for U.S. policy and other stakeholders to build out a North American supply chain for “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — which already has received fresh impetus with the passage of the sourcing requirements contained in the statutory language on EV credits in the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act.

(ARPN has already outlined current U.S. efforts to this effect for graphite and manganese in our recent posts.)

After years of inaction on the domestic development front, U.S.-based cobalt projects have begun to move forward.

According to USGS, “in 2022, the nickel-copper Eagle Mine in Michigan produced cobalt-bearing nickel concentrate. In Missouri, a company produced nickel-copper-cobalt concentrate from historic mine tailings and was building a hydrometallurgical processing plant near the mine site. In October, commissioning began at a cobalt- copper-gold mine and mill in Idaho, where cobalt concentrate will be produced.”

While it “will be a while before we can actually say that this is going to be a growth industry,” as Brad Martin, director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute says, the opening of the Idaho mine operated by Jervois Global is a “geopolitically significant” development for the United States and a small first step away from relying on materials sourced from a country using child labor practices.

However, as Gregory D. Wischer and Jack D. Little with Westwin Elements outlined in a recent op-ed for the Idaho State Journal, while Jervois’s mine will produce roughly 2,000 metric tons of cobalt, Idaho’s other untapped cobalt reserves “will sit uselessly dormant unless U.S. government policy changes — and, even if tapped, this cobalt ore will be shipped overseas for refining.”

They added, in a storyline familiar to followers of ARPN:

“U.S. government policy has long influenced America’s cobalt industry. For instance, during the Cold War in the 1950s, Calera Mining Co. expanded mining and refining in Idaho’s Blackbird district in exchange for U.S. government purchases of its refined cobalt. However, as U.S. government support dissipated, permitting timelines lengthened, and cobalt prices cascaded, U.S. cobalt mining evaporated. 

Consequently, China today controls approximately 35 percent of global cobalt mining production — given Chinese ownership of 50 percent of cobalt mining production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and more than 70 percent of global cobalt refining production.”

On the processing side, Canadian Electra Battery Materials is set to launch cobalt refining operations this year, but North American efforts — and in particular U.S. efforts — are still few and far in between because domestic cobalt mining and refining continue to face significant regulatory and financial hurdles, including lengthy permitting times that in the U.S. can range between seven and ten years.

Add Wischer and Little:

“Some people may argue that the United States can rely on mined and refined cobalt from ostensibly ‘friendly’ countries. Yet, as the COVID-19 pandemic displayed, even allies like Australia will protect their own supply chains and block critical exports to the United States during crises. Future events, such as wars, trade disputes and natural disasters, could similarly disrupt global cobalt supply chains. For instance, a possible U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan would likely delay U.S. cobalt imports, with consequences magnified by the defense industrial base’s increased cobalt demand for the war effort. In short, cobalt supply chains dependent on any foreign countries are insecure and risky.”

As such, cutting red tape for domestic cobalt projects like Jervois’s operations in Idaho, as well as supporting and incentivizing refining projects should range high on U.S. stakeholders’ priority list in the 2023 and beyond.

The post Bolstering the Domestic Supply Chain for “Battery Criticals” – A Look at Cobalt appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

It’s fitting that ARPN reviews the report on Groundhog Day, February 2^nd, because just like in the Bill Murray classic movie, in which the clock jumps back to the same day all over again every morning, the Critical Mineral movie appears to bring us back to a situation of ongoing deep dependency on foreign sourced metals and minerals every year – at least in recent memory.

While there are some changes from last year’s report, the number of metals and minerals for which we are 100% import dependent dropped by two from 17 to 15, the only significant change here is a drop for Vanadium, with recalculations made for overall import reliance suggesting that its inclusion in the 100% segment has been overstated for several years. (The drop for nepheline syenite from 100% to greater than 95% is less significant, with the numerical drop small and material not featuring on the critical minerals list.)

And for all the talk about reducing the United States’ resource dependence in recent years,  a deeper look at the chart depicting U.S. Net Import Reliance — or the “Blue Wall of Dependency,” as we have dubbed it based on the many blue bars showing our significant degree of import dependence, reveals that the number of metals and minerals for which we are 50% or more import-dependent has even gone up over last year — with the new report pegging it at 51 versus 47 in 2022.

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.

Once more, we can’t help but observe that this represents a stark contrast to our import reliance for metals and minerals in 1984, when we were 100% import reliant for just 11 mineral commodities.

A few changes for individual metals and minerals included in the report are notable and significant, particularly in the context of the accelerating global green energy transition:

For the Rare Earths, a key group of tech metals underpinning 21st Century technology and the accelerating green energy transition, our import reliance had dropped from 100% in the 2021 report to “greater than 90%” in the 2022 report. It is now back up to “greater than 95%”, and the rare earth concentrate being extracted in the U.S. currently sent to China for separation.  Once again, a single link lacking in a supply chain continues U.S. dependency.

For Lithium, perhaps the most frequently cited battery tech mineral, and Cobalt, another one of Lithium’s “battery critical” peers, U.S. import reliance stayed the same at “greater than 25%” for lithium, and Cobalt at 76% respectively.

For Graphite and Manganese, both battery criticals – the USGS report shows both still pegged at an unchanged 100% import reliance.

For Nickel, the final battery critical and a new element on the 2022 Critical Mineral List, import-reliance jumped from 48% last year to 56% in this year’s report.

In upcoming posts, ARPN will focus on each of these battery criticals, and the U.S.-based projects working to urgently needed new supply into production.

As in previous iterations of the report, China continues to be the elephant in the data room. And against all pledges in recent years for the United States to reduce import reliance on supplies from China, the 2022 Mineral Commodity Summaries lists still China an unchanged 25 times as one of the major import sources of metals and minerals for which our net import reliance is 50% or greater – and recent developments in China show that the country has no intention of loosening its grip on the critical minerals supply chain [see our recent posts on Chinese resource policy here].

Owing to the growing focus on critical minerals on the part of U.S. policy stakeholders, this year’s Mineral Commodity Summaries report features an expanded chapter on developments in the critical minerals realm, identifying trend lines, and supply chain security and U.S. government critical minerals initiatives as well as critical mineral investments.

While the urgency of the need to secure critical mineral supply chains has registered with stakeholders over the past few years, USGS’s findings underscore once more that supply chains in the 21st Century are extremely complex and meaningful change takes time – and the developments of 2022 ranging from increased resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere over war in Ukraine to rising geopolitical tensions have not made untangling supply chains any easier.

In Bill Murray’s movie, it took the protagonist several years to realize how to change behavior to break the cycle.  We know by now that to break our cycle of resource dependence, it will take a comprehensive “all of the above” approach to critical mineral resource policy – and stakeholders have come to realize this and have increasingly embraced the concept.  We continue to stand by what ARPN’s Dan McGroarty stated during a congressional hearing in 2019 – “we can’t admire the problem anymore. We don’t have the luxury of time.”

If we act swiftly and comprehensively, there may just be a chance that we will wake up twelve months from now not to another Groundhog Day, but to a 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries that paints a picture of reduced resource dependence.

The post Groundhog Day 2023 – Another Year of Critical Mineral Resource Dependence? USGS Releases Annual Mineral Commodity Summaries Report appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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 critical mineral resources front in 2022 — to assess where we are, and, filled with hope for a New Year, where we are headed. 

Early 2022 —

As Covid Pressures Fade, Geopolitical and National Security Concerns Mount, While the Global Push Towards Net Zero Carbon Emissions Intensifies

Coming off two years of a global pandemic affecting virtually every aspect of our lives, the world was ready to take a collective deep breath.

The severity of the coronavirus strains had lessened, vaccines, therapeutics and treatment methods for Covid-19 became more readily available, many restrictions had been loosened or dropped, and global supply chains appeared to slowly recover and reorganize from the strain of lockdowns.

In the U.S. domestic critical minerals realm, against the backdrop of the accelerating global green energy transition, it appeared that stakeholders had learned their pandemic-induced lesson as the 2021 Biden Administration’s 100 Day Supply Chain report and subsequent policy statements pointed towards the adoption of an “all of the above” approach to mineral resource policy to strengthen North American supply chains and decouple from adversaries, and especially China.   (see our 2021 Year in Review post for more)

However, any sense of collective relief was short-lived.

Only weeks into 2022, geopolitical tensions were rising fast with China and Russia declaring a “no limits” partnership in the face of what both nations perceived as “interference in the internal affairs” of other states by “some forces representing a minority on the world stage” which “continue to advocate unilateral approaches to resolving international problems and resort to military policy.”  

Resource nationalism began rearing its head in the Southern Hemisphere, which, often overlooked in the policy discourse, is no less crucial in the global race for critical mineral resources and has emerged as a major source of renewable energy metals and minerals.  Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which form the so-called Lithium Triangle — home to more than half of the world’s known lithium reserves — were central to this new development, but other countries in the region, like Mexico, are also in the critical minerals business.  Specific developments varied from country to country (for more on the issue click here), but in each case, the trend toward resource nationalism was unmistakable.

Against the backdrop of a global lithium market expected to grow by 500% in the next 35 years, developers in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and possibly Peru were even reportedly evaluating the possibility of creating an OPEC-like lithium cartel.  While observers contended that it was “important not to confuse this resource nationalism with predictions of a highly ideological leftward turn,” the underlying implications for U.S. critical mineral resource supply chains as U.S. demand for lithium and other green energy critical materials continues to grow are not to be dismissed.

Meanwhile, countries around the globe forged ahead with their pursuit of net zero carbon emissions, with up to 20 countries to date having have announced phase-out bans on internal combustion engine car sales over the next 10 to 30 years.

But the watershed moment for 2022 was undoubtedly Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.  While the ongoing war has serious implications for European energy supply, the ramifications of Russia’s actions stretch well beyond oil and natural gas, and well beyond Europe.

Russia’s war on Ukraine set off a potential realignment of critical mineral resource supply chains that warrants attention.  Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has largely isolated it on the global front both diplomatically and economically, and, with sweeping sanctions taking hold, the Western world has turned elsewhere to meet certain critical mineral needs previously supplied by Russian companies and halted shipments of materials to the Russian Federation. Unsurprisingly for followers of ARPN, Russian buyers began turning to China to plug shortfalls.

As ARPN cautioned earlier this year:

“While to date, Beijing has walked a carefully calculated line on Russia’s war on Ukraine emphasizing its concern with violence while maintaining the need to respect territorial integrity and security interests of all parties, China stands to gain major strategic opportunities from filling the void left by a Western business pullout from the Russian market, both in terms of imports and exports. China will also be able to further its grip on global critical minerals via access to Russia’s vast mineral riches.”

By mid-March of 2022, a confluence of factors — pandemic-induced supply chain shocks, increasing resource nationalism in various parts of the world, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — had completely altered the Post-Cold War geopolitical landscape and mineral resource security calculus.

Critical Mineral Security = National Security. President Joe Biden Invokes Defense Production Act 

Responding to the resulting growing pressures on critical mineral supply chains and skyrocketing demand scenarios, U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to encourage domestic production of the metals and minerals deemed critical for electric vehicle and large capacity batteries via Presidential Determination No. 2022-1.

The Presidential Determination instructs the Secretary of Defense to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore sustainable and responsible domestic production capabilities of such strategic and critical materials by supporting feasibility studies for mature mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing projects; by-product and co-product production at existing mining, mine waste reclamation, and other industrial facilities; mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing modernization to increase productivity, environmental sustainability, and workforce safety; and any other such activities authorized under section 303(a)(1) of the Act.”

Observers and stakeholders hoped that the presidential determination would “oil the wheels of domestic mining and refining” by “funding easy wins” and “low hanging fruit,” as Simon Moores, Managing Director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence phrased it, and set the stage for subsequent additional steps to support domestic mining and processing projects.

Mid 2022 –

A New Great Game?

Post-Cold War Realignment Spurs Domestic and Global Efforts to Strengthen Critical Mineral Supply Chains

Over the course of the following weeks and months, awareness of the importance of securing critical mineral supply chains and decoupling from adversaries, i.e. China, against the backdrop of an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape and mounting environmental pressures continued to grow, not just domestically, but also amongst the United States’ key allies.

In the eyes of Globe and Mail (Canada) columnist Robert Muggah, the geopolitics of mineral resource supply had triggered a new “Great Game” -   a term coined by British writer Rudyard Kipling to describe the “fierce competition between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, both of which sought to control South Asia and Africa” which “went on to shape geopolitics for much of the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Said new Great Game, according to Muggah, foreshadowed by the 2010 rare earths dispute between China and Japan, gained momentum with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 which committed countries to significantly reduce greenhouse gases and transition to renewables, and prompted Western nations to rethink and reorganize their supply chains.

As director of the Payne Institute and professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines Morgan Bazilian, and postdoctoral fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University Gregory Brew suggest:

“Where the 20th century featured battles over access to oil, the 21st century will likely be defined by a struggle over critical minerals, particularly as the United States views China as a global competitor and strives to limit its reliance on Chinese supplies for EV manufacturing and a wide variety of energy and defense technologies.”

In July, the United States and allied countries announced the formation of a new cooperative initiative to bolster critical mineral supplies. The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) comprises the United States, Canada, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Commission, and seeks to “ensure 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.”

Observers like Reuter’s Andy Home posited that the formation of the MSP might signify a post-Cold War “tectonic realignment with far-reaching implications” as it — against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine and mounting tension with China — is “defined as much as anything by who is not on the invite list — China and Russia.” Arguing that a “previously highly globalized minerals supply network looks set to split into politically polarized spheres of influence” he suggested that a “metallic NATO [was] starting to take shape, though no-one [was] calling it that just yet.”

U.S. Congress “Net-Zeroes” in on Critical Mineral Supply Chains, Passes Inflation Reduction Act

In August of 2022, the U.S. Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes combined investments of $369 billion aimed at reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40% by the end of this decade.

A swath of significant clean energy tax credits aims at increasing domestic energy production while at the same time accelerating energy innovation abroad.

The package further includes funding for tax credits and rebates for consumers buying electric vehicles, installing solar panels or making other energy-efficiency upgrades to their homes, including, a credit of $4,000 for lower-and middle-income individuals purchasing used EVs, and up to $7,500 tax credits for EVs.  These represent a renewal of the existing $7,500 electric vehicle Federal tax credit starting in January of 2023, and carrying it through until the end of 2032. The former 200,000-vehicle cap is removed and all manufacturers will have access to the credits if they comply with the other requirements in the package.

However – and of considerable interest for followers of ARPN — a new requirement is that qualified cars must be assembled in North America, and adhere to mandated “escalating levels of critical minerals to be sourced from the U.S. or a country with a free-trade agreement with the U.S.”

Experts like John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), believed the sourcing requirements for the battery materials contained in the package would become key to addressing “emerging energy security vulnerabilities before they are intractable crises,” while others have cautioned that because the auto industry was so heavily reliant on battery materials and components from China that the requirement would represent an almost insurmountable challenge in light of lagging timelines for mine permitting.  These concerns notwithstanding, the provisions have sent a strong signal to investors that the United States is serious about “building the secure responsible industrial base our economy and national security needs,” kicking off a flurry of activity in the industry.

Fall/Winter 2022 –

Regulatory Changes Prompt Rethink As China Tightens Reins on Supply Chains 

Energy Provisions in Inflation Reduction Act Spur Efforts to Build Out U.S. Battery Supply Chain, as States Step Up Their Own Efforts

In October of 2022, As part of the implementation of the 2021 infrastructure law, the U.S. Department of Energy announced the first round of funding under the Act for projects aimed at “supercharging” U.S. manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and electric grid.

Awardees — a total of 20 companies — will receive a combined $2.8 billion “to build and expand commercial scale facilities in 12 states to extract and process lithium, graphite and other battery materials, manufacture components, and demonstrate new approaches, including manufacturing components from recycled materials.”

Meanwhile, adapting to “recent regulatory changes and intensifying competition over key battery raw materials,” automakers, miners and suppliers have begun to rethink and reorganize their critical mineral supply chains.  ARPN featured several examples (see here and here) of new offtake agreements  and contracts between battery makers and mining companies – and even states and cities are getting in on the action, entering into partnerships with and offering incentive packages to mining companies to cultivate a “vertically integrate supply chain that will help companies increase efficiencies by reducing the reliance on imported materials,” as Georgia Governor Bryan P. Kempdescribed the rationale for a new battery plant construction partnership in Georgia.

Tying into the overall push towards net zero carbon emissions, these agreements increasingly leverage advances in materials science and technology as the mining industry has made strides towards balancing modern mining practices and environmental protections in the quest to sustainably green our future.

For more examples of initiatives by mining companies to significantly reduce carbon emissions or even “close the loop,” take a look here, here and here.

Xi’s China – Beijing’s Tightening of Reins Underscores Urgency of Decoupling Critical Mineral Supply Chains from China

Also in October, China’s Communist Party confirmed President Xi Jinping for another term in office.  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.”  Xi has since reaffirmed the need to increase China’s self-sufficiency in technology and supply chains, and 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.”

Earlier this summer, Beijing had established a new state-owned group to serve as a consolidated hub for the country’s iron ore trade with a registered capital of 20 billion yuan ($3 billion).  China Mineral Resources Group’s mandate covers mining, ore processing and trading.  As mining.com outlines, the company’s creation was “encouraged and closely monitored” by senior government officials in Beijing.   These Chinese officials have repeatedly accused the United States and its allies of “ganging up to try to suppress China’s global rise,” and consider the formation of a consolidated trading platform a “way to strengthen the country’s negotiating position in an unfriendly international environment.”  

Since then, with a newly emboldened Xi at the helm, the Chinese government has been actively tightening the reins on its critical mineral supply chains. Most recently, according to news reports, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced plans to increase its supervision of China’s lithium battery supply chain, which, according to the ministry, is “severely unbalanced.”

Efforts to decouple supply chains from China may become “all the more pressing in light of current fears that (…) China may retaliate after the U.S. Department of Commerce announced sweeping limitations to semiconductor and chip-making equipment sales to Chinese customers this fall.” 

2022 Reality Check

– The Real World Challenges of “Decoupling” -

Against the backdrop of a growing realization 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 push to decouple critical mineral supply chains from China has been one of the emerging key trend lines of 2022.

However, in spite of having made it de facto policy, it appears that Biden Administration officials are becoming increasingly wary of the term “decoupling” – as evidenced most recently by U.S. Secretary of Commerce stating explicitly that the United States is “not seeking a decoupling from China” in a policy speech on U.S. Competition with China.  This development may be rooted in the fact that, in light of the complexity of critical mineral supply chains, the process of “decoupling” is fraught with more significant real world challenges than some would have thought.

Earlier this summer, a RealClearInvestigations exposé discussed the alleged China connections of a domestic lithium extraction project in Nevada, where, as RealClear’s Steve Miller writes “a Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden’s envisioned green economy.

The Nevada project is still in the permitting process, but similar scenarios have already unfolded elsewhere, such as in the case of rare earths magnets used in engine parts for F-35 fighter jets, where the U.S. Department of Defense has resorted to granting a waiver for sourcing requirements because at the current time acquisition of parts without Chinese components is not possible.  While the U.S.’s national security imperatives may make a rare earth waiver unavoidable, it should serve to turbo-charge domestic rare earth supply chain development to break the U.S. Armed Services’ Chinese rare earth dependency once and for all.

Of course, experts have long warned that decoupling supply chains for lithium, for example represents a formidable challenge.

As Simon Moores, chief executive of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence argued in the wake of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, “[c]onsidering it takes seven years to build a mine and refining plant but only 24 months to build a battery plant, the best part of this decade is needed to establish an entirely new industry in the United States.”

Meanwhile, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) challenge, becoming increasingly prominent in 2021, continues to represent a significant hurdle for shoring up domestic supply chain security, particularly as it now appears that its newest manifestation, “virtual weaponized NIMBYism” in the form of concerted cyber warfare campaigns in which networks of inauthentic accounts across social media platforms, websites and forums pose as local residents opposed to certain mining or processing projects.

(see our post on virtual weaponized NIMBYism here) 

Interestingly, and underscoring that the critical minerals challenge has gone mainstream it was CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who put his finger on the crux of the issue stakeholders are currently grappling with in a TV segment this summer. He said:

“The minerals industry isn’t as popular as renewable energy – particularly on the Left. There are real environmental hazards. But if people want to protect the planet from climate change and authoritarian powers, they will have to get onboard with new mineral projects.”

While pointing to the importance of other components that ARPN has consistently highlighted as part of a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to mineral resource security – recycling and closed-loop solutions as well as increased R&D in the materials science arena – Zakaria closed his segment as follows:

“This will have to remain a priority for years and years to come. For the sake of the planet and international security, we will need to dig deep, quite literally.” 

2022 – Metals in Focus

Government Critical Minerals List, Rare Earths and the Battery Criticals 

While USGS released its second government critical minerals list in February of 2022 (an update to the 2018 list of 35) featuring 50 metals and minerals deemed critical to United States national security and economic wellbeing, this year’s media coverage might have you believe that all that matters when it comes to securing critical mineral supply chains, is the rare earths and the battery criticals (Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Nickel, and Manganese).

And even here, initially, lithium appeared to steal the spotlight – after all, much of the green energy transition is fueled by Lithium-Ion technology.

In recent months, this has shifted.

Cobalt

With the U.S. Department of Labor including lithium-ion batteries into its “list of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” – a list of 158 goods from 77 countries assumed to be produced in violation of international standards regarding child or forced labor, tracking the cobalt supply chain is becoming increasingly important and the added scrutiny of labor practices for cobalt adds increased urgency for U.S. policy and other stakeholders to build out a North American supply chain.

Nickel

With Indonesia’s investment minister hinting at the possibility of Jakarta pursuing the creation of an OPEC-like cartelfor nickel (and other key battery materials), the spotlight is falling on nickel.

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.

Graphite

Graphite has also entered the chat.  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.

Currently, according to the USGS, the United States is 100% import dependent for its graphite needs, but as ARPN recently pointed out,

“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.”

Until then, China’s battery anode dominance could be the West’s Achilles heel in the green energy transition – in defense planners parlance, a potential “single point of failure”:  irrespective of whether we succeed in developing multiple minerals and metals for the battery cathode, if we are unable to meet anode material needs – and we cannot do so sustainably and ESG-friendly without natural graphite — we will not be able to build a rechargeable battery independent of China.

New Focus: The Super-Criticals 

Altogether, a new set of critical minerals appears emerge as a key priority for stakeholders.

What ARPN has dubbed the “super-criticals” – the five battery materials, plus a sub-set of five rare earths required for permanent magnets (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium and samarium) altogether comprise a group of 10 criticals within the 50 critical minerals on the official U.S. government list, and many of the efforts to build out a secure North American critical minerals supply chain are focused on this group of materials.  By June, courtesy of another DPA Presidential Determination, platinum and palladium pushed the super-critical list to 12.

All-of-the-Above and Supply Chains in 2022

At the end of 2021, ARPN suggested that if the term “supply chain” could “move from jargon to meme in 2021,” maybe 2022 could be the year that strengthening supply chains could “move from rhetoric to reality” – and in some ways it was.

As outlined above, much progress was made, including important groundwork to build out a secure North American critical minerals supply chain.  However, much more remains to be done, and to overcome the many challenges, new alliances will need to be forged.

As Shane Lasley argues in Critical Minerals Alliances 2022, a magazine covering 29 metals and minerals (when counting rare earths as 14)  deemed critical to North American supply chains as well as related policy issues:

 “The 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.”

And so the stage is set for 2023, as decisions to come will determine national fortunes and human progress in decades ahead.

The post 2022 – ARPN’s YEAR IN REVIEW appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The U.S. Department of Labor has included lithium-ion batteries into its “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” – a list of 158 goods from 77 countries assumed to be produced in violation of internationals standards regarding child or forced labor.

As Mining.com reports, “[t]the addition of Li-ion batteries to the list is not due to direct evidence of labor abuses in the final production of this good, but because of the evidence of human exploitation in the mining of cobalt, a key input in the production of the technology.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies more than 70% of the world’s cobalt, and labor practices in the country have long been scrutinized by the global community, including the United States.

The Department of Labor first placed cobalt, specifically referred to as “cobalt ore” on its List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor, and a year later, Congress included language in the Dodd-Frank financial law targeting the sale of conflict minerals from the DRC to address profits from commodities mined in Congo, but they stopped short of including cobalt,  and only focused on gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten.

In 2016, Amnesty International released a report on child labor at the DRC’s so-called “artisanal” informal mine sites, increasing international scrutiny, but fast forward to 2022, and child labor persists in the DRC.  Today, according to the Department of Labor report, “it is increasingly linked to the global supply chain of products made with cobalt, including lithium-ion batteries that power our smartphones, laptops, and electric cars,” leading the agency to dedicate a separate writeup to outlining  “How Batteries Are Powered by Child Labor.”

Writes Valentina Ruiz Leotard for Mining.com:

“One of the main conclusions in the report is that as the world is shifting toward generating clean and renewable energy, it is important for companies to track the cobalt supply chain by acquiring knowledge of trade data, supplier information, transport routes, and processing steps. 

Demanding such information and conducting their own research, will give companies ‘fewer excuses—such as the distance between raw materials and the finished product or supply chain complexity—to point to their lack of accountability in determining if a supply chain is tainted with child labor or forced labor,’ the reports states.”

The added scrutiny of labor practices for cobalt also adds increased urgency for U.S. policy and other stakeholders to build out a North American supply chain for the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — which already has received fresh impetus with the passage of the sourcing requirements contained in the statutory language on EV credits in the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act.

Efforts are underway. To stick with cobalt — in Idaho, America’s first and only cobalt mine in decades opened earlier this month, and while it “will be a while before we can actually say that this is going to be a growth industry,” as Brad Martin, director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute says, it is a “geopolitically significant” development for the United States and a small first step away from relying on materials sourced from a country using child labor practices.

However, in light of the multifaceted challenges relating to building out domestic mining and processing capacity, ranging from permitting issues to to politically-motivated NIMBYism, we still have a long way to go until the Department of Labor will be able to drop lithium-ion batteries from its watch list, and we have a fully built-out North American supply chain for the battery criticals.

The post DoL “List of Goods Produced By Child Labor or Forced Labor” Zeroes in on Lithium-Ion Batteries, Adding Pressures for Already Strained Material Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Here’s a snippet – for the full graphic and context, click here.

The infographic uses data from the European Federation for Transport and Environment, which bases the mineral content on the ‘average 2020 battery’ — the weighted average of battery chemistries on the market in 2020.  Friends of ARPN will recognize familiar elements:  graphite, copper, manganese, nickel, aluminum, cobalt and, of course, lithium.  (All of which – with the exception of copper – are U.S.-Government designated “Criticals.”  To revisit our case for copper as a “Critical,” see HERE and HERE.)

As Visual Capitalist notes,

“The EV battery market is still in its early hours, with plenty of growth on the horizon. Battery chemistries are constantly evolving, and as automakers come up with new models with different characteristics, it’ll be interesting to see which new cathodes come around the block.”

Of course, as ARPN has consistently argued, the issue goes well beyond the “battery criticals,” and we’re thankful to see that as mainstream awareness is rising, so is the realization that our critical minerals challenge extends across vast swatches of the periodic table, and encompasses both sourcing and processing of many metals and minerals.

Some steps have been taken, but much more remains to be done. Against the backdrop of ever-increasing stakes, the time for stakeholders to act decisively to implement an all-of-the-above strategy on critical mineral security is now.

The post A Visual Reminder: Breaking Down the EV Battery appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

A look at the numbers reveals that despite a noticeable push towards strengthening U.S. supply chains (we’ve featured some recent developments here) “there is still a gaping hole in America’s efforts” according to JB Straubel, a co-founder of Tesla who has moved on to head up Redwood Materials, a battery component company planning to invest more than $2 billion to start building battery components as early as this year.

Muller cites Jigar Shah, head of the Department of Energy’s Loan Program’s office, who says that the U.S. currently only possesses about 5% of the manufacturing capacity required to hit President Joe Biden’s ambitious declared goal of 50% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. being electric by 2030.

Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and Morgan Bazilian, Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines, dig deeper into the numbers in a recent piece on the Benchmark Mineral Intelligence Blog, pointing out that while in 2015, 40% of the cost of a lithium ion battery was raw materials, that percentage has shot up to 80% in 2022.  Their conclusion: “[I]f EVs mean lithium ion batteries, EVs must now mean critical minerals and mining.”  Industry leaders like Tesla’s Elon Musk are openly mulling throwing their hats into the mining ring – but, as Moores and Bazilian write: 

“OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] are right to be fearful and hesitant to want to ‘become miners’.

Echoes of an ill-fated venture by Henry Ford to build rubber plantations in Brazil in the 1920s after the industry ran out of rubber tyres loom large. One hundred years on the industry faces an eerily similar problem.

The reality is that this global EV blueprint is yet to be built out to a scale needed to reach surging consumer demand and increasing aggressive OEM and government targets… We are nowhere close.”

Moores and Bazilian see the recent invocation of the Defense Production Act Title III by the Biden Administration to strengthen battery supply chains as a “major step forward” and “a move that it hopes will drag the finance community in to 21^st century mining.” But as they conclude, the proof is in the pudding, and it goes back to a truly comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach across the entire value chain that ARPN and others have been calling for.  The Administration has been embracing partnership with allies, and expanding recycling and closed-loop solutions, but has been guarded at best when it comes to domestic mining. According to Moores and Bazilian, that must change:

“Big talk on EVs must now mean equally as big statements on mining. After all, a Gigafactory without secure raw materials is as useful to an OEM as a grain silo.” 

As ARPN has said many times, the first word in supply chain…. is supply.

The post Time to Address the “Gaping Hole” in America’s Efforts to Secure Critical Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Responding to the resulting growing pressures on critical mineral supply chains and skyrocketing demand scenarios, U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) earlier today to encourage domestic production of the metals and minerals deemed critical for electric vehicle and large capacity batteries.

In Presidential Determination No. 2022-1, President Biden determines, pursuant to section 303(a)(5) of the Act, that:

-       “sustainable and responsible domestic mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing of strategic and critical materials for the production of large-capacity batteries for the automotive, e-mobility, and stationary storage sectors are essential to the national defense;

-       without Presidential action under section 303 of the Act, United States industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the capability for these needed industrial resources, materials, or critical technology items in a timely manner; and

-       purchases, purchase commitments, or other action pursuant to section 303 of the Act are the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical alternative method for meeting the need.”

The Presidential Determination instructs the Secretary of Defense to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore sustainable and responsible domestic production capabilities of such strategic and critical materials by supporting feasibility studies for mature mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing projects; by-product and co-product production at existing mining, mine waste reclamation, and other industrial facilities; mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing modernization to increase productivity, environmental sustainability, and workforce safety; and any other such activities authorized under section 303(a)(1) of the Act.”

Acknowledging that “action to expand the domestic production capabilities for such strategic and critical materials is necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair the national defense capability” the Presidential Determination further waives “the requirements of section 303(a)(1)–(a)(6) of the Act for the purpose of expanding the sustainable and responsible domestic mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing of strategic and critical materials necessary for the production of large-capacity batteries for the automotive, e-mobility, and stationary storage sectors.”

According to a White House fact sheet released only hours before the Presidential Determination was made public, the President “is also reviewing potential further uses of DPA – in addition to minerals and materials – to secure safer, cleaner, and more resilient energy for America.”

Earlier this month, U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Joe Manchin (D-WV), James Risch (R-ID), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) had sent a letter to President Biden urging  him to take congressional and Administration efforts to bolster mineral supply chains one step further and to “invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of lithium-ion battery materials, in particular graphite, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and lithium.”

“Allowing our foreign mineral dependence to persist is a growing threat to U.S. national security, and we need to take every step to address it. The 100-day report acknowledges the ‘powerful tool’ the DPA has been to expand production of supplies needed to combat COVID-19, as well as the potential the DPA could have to ‘support investment in other critical sectors and enable industry and government to collaborate more effectively,’” the Senators said in their letter, adding that  “[t]he time is now to grow, support, and encourage investment in the domestic production of graphite, manganese, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other critical minerals to ensure we support our national security, and to fulfill our need for lithium-ion batteries – both for consumers and for the Department of Defense.”

It seems President Biden was ready to take that step.

According to Bloomberg News, the addition of metals and minerals like lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt and manganese to the list of items covered by the 1950 Defense Production Act affords mining companies access to $750 million under the Act’s Title III fund.

The National Mining Association’s President and Chief Executive Rich Nolan welcomed the move, stating that “[t]he minerals supply chain that will drive the electrification of our transportation sector and the energy transition is not only at risk from a perilous and growing import dependence, but the approaching minerals demand wave is set to strain every sector of the economy and requires an urgency in action from government and industry never before seen.”

Nolan told the Washington Post in anticipation of the Presidential Determination that the United States needs new mines and mineral processing plants: “What we need is policy to ensure we can produce them and build the secure, reliable supply chains we know we must have.” 

Watch the press conference announcing the Presidential Determination here.
And for the full text of Presidential Determination No. 2022-1 click here.

ARPN will be back with additional analysis as we work through the DPA action.

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However, with most global supplies of the material coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mining conditions often involve unethical labor standards and child labor, as well as poor environmental standards, battery makers and researchers were in some cases beginning to turn to nickel as a substitute for cobalt — as in nickel-iron-aluminum cathodes, for example.

And here’s where environmental and human rights concerns intersect with geopolitics.

Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine is increasingly straining nickel supply chains (see our latest post here).  As a result, analysts are keeping a close eye on cobalt, which could see prices go up as potentially persistent “elevated nickel prices could push demand from battery production back in cobalt’s direction.”

At the same time, concern over cobalt supply chains is mounting against the backdrop of a major court ruling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which, according to the Wall Street Journal’s What’s News podcast from March 14, has sent “shockwaves through the industry with potentially wide reaching implications for China, the US and the world.”

In the recent ruling, a DRC court appointed a temporary administrator from the state miner to effectively take control of China Molybdenum’s Tenke Fungurume mine amid a dispute between the shareholders over reserves of copper and cobalt. According to Reuters, the dispute began last fall, when the DRC’s government set up a commission to “reassess the reserves and resources at the mine (…) in order to ‘fairly lay claim to (its) rights,’” after alleging that the Chinese miner deprived the country of millions of dollars in annual payments for undeclared discoveries of copper and cobalt.

As WSJ correspondent for Uganda and Africa’s Great Lakes Region Nicholas Bariyo argues, the move appears to be part of a larger push by the DRC to take control of the lucrative cobalt industry. Says Bariyo:

“The DRC, despite having all these huge mineral resources remains one of the poorest countries in the world with a significant percentage of the population living under less than $2 a day and most of them unemployed and this widespread poverty. So in this case, the Congolese feel like they’re not benefiting so much from this mineral earth. And at the same time, when you look across the wider continent, commodity prices are skyrocketing and most of these resource rich nations tend to push for bigger share of proceeds from this industry as prices go up here. So this is something that is likely to really spiral beyond the Congolese border.” 

Developments in the DRC tie into an overall shift towards resource nationalism around the globe, as evidenced most recently in Central and South America, where the political tide “has turned decisively toward leaders who openly shun laissez-faire economics” and “a new generation of presidents and legislative leaders is advocating for greater government control of national economies, and with this trend, the specter of resource nationalism has once again gained a foothold in the region,” as Peter Schechter and Juan Cortiñas recently outlined in a  piece for Marsh McLennan’s Brink News.

All of which is to say that the newfound resolve of the Biden Administration to make “major investments in domestic production of key critical minerals and materials, ensuring these resources benefit the community, and creating good-paying, union jobs in sustainable production,” and new reports that “US regulators are warming to approving new domestic sources of electric vehicle battery metals, as Washington bids to avoid a reliance on strategic minerals imports similar to that on crude oil,” are a more than welcome development.

As Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Joe Manchin (D-WV),  James Risch (R-ID), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) argued in a recent letter to President Biden urging the Administration to “invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of lithium-ion battery materials, in particular graphite, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and lithium:”

“Allowing our foreign mineral dependence to persist is a growing threat to U.S. national security, and we need to take every step to address it. The 100-day report acknowledges the ‘powerful tool’ the DPA has been to expand production of supplies needed to combat COVID-19, as well as the potential the DPA could have to ‘support investment in other critical sectors and enable industry and government to collaborate more effectively.’  The time is now to grow, support, and encourage investment in the domestic production of graphite, manganese, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other critical minerals to ensure we support our national security, and to fulfill our need for lithium-ion batteries – both for consumers and for the Department of Defense.”

As the world begins to realign in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and rising resource nationalism, it is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. will have to harness our arguably vast domestic resource potential across the entire value chain — from mine to manufacturing – if we want to remain safe, secure and competitive in the 21st Century.

The post Russia’s War on Ukraine and Rising Resource Nationalism to Reshape Global Post-Cold War Order and Resource Supply Chains – A Look at Cobalt appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.