As we noted here at ARPN, comments made by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California earlier this month underscored that, at least on the trade front, “all arrows very much point to confrontation.”

Concerns over China have also been mounting on Capitol Hill, especially with regards to China’s supply chain leverage over critical minerals.

Earlier this week, Congressman Daniel Webster (R-Fl), along with R-Clermont, along with House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY), House Committee on Armed Services Vice Chair Rob Wittman (R-VA), and 28 of his House colleagues sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging that the Department develop a plan “to address the national security ramifications of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) interest and investment in seabed mining,” arguing that “[w]e cannot afford to cede another critical mineral resource to China.”

The members note that China’s recent tightening of export controls – see ARPN’s coverage here and here — ties into a “series of efforts from the CCP to further dominate crucial supply chains this year,” and remind DoD of its mandate to “continue improving the resilience of national defense supply chains,” while emphasizing “the importance of evaluating and planning for seabed mining as a new vector of competition with China for resource superiority and security.” 

Considered mostly a futuristic niche issue for a long time, the question of seabed mining has in recent years garnered more attention as the global race for critical has heated up and technology has advanced.

According to the letter:

“The deep-sea bed contains small polymetallic nodules–rich in manganese, cobalt, copper, nickel, and rare earth elements—that are contained in deposits across international waters, often hundreds to thousands of miles from shore and occurring at water depths of 200 meters or greater. Deep-sea mining is regulated by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an institution where the United States only holds observer status. ISA has already granted five of the 31 total deep-sea valuable metal exploration licenses to China, covering 17 percent of the of the total area currently licensed by ISA.  Russia also holds two ISA exploration contracts.China is putting pressure on ISA to accelerate its decision-making process to adopt regulations by 2025 or sooner–a demand that comes on the heels of ISA missing a deadline to establish a regulatory framework earlier this year–at which point mining can begin.”

The members conclude that the United States, and specifically, the Department of Defense, should be “engaging with allies, partners, and industry to ensure that China does not seize unfettered control of deep-sea assets,” and ask several pointed questions to which they demand answers by December 18, 2023.

(For the full letter and questions to DoD, click here.)

While the regulatory, environmental and economic challenges to deep-sea mining are not insignificant, it may just become the newest frontier in the Tech War between the United States and China – and here as on resource development on dry land, the U.S. had better be ready.

The post Members of Congress to DoD on Seabed Mining: “U.S. Can’t Afford to Cede Another Critical Mineral Resource to China” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Sometimes the obvious can be overlooked:  As a case in point, consider the human resources required to unlock the natural resources needed to power 21^st Century technologies.  Is the U.S. doing what it must to excite, encourage and educate the next generation of geologists, metallurgists, engineers, materials scientists and the many other disciplines involved in extracting and processing critical minerals?

While much of the Congressional effort has focused on the exploration, development and recycling of critical minerals, the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-167) (CHIPS Law) contains a provision making funding available to bolster the mining workforce.

Late last month, U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen (D-Nev) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo) sent a letter to U.S. National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan requesting an update on what steps the National Science Foundation (NSF) has taken to implement Section 10359 of the CHIPS Act, the inclusion of which the senators had secured at the time of the law’s passage.

The senators lament that estimated enrollment at the 14 mining schools currently accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. has rapidly declined from almost 1,500 in 2015 to just under 600 students today, with only roughly 200 students anticipated to graduate with Bachelor of Science degrees in mining engineering from U.S. schools this year.

Section 10359 of the CHIPS Act directed NSF to offer funding to universities and nonprofit organizations to “grow the next generation of mining engineers and support research and innovations that will improve mining technologies, reducing our reliance on China and other adversaries for critical minerals and materials.” 

Write the senators:

“To ensure the United States is able to innovate and compete on a global scale, we must recruit, educate, train, and develop tomorrow’s workforce today, providing them the tools they need to meet the challenge of developing a secure domestic resource supply chain that will strengthen our nation’s future economic and national security. (…)

It is critical that the NSF swiftly implement Sec. 10359, so that the U.S. remains competitive with a strong, skilled, and adaptive workforce to meet the needs of the modern mining industry.”

The senators are “are eager to learn what steps the National Science Foundation (NSF) has taken to implement this provision and engage with communities across the country on available opportunities,” and request an update by Director Panchanathan by January 12, 2024.  ARPN will be sure to keep tabs on NSF’s response, and on the broader effort to encourage the cultivation of the human resources needed to develop the Nation’s natural resources for decades to come.

The post U.S. Senators Nudge National Science Foundation on Funding for Mining Engineering appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Laments Lasley:

“The case for copper’s criticality is backed by commodity analysts who predict global copper production will need to double by 2035 to meet demands driven by global net-zero emission goals. Building that level of capacity in just 12 years, while at the same time not losing any output from existing mines, is a highly unlikely scenario.

(…)

Despite the growing consensus that it is going to require extraordinary measures to ensure that there is enough copper to achieve global net-zero carbon emission goals, the U.S. Geological Survey has remained steadfast in its refusal to add this metal to America’s critical minerals list.”

USGS Director Dave Applegate has publicly stated that while copper is considered an essential mineral, copper does not meet the agencies criteria for elevating the material onto the critical minerals list, an assessment that, in Lasley’s eyes, “seems to ignore the forecasts that demand will outstrip supply over the next two decades.”

Lasley points to the Copper Development Association’s (CDA’s) commissioning of an analysis mimicking USGS methodology employed for the 2022 Critical Minerals List, which the association maintains was based on out-of-date data.  The CDA-commissioned analysis concluding that copper does meet the “critical” criteria when basing the assessment on “the very latest available data.” 

As followers of ARPN well know, ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty has called for the designation of copper as a critical mineral on several occasions, and has submitted public comments to USGS to this effect.

However, USGS has remained steadfast in its refusal to re-consider copper’s status even though the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has statutory authority to add copper to the Critical Minerals List without waiting for the next official update of the entire list, and has rejected a formal request by a broad coalition including federal lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle and more than 70 trade associations and unions to do so.

The U.S. Department of Energy, meanwhile, recognized the growing importance of copper and included it into its critical materials list as part of its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment. While agreeing with the USGS notion of a diverse and relatively low-risk global copper supply, the department’s inclusion of copper was prompted by a longer-time view that declining ore grades and growing competition for available resources might change the outlook so that “identifying and mitigating material criticality now will ensure that a clean energy future is possible for decades to come.”

USGS may have rejected a direct broad-based push to include copper into the overall government Critical Minerals List, but a congressional push is still underway, and the recent DOE elevation of copper’s status may provide a boost for U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s (R-Ariz.) Copper is Critical Act, which would do so with or without USGS consent.

As copper demand in an increasingly net zero world continues to grow, ARPN will watch the push to add the perhaps most critical non-critical to the official U.S. government list with great interest.

The post The Most Critical Non-Critical? A Look at Copper appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The vote is a timely one and came on the same day 19 companies sent a joint letter to EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen urging immediate action to strengthen the European battery value chain.

The joint letter, signed by companies like battery maker Northvolt, battery materials maker Umicore, recycler Li-Cycle, as well as miners and industry bodies including Recharge and Eurometaux, urges the creation of an equivalent to the EU Hydrogen Bank for the critical minerals sector. Acknowledging European efforts including the above-referenced CRMA and the Net Zero Industrial Act aimed at clean tech manufacturing, the signers argue these efforts aren’t targeted enough. While the U.S., they say, “is fast catching up with its mammoth investment package under the Inflation Reduction Act, (…) Europe’s investment climate has been further worsened from the ongoing Ukraine conflict.”

While Europeans often point to accelerated efforts in the U.S. to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, U.S. observers question whether the U.S. is in fact doing enough to reduce its own over-reliance, pointing to challenges associated with both the Inflation Reduction Act provisions, as well as some other policy avenues that have recently been pursued particularly against the backdrop of ever-increasing material demand scenarios.

The latest case in point: a new CSIS White Paper arguing that for all recent efforts, the U.S. government is currently lacking a coherent approach that truly acknowledges “[m]ining’s strategic importance in ensuring decarbonization, strengthening national security, and contributing to economic development.” 

The paper argues that failure to enact a comprehensive and bipartisan mineral resource strategy may only worsen the mineral-related imbalance in which the country finds itself, and recommends several steps to correct course, which range from broadening the definition of what constitutes a critical mineral (see our recent discussions of copper, which recently made a Department of Energy list of critical materials but has yet to be incorporated into the overall U.S. Government’s critical mineral list), over designating a lead agency to formulate strategy, to increasing domestic extraction and processing and developing a more comprehensive narrative around the issue of mineral resource security (see ARPN’s latest post on grassroots involvement). 

As U.S. lawmakers return to the capital to work on unresolved policy issues this month, there are rumblings that momentum to tackle some of the mineral resource related agenda items has been waning, particularly a push to further permitting reform.  Perhaps a look across the pond to Europe, where stakeholders aim to kick mineral resource supply chain security efforts into high gear, can serve as the nudge U.S. stakeholders need to push forward with an all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security, as the global race for resources will only continue to heat up.

The post As Europe Votes to Further Critical Mineral Resource Security, U.S. Must Not Let Momentum for Reform Slip appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Arguing that changing copper’s designation would allow the federal government to more efficiently ensure reliable and secure supplies of the material in the future, Representative Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) is introducing the “Copper is Critical Act.”  The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Jim Baird (R-Indiana), and David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), and Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.)

The bill would amend section 7002 of the Energy Policy Act of 2020, and represents the first time this process is used in an attempt to broaden the scope of the U.S. Critical Minerals List.

As followers of ARPN well know, ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty has called for the designation of copper as a critical mineral on several occasions, and has submitted public comments to USGS to this effect.

Policy experts agree.

In a recent piece, Cullen S. Hendrix with the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that while copper is widely mined and processed relative to listed critical minerals on the U.S. government’s list, “the security of diffuse global supply chains and production in US-friendly economies is still vulnerable to disruptions in producer countries. The ability and willingness of copper producing countries to keep supplying copper can change rapidly.”

He points to current trends in Peru, a key copper mining country, where resource nationalism has reared its head, as well as developments in neighboring Chile, that may indeed affect both countries’ “ability and willingness” to supply copper to the global market and elaborated that “designating copper as critical to national and economic security would lead to enhanced scrutiny from the USGS, which tracks minerals markets, production, and reserves. Industry advocates also believe that the designation might lead to streamlined permitting processes that would facilitate more domestic production.” 

With copper’s long list of applications growing in the context of the materials science revolution and with long-term demand scenario surging, ARPN will monitor the Copper is Critical Act as it moves through the legislative process.

The post Lawmakers Seek Critical Mineral Designation for Copper via Federal Legislation appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The expectation is that with the proposed EPA rules requiring automakers to reduce carbon emissions by 56% in their 2032 models compared to 2026 models in place, 67% of new light-duty car purchase will need to be electric by 3032.

The so-called battery criticals – nickel, lithium, graphite, cobalt and manganese – hold the key to this development, but the push to secure their supply chains is, as followers of ARPN well know, fraught with challenges.

A case in point is nickel.

While a “relatively benign supply profile” kept nickel off the U.S. Government’s first List of Critical Minerals in 2018, the metal’s increased usage in EV batteries, and the USGS’s expanded criticality criteria to include materials with only a single domestic producer along their raw materials supply chains – identified as having a single point of failure – led to nickel’s incorporation into the 2021 update to the U.S. Government Critical Minerals List.

With the underground Eagle Mine in Michigan – currently the only U.S. primary nickel mine in operation – near the end of its lifecycle, stakeholders look to Michigan’s near-neighbor Minnesota, home to the Tamarack Nickel Project in Central Minnesota which is expected to start the environmental review process this year, the proposed Twin Metals underground mine which has been embroiled in an ongoing legal and regulatory battle over the years, and the PolyMet Mine in Northeastern Minnesota.

See ARPN’s recent post entitled “Critical in Spite of ‘Relatively Benign Supply Profile?’ A Look at Nickel” for more.

Earlier this week, as the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources held an oversight field hearing “Examining the Mineral wealth of Northern Minnesota,” AXIOS Pro (subscription only) zeroed in on the congressional politics on the push to bolster the U.S. supply chain for the battery critical, pointing to the fact that “both Republicans and Democrats are pressing the Pentagon to use the Defense Production Act (…) to boost domestic nickel output” according to letters obtained by Axios.

As Axios’s Jael Holzman writes, the letters build off Biden’s 2022 DPA invocation to “liberate wartime authorities and funding U.S. minerals projects in a bid to unshackle the nation from foreign metals,” and the Defense Department replied to one of the letters stating that “the Department is actively engaging with companies across the United States and our allies to secure our critical mineral supply chains using DPA funds, including for nickel.”  

While recent headlines talk of a nickel glut considering Indonesia’s booming nickel output, these narratives must be taken with a grain of salt with the specter of resource nationalism and potential cartelization on the rise.  News from Moscow and Kiev indicate that and end to the war between Russia (a key global nickel player) and Ukraine is nowhere to be seen, and U.S. relations with China are deteriorating.  Faced with ever-growing geopolitical volatility, working with our allies, as per the DOD response to the congressional letters, to strengthen supply chain is an important piece of the “all-of-the-above” puzzle, but it is no panacea.

As ARPN has consistently argued, for the U.S. to achieve the lofty – and now even loftier – goals of net carbon neutrality we must embrace “a push to secure critical mineral supply chains from ‘soup to nuts’ to borrow a term used by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. That means ‘all of the above,’ including domestic production and processing of metals and minerals like nickel.”

Clearly, the State of Minnesota has potential.  However, as Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) said after the subcommittee field hearing:

“[I]f we’re going to unlock the full potential of our resources and secure our domestic mineral supply chains, we need the political will to implement permitting reform.”

With consensus on the need to secure critical mineral supply chains mounting on both sides of the political aisle, here’s hoping the political will to make tough choices and overcome the perennial “not-in-my-backyard” sentiment will follow suit.

The post Tackling the “Single Point of Failure” – Inside the Push to Bolster the U.S. Domestic Nickel Supply Chain appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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

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

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

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

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

Write Dwivedi and Wischer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He writes:

“From our warfighting capabilities to overlooked supply chains—including the personal protective equipment and essential medicines that were in short supply during the height of the pandemic—we’ve come to recognize that an unbalanced focus on efficiency has hollowed out key pieces of American manufacturing.

Countless supply chains are overstretched, and we’ve lost critical slack needed to ramp up production of essential goods and materials when needed. The withering of our industrial base has also created alarming reliance on supply chains controlled by our rivals or—worse yet—our adversaries.

Our extraordinarily dangerous over-reliance on mineral and metal imports—particularly from China—is a case in point.”

While there has been a “groundswell of bipartisan energy to address the minerals problem” – Gen. Adams cites the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the recent invocations of the Defense Production Act – some key issues that would help address said over-reliance on China, such as permitting reform, have yet to be addressed.

The just-introduced Transparency, Accountability, Permitting and Production of (TAPP) American Resources Act, H.R. 1 seeks to bolster U.S. critical mineral supply chains by reducing red tape, entry barriers and redundancies, and reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to provide industry with clearer timelines and more certainty, among other things.

As Adams argues, “[a]s the war in Ukraine underscores, productive capacity is the foundation from which we can project strength and deterrence. It’s also how we can insulate our economy from those who seek to use supply chain dominance to exert undue geopolitical leverage.”

Reforming the U.S. permitting process to meet the national security exigencies of the 21st Century Technology Age is just one side of the coin — insuring that potential adversaries, “bad actors” in the parlance of the newly-unveiled TAPP Act don’t have undue access to domestic resources, is the other.

A provision in TAPP would limit Chinese and other “bad actors’” involvement in the U.S. critical minerals industry:

Sec. 20309 would bar “a mining claimant from the right to use, occupy and conduct operations on Federal land if the Secretary of Interior finds that the claimant has a foreign parent company that has a known record of human rights violations and knowingly operated an illegal mine in another country.”

According to the Daily Caller, “it was not immediately clear if the proposed legislation would impact firms like Lithium Americas, which is only owned in part by Chinese mining giant Gangfeng Lithium through subsidiary GFL International,” and which won federal court approval in 2021 to establish a major lithium mining project in Nevada.

With partisan politics dominating the halls on Capitol Hill, H.R. 1 and its provisions will likely face an uphill battle, but the the focus on permitting reform in general, and the inclusion of Sec. 20309 specifically highlights the fact that stakeholders are beginning to realize that harnessing and protecting domestic assets will be key as the global resource wars enter into the next round.

The post New Push to Bolster Critical Mineral Supply Chains to Shore Up Industrial Base Focuses on Permitting, Banning “Bad Actors” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The events have created a new flashpoint in already strained U.S.-Chinese relations.  The visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing planned for this past weekend was canceled and U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) are on high alert.

Against this backdrop, last week’s hearing before the House Armed Services Committee on the State of the Defense Industrial Base should be viewed with a greater sense of urgency.

During the hearing, members of Congress and defense experts argued that there was a “mismatch between what our national strategies aim to achieve and how our defense industrial base is postured,” and that “key industrial readiness indicators for great power competition are going in the wrong direction,” as David Norquist, president of the National Defense Industrial Association phrased it.

A key culprit, according to witnesses, is an over-reliance on Chinese supplies of key critical materials, like antimony, and the rare earths not just in terms of mining, but also processing.

“We found ourselves where we were relying on China for those minerals over many years, giving up our capacity and our ability to do that,” Eric Fanning, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, told the committee, referring to reshoring critical mineral production and processing capabilities, according to the Daily Caller’s Micaela Burrow.

Soliciting recommendations from witnesses on what Congress could do in the context of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act to shore up U.S. domestic processing capabilities and strengthen the defense industrial base, committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) stressed that “it is completely unacceptable that we are so heavily reliant on China for those minerals as well as their processing.”

The hearing also highlighted one of the inherent ironies of today’s critical mineral resource policy, which juxtaposes the urgent need to access and process critical minerals domestically with environmentalist pressures to reject new mineral resource projects.

Burrow cites Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) who put it bluntly: “The problem is us. We’re schizophrenic,” pointing to Armed Services members pressuring companies to access those minerals domestically while Congress orders other federal government entities, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, to sequester public lands.

Overall, Daniel F. Runde, senior vice president and William A. Schreyer chair in Global Analysis at CSIS argued in The Hill this weekend, while there has been an uptick in activity and recent legislative changes are “significant and helpful,” a “coherent strategy remains absent.”

Runde cites the Biden Administration’s 2022 National Defense Strategy as an example, which, he says, contains no mention of the mining and processing challenge posed by China — a “regrettable” omission “given that past assessments have found that China strategically floods the metals market to undermine U.S. producers critical to national security.” 

At a time when geopolitical stakes continue to mount and tensions flare, here’s hoping that in the coming months, urgency to strengthen U.S. critical mineral supply chains and the defense industrial base with a comprehensive all-of-the-above-approach is the name of the game.

As Norquist closed his remarks to the committee last week:

“The return of great power competition places greater demands on America’s defense industrial base. A brittle industrial base is a strategic vulnerability. A resilient defense industrial base is a powerful deterrent.”

The post As U.S. Chinese Tensions Soar, Congressional Witnesses Call for Strengthening U.S. Defense Industrial Base and Domestic Critical Mineral Supply Chains During Armed Services Committee Hearing appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With Congressional leadership elections – finally – behind us, policy makers in Washington are gearing up to delve into the issues, and, if the newly announced House Committee assignments are any indication, critical mineral resource and supply chain security will rate high on the priority list.

Looking at the overall trend lines in the critical minerals space, earlier this month we outlined the themes we see emerging for this year, as follows:

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

It appears the urgency to act is not lost on policy makers, and earlier this week, Rep. Peter Stauber (R-Minnesota) the incoming chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, offered an early glimpse into plans to overhaul the permitting process for energy projects with the new House majority.

Rep. Stauber has introduced the “Permitting for Mining Needs Act,” a bill that seeks to spur domestic critical mineral production to meet national defense, technology and clean energy needs.

Incoming House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas) has vowed to make permitting reform a priority in the 118th Congress, stressing in an interview earlier this week that “[t]he country’s got to come to grips with where we want to go with this electric economy”  and if we do, being “totally dependent on China and other countries like that to supply the materials we need” is not the answer, but rather striving to “produce these elements and minerals on our own.”  

Prioritizing the decoupling from Beijing is also the emerging theme from a vote to establish a Select U.S. House Committee on China, which will consist of nine Republicans and seven Democrats, and will be headed up by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin), who has framed U.S.-Chinese competition as a 21st Century Cold War and wrote in an op-ed for Fox News that the “first step is to restore our supply chains and end critical economic dependencies on China,” which he noted produced approximately 90% of the world’s rare earth metals, alloys, and permanent magnets in 2019.

Of course, if recent years on Capitol Hill serve as a guide, we can’t expect a high level of bipartisanship of the 118^th Congress overall, but the critical minerals space may continue to be a rare exception.

As a new piece for National Law Review outlines, “there is growing consensus that the U.S. must avoid trading dependencies on foreign sources of fossil fuels, for one, on Chinese critical minerals,” and while reform efforts may face an uphill battle with fundamental disagreements persisting over constraints on environmental reviews and timelines, “[p]ermitting reform will continue to be an issue receiving bipartisan attention,” though “[f]undamental disagreements among Democrats persist on how to put new constraints on environmental reviews and timelines.”

An area “ripe for bipartisanship” according to National Law Review could be “[t]echnologies to trap carbon emissions from power plants and suck carbon directly out of the atmosphere,” with some lawmakers “convinced there will be an appetite to boost carbon removal startups in the next few years.”

Meanwhile, external pressures continue to grow, with geopolitical tensions rising and the green energy transition accelerating.

Here’s hoping Santa put some sneakers under the tree this Christmas, because if this week’s policy announcements in Washington, D.C. are any indication, this first month of 2023, we’ve hit the ground running.

The post New Year, New Congress, New Impetus for Critical Mineral Policy Reform? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.