Arguing that while it is “possible to produce them here” he says that “onerous federal rules make it extremely difficult,”adding that “[w]e cannot sit idly by and hope our U.S. mining industry can cut through the red tape currently strangling it.”

Sen. Risch points to the long-standing and, against the backdrop of surging demand, increasingly dangerous practice of over-relying on foreign – and especially Chinese supplies of critical minerals, which has given our adversaries significant leverage over us. The senator points to China’s penchant for weaponizing the mineral supply chain, with recent examples being the restriction of gallium and germanium exports — key components of semiconductor production and defense technology, arguing that “[i]t is only a matter of time before China decides to punish the U.S. and ur allies again by holding minerals hostage. That will even apply to minerals that are mined in the U.S. but processed in China, like copper.”

Meanwhile, one of the key obstacles to increased domestic mining and processing according to Sen. Risch, is the Biden administration, under whose guise a “working group on mining regulations released recommendations that, if implemented would transition mineral rights to a leasing program and add a dirt tax to every shovelful of ore, regardless of the value of the mineral,” which, according to the senator “would add years to the already lengthy permitting process and stifle investment in mining projects.”

Followers of ARPN are familiar with the average permitting timeframe for mining projects of roughly seven to ten years.  Litigation from NIMBY environmental groups — Sen. Risch points to the Rosemont decision in the Ninth Circuit Court which “changed the interpretation of long-established mining law” and “hampers the industry while making mining significantly less efficient and cost-effective”– can further add years to the already onerous process.

With even U.S. car companies requesting that the Biden administration speed up the mine permitting process, a consensus is growing that reform should be a national priority.

Sen. Risch points to the U.S. Department of Defense being an outlier in the administration and having recognized the “danger we face, which is why it is awarding grants to critical mining projects.”  The senator highlights the stibnite gold project in the central region of his home state of Idaho, where Perpetua Resources is working to be the sole domestic source of antimony, a key component of military technology.

But of course, as followers of ARPN know, there are more projects receiving DoD support with even more expected to be announced on a rolling basis.

In ARPN’s latest post on the blog, we pointed a series of Presidential Determinations involving specific critical minerals which laid the foundation for this type of funding under Defense Production Act Title III authority.

Current projects, recently highlighted by Oregon Group’s Anthony Milewski, include:

• Graphite: a $37.5 million agreement between the DoD and Graphite One (Alaska) to fast-track a domestic graphite mine;
• Antimony (as highlighted by Sen. Risch): two awards — $24.8 million and $15.5 million — by the DoD to Perpetua Resources to secure a domestic source of antimony [an additional conditional award of up to $34.6 million under the existing Technology Investment Agreement was announced earlier last month];
• Lithium: a $90million agreement to secure lithium production between the DoD and Abermarle;
• Nickel: a US $20.6 million agreement between the DoD and Talon Nickel to increase domestic nickel production.

Closes Sen. Risch:

“Every aspect of our society and security relies on processed minerals and would therefore benefit from expedited permitting and easier access. We cannot afford to wait until China reduces or even cuts off our access to critical minerals.

It is time for America to see the power of the U.S. mining industry, invest in it, and secure our supply chains. The technology we depend on every day is only possible because of mining. To ensure not just our economic success but our national security, Congress must revamp our mining laws and substantially reduce irrelevant regulations.”

The stakes are getting higher by the day, and, as ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty pointed out years ago, “we can’t admire the problem any longer” because “we don’t have the luxury of time.” However, we are dealing with Washington, D.C., and the question is whether Congressional stakeholders will finally be able to put policy over politics in an election year.

The post U.S. Senator: Embrace Domestic Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals “Before It’s Too Late” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Milewski points to Russia having fired an estimated 11 million artillery shells in 2022, the majority of which can contain – depending on shell and manufacturing process – at least an estimate 0.5kg of copper. This, he says would amount to 5,500 tons of copper, or the equivalent of copper used in 1,170 wind turbines.

Copper demand is already forecast to increase by more than 100% by 2035 with many analysts warning there may not be enough copper to meet decarbonization goals in the next few decades after years of underinvestment in the mining industry and falling ore grades.  And those projections, according to Milewski, do not account for surging military demand against the backdrop of increasing geopolitical volatility around the globe.

Of course, copper is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. According to the National Mining Association, the U.S. Department of Defense uses nearly 750,000 tons of minerals on an annual basis – a number that was calculated around 2016/2017 at a time when the U.S. was not facing any major conflicts.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the U.S. is supporting allies in the Ukraine and Israel while the situation in the Taiwan Strait looks increasing vulnerable.  Meanwhile, particularly ammunition stockpiles are running so low that NATO officials have warned that Western militaries are scraping “the bottom of the barrel” forcing NATO to provide Ukraine with supplies not from full warehouses, but rather “half-full or lower warehouses in Europe.”

The issue is compounded by the fact that production time to rebuild weaponry stocks can take anywhere between three and 18 years, depending on equipment according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies – however that analysis focuses only on manufacturing and production times.

As followers of ARPN well know, supply chains for the metals and minerals underpinning U.S. military technology and munitions are “extremely vulnerable” due to a perennial over-reliance on supplies from adversary nations, i.e. China.

For all the talk about decoupling supply chains in recent years, the needle has not moved much, and the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries still has the U.S. 100% import reliant for 12 metals and minerals, while an additional 29 critical mineral commodities had a net import reliance greater than 50% of apparent consumption — a small drop by two over last year’s report.

However, some important steps have been taken in recent years, and are beginning to bear fruit. Milewski lists several military budget ramp-ups to “try and resolve the massive shortfall.”

As ARPN previously outlined, a notable example of such efforts is the series of (Defense Production Act) DPA Presidential Determinations involving specific Critical Minerals, beginning with President Trump’s July 2019 designation of the Rare Earth permanent magnet supply chain as being “essential for the national defense,” followed by President Biden’s designation of what ARPN calls the “Battery Criticals” as DPA Title III eligible in March 2022, followed by Platinum and Palladium in a DPA Presidential Determination in June 2022.  Earlier this spring, two further Presidential Determinations (February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination, and DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5)), effectively created an entirely new category of critical minerals – “Defense Criticals” as ARPN calls them – by way of designating airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

Those DPA actions, funded by Congressional appropriations, are now producing Department of Defense funded projects to encourage domestic development of these “defense criticals” and their supply chains.

Milewski highlights the following:

• Graphite: a $37.5 million agreement between the DoD and Graphite One (Alaska) to fast-track a domestic graphite mine;
• Antimony: two awards — $24.8 million and $15.5 million — by the DoD to Perpetua Resources to secure a domestic source of antimony [an additional conditional award of up to $34.6 million under the existing Technology Investment Agreement was announced earlier this week];
•  Lithium: a $90million agreement to secure lithium production between the DoD and Abermarle;
• Nickel: a US $20.6 million agreement between the DoD and Talon Nickel to increase domestic nickel production.

He closes:

“We see the U.S. military shifting its position and capacity to secure its critical mineral supply gaining more momentum than it has for arguably the past 30 years. However, the U.S. military is America’s largest government agency, and it will take time.”

However, with conflict brewing in many parts of the world, time is a luxury we do not have, and strengthening critical mineral supply chains should be a key priority for policy stakeholders in 2024.

The post U.S. Military Faces Compounding Problems – Surging Tensions, Depleted Stockpiles, Critical Mineral Supply Chain Challenges appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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.

According to Taylor-Kale, the key areas of the strategy are:

• Creating resilient supply chains
• Having an industrial base that can produce capabilities, services and technologies that are needed at speed, scale and cost
• Ensuring workforce readiness and development
• Delivering flexible acquisitions
• Building in metrics for measurable outcomes

Taylor-Kale stressed DoD’s emphasis on partnerships in an effort to “attract new, innovative, non-traditional companies into the industrial base, particularly those that connect dual-use technologies with the emerging needs of the warfighter.”  

As followers of ARPN well know, critical minerals are integral components of 21^st century military technology, and DoD has taken significant steps to bolster supplies of the metals and minerals needed to create and sustain a “modern defense industrial ecosystem” in recent months. A key vehicle to do so has been Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) (see ARPN’s coverage of DPA funding awards here and here). 

Taylor-Kale has emphasized DoD’s focus on securing domestic mineral resource supply chains in these funding announcements, stating, for example that

“[i]n investing in domestic (…) resources, Industrial Base Policy is building a sustainable, responsible industrial base capable of meeting our future national defense challenges.  Investments such as these execute President Biden’s focus on strengthening supply chains for critical minerals for large capacity batteries and are one step in the Defense Department’s strategy for minerals and materials related to batteries.”

ARPN will be watching to see whether critical mineral supply chains will be afforded their own separate chapter in the strategy, guided by our credo that the first word in supply chain is… supply.

The post Amidst Growing Geopolitical Tensions, DoD Aims to Release First-Ever National Defense Industrial Strategy appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

ARPN outlined several of these DoD-funded projects to strengthen critical mineral supply chains in an earlier post. This past week, DoD added two more projects to the list.

On September 12, 2023, DoD announced that the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office, has entered an agreement with Albemarle Corporation to support the expansion of domestic mining and production of lithium.

Per DoD’s announcement, “[t]he $90 million agreement, entered into under Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III authorities and utilizing funds appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act, will help support Albemarle’s planned re-opening of their Kings Mountain, N.C. lithium mine to increase domestic production of lithium for the nation’s battery supply chain. Albemarle estimates that Kings Mountain will be operational between 2025 and 2030.”

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

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

A second award announcement made on the same day aims at strengthening the nickel supply chain, and was also made through the Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience:

The $20.6 million agreement with Talon Nickel (USA), LLC – also entered into under DPA Title III authorities — uses funds appropriated by the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act to advance nickel exploration and mineral resource definition of the Tamarack Intrusive Complex in northeast Minnesota.

The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office, entered an agreement with Talon Nickel (USA), LLC (Talon) to increase the domestic production of nickel.

The $20.6 million agreement, entered into under Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III authorities and using funds appropriated by the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, to advance nickel exploration and mineral resource definition of the Tamarack Intrusive Complex (TIC). Here, the company seeks to leverage its Advanced Exploration System (AES) — a proprietary suite of geophysical mapping tools that has already completed a successful pilot program and allows the company to rapidly identify and demonstrate economically recoverable nickel materials.

A key battery critical, nickel is also an essential building block for the production of high-temperature aerospace alloys and stainless steel.  A “relatively benign supply profile” kept nickel off the U.S. Government’s first List of Critical Minerals in 2018. However, 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.    The United States’ only primary nickel mine in operation, the Eagle Mine in Michigan, is nearing the end of its life cycle.

While, as ARPN previously outlined,  increased domestic production for critical minerals alone may not suffice to fully solve our nation’s critical mineral woes – hence ARPN’s support for an all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security — there are promising domestic resource development projects that can go a long way to significantly reducing vulnerabilities in the short to medium term, and ARPN will continue tracking these DoD-funded projects as they begin to bear fruit.

The post DoD Once More Invokes Defense Production Act Title III Authority for Projects to Strengthen Domestic Critical Mineral Supply Chains for Lithium, Nickel appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Of course, the challenges of detangling supply chains and decoupling from China, which has long controlled various supply chain segments of many metals and minerals deemed critical are immense, and warrant a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security.

Thankfully, the United States is home to vast mineral resources. Technological advances in the context of the materials science revolution allow the mining sector to efficiently and sustainably harness this often untapped potential – and as ARPN has reported, the U.S. Government has taken several important steps to support these important efforts.

A notable example of such efforts is the series of (Defense Production Act) DPA Presidential Determinations involving specific Critical Minerals, beginning with President Trump’s July 2019 designation of the Rare Earth permanent magnet supply chain as being “essential for the national defense,” followed by President Biden’s designation of what ARPN calls the “Battery Criticals” as DPA Title III eligible in March 2022, followed by Platinum and Palladium in a DPA Presidential Determination in June 2022.  Earlier this spring, two further Presidential Determinations (February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination, and DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5)), effectively created an entirely new category of critical minerals – “Defense Criticals” as ARPN calls them – by way of designating airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

Those DPA actions, funded by Congressional appropriations, are now producing Department of Defense funded projects to encourage domestic development of these “defense criticals” and their supply chains.

Idaho-based Perpetua Resources, whose Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho is home to one of the largest reserves of antimony – a critical mineral for which the U.S. is currently more than 80% import reliant — finds itself at the front end of DPA-funded projects. According to estimates, the project could conceivably supply about 35% of U.S. antimony demand during the first six years of production.

Having been awarded two grants of $100,000 from the DoD’s Defense Logistics Agency to support efforts to evaluate whether antimony from stibnite can meet military specifications for use in munitions, Perpetua Resources later became the first recipient of a critical minerals award through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy’s Defense Production Act (DPA) Investments Program, obtaining a $24.8 million grant to complete environmental and engineering studies necessary to obtain a Final Environmental Impact Statement, a Final Record of Decision, and other ancillary permits for its Stibnite-Gold.

With analysts reporting that Perpetua Resources is on track to successfully conclude the environmental impact statement process, earlier in August the company was further awarded a Technology Investment Agreement of $15.5M to develop a wholly domestic supply chain of antimony trisulfide of military-grade Stibnite ore.

While Perpetua Resources’ antimony project is at the front end of DPA-funded projects, others are also underway.

In June of this year,  the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy (OASD(IBP)), through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office entered into an agreement with Jervois Mining USA, a subsidiary of Jervois Global Limited, to conduct feasibility studies to expand cobalt extraction in Idaho under Defense Production Act Title III authorities. A component of munitions and aerospace alloys, cobalt is also a battery critical used in high-capacity batteries for military and commercial electric vehicles.

One month later this summer, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization office awarded Graphite One, which seeks to advance its Graphite Creek project near Nome, Alaska to provide a fully integrated North American supply chain of the battery critical graphite, for which the U.S. is also currently 100% import dependent, a $37.5M grant under DPA Title III authorities to accelerate the feasibility study for the project.

While increased domestic production for critical minerals alone may not suffice to fully solve our nation’s critical mineral woes – hence ARPN’s support for an all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security — there are promising domestic resource development projects that can go a long way to significantly reducing vulnerabilities in the short to medium term, and ARPN will continue tracking these DoD-funded projects as they begin to bear fruit.

The post Defense Production Act Key Vehicle to Reduce Supply Chain Vulnerabilities for Critical Minerals appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Against the backdrop of the Pentagon having commissioned studies to examine increased use of electricity for its vehicles, tanks, ships and planes, the authors caution:

“Washington has encouraged the electrification of wide swathes of the U.S. economy as a way to encourage greater use of renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions. The U.S. Defense Department, the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. federal government, is now considering pursuing its own wide-scale electrification. Such a step would have profound strategic effects that should cause policymakers to proceed far more cautiously.”

They argue that while, as the U.S. on the whole pivots towards “electricity and regulating electricity generation in ways that phase out fossil fuels,” a call for electrifying the military may be “intuitive,” but it would also open the military up to significant strategic vulnerabilities.

Of course, followers of ARPN know that one of the key vulnerabilities lies in our nation’s over-reliance on supplies of critical minerals from adversary nations. Demand for critical minerals will increase exponentially amidst a green energy shift, and the “renewable energy economy’s dependence on limited rare earths and other minerals is likely to unleash a great game for minerals that is already requiring the U.S. government’s attention,” according to the authors.

Meanwhile, Howard and Shaffer caution that with greater interconnectivity of an energy system comes another inherent danger: the increased risk of cyberattacks, both in terms of electricity generation as well as on an electrified military battlefield, where access to electricity can already be a challenge in its own right depending on the geographic location. Moreover, supply lines could become easy enemy targets, and charging times for battery-powered equipment could hamper military readiness.

While there is no denying that we find ourselves in the middle of a global energy transition, and the push towards a greener energy future is a given, stakeholders would be well advised to follow the classical adage of “festina lente” — “make haste slowly,” particularly when it comes to our national security at a time when current events underscore how quickly geopolitical realities can change.

The good news is that, at least on the material inputs front, efforts to diversify U.S. supply chains away from adversary nations are gaining momentum, particularly in the wake of the White House’s 100-Day Supply Chain Report which we discussed in-depth in our recent study “Critical Mass,” as well as the U.S. Armed Services Committee’s Bipartisan Defense Critical Supply Chain Task Force findings.

Here’s hoping that this momentum for mineral resource policy reform, which will be a key foundation for successfully transforming the U.S. military in the long run, will not lose steam over the August recess.

The post Make Haste Slowly – The Inherent Risks of an Electrification of the U.S. Military: Material Inputs, Geopolitics and Cyberattacks appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

On July 22, 2021 the House Armed Services Committee’s bipartisan Defense Critical Supply Chain Task Force, chartered in March of 2021 to “review the industrial base supply chain to identify and analyze threats and vulnerabilities,” released its final report, which includes key findings and policy recommendations.

Co-chaired by Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the task force convened a series of round tables with with experts and stakeholders to identify

“1) the processes by which DOD analyzes supply chain vulnerabilities and develops mitigation strategies; 

(2) DOD’s processes to prioritize and mitigate identified vulnerabilities; and 

(3) the steps Congress and others can take to help build resilience against future shocks to the supply chain, both in the near term with respect to selected cases, and over the longer term, leveraging the lessons learned from the initial actions.”

The report includes six legislative recommendations task force members will submit as amendments for the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) full committee mark up.

Among them, most notably from an ARPN perspective, were the following:

“DOD must treat supply chain security as a defense strategic priority. Although DOD conducts assessments for critical supplies and is required by section 2509 of title 10, United States Code, to establish a framework to mitigate risk in the acquisition process, it lacks a comprehensive strategy for the entire supply chain across the Department and the services. The Task Force recommends a statutory requirement for a Department-wide risk assessment strategy and system for continuous monitoring, assessing, and mitigating risk in the defense supply chain.  

DOD (and the United States more broadly) needs to reduce reliance on adversaries for resources and manufacturing. The defense supply chain presents a national security risk: a significant amount of material in the Defense Industrial Base is sole-sourced from the People’s Republic of China. With the requirement for a strategic framework and illuminating the supply chain, the Department must use this information to work with industry, allies, and partner nations to lessen the reliance on the People’s Republic of China. The Task Force recommends a statutory requirement to identify supplies and materials for major end items that come from adversarial nations and implement a plan to reduce reliance on those nations.

DOD should strengthen the ability to leverage close ally and partner capabilities through the National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB). The NTIB is an underutilized forum and should be leveraged to shape policy and partnerships with allies. To reduce reliance on adversaries and expand partnerships, the NTIB will need to help shape global policy. The Task Force recommends updating statutory authority to emphasize the value of a broad collaboration with the NTIB allies beyond acquisition, to strengthen the alliance; directing the NTIB Council to identify particular policies and regulations that could be expanded to the NTIB allies, in order to use the NTIB as a test bed for closer international cooperation and supply chain resiliency; and authorizing an NTIB “International Council” to harmonize industrial base and supply chain security policies. The NTIB countries and other close allies and partners undoubtedly face similar challenges with over-reliance on Chinese and Russian suppliers. Effective policy to reduce the associated supply chain vulnerabilities requires meaningful, sustained dialogue and collaboration. Accordingly, the Task Force encourages the Department’s leaders to prioritize supply chain security policy in bilateral and multilateral discussions. 

DOD should deploy the full range of American innovation to secure the supply chains involving rare earth elements. This includes diversifying the source of rare earths, minimizing dependence on sources and processes in the People’s Republic of China, seeking global solutions by seeking agreements and collaboration with allies and partners, and increasing relevant capability in the United States. Developing alternative technologies and methods for extraction, processing, and recycling in support of diversification is critical. The Task Force notes research and development is funded by the Department of Energy and Department of Interior and recommends a requirement for the Secretary of Defense to coordinate with both the Secretaries of Energy and Interior to ensure research and development includes the DOD’s interest.”

The Task Force stresses the common ground between their own findings and recommendations and those included in the Administration’s 100-Day Supply Chain report, including improved communication between stakeholders, and leveraging cooperation with allies and partners, in particular in the framework of the NTIB. From the task force report:

“Where on-shoring is not feasible or not advantageous, the authors encourage resilience through ‘ally and friend-shoring,’ a construct the Task Force Members endorse. The United States can expand the capacity and capability of the domestic DIB.”

Against mounting pressures, there is hope that the House task force report, coupled with the findings of the White House’s 100-Day Supply Chain report, will create sufficient momentum to translate recommendations into actual policy, programs and projects to address the nation’s deep shortfalls in Critical Mineral supply.

The full task force report – including detailed findings and recommendations – can be found here.

And for a handy compilation of our recent coverage of the 100-Day Supply Chain report, click here.

The post House Armed Services Committee’s Bipartisan Defense Critical Supply Chain Task Force Releases Findings and Recommendations appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

This week’s developments in Washington — movement on a bipartisan infrastructure package and announcements of new EV goals and fuel efficiency standards — will only add fuel to the fire, as policymakers scramble to diversify Critical Mineral supply chains away from adversary nations like China.

In a new compilation of recent blog posts, ARPN is asking whether the White House’s recently released 100 Day-Supply Chain Report, which offers a combination of analysis and recommendations, combined with a — long overdue — sense of urgency, has the potential of bringing the Critical Mineral issue to “Critical Mass,” and influence true and meaningful mineral resource policy reforms.

Take a look at our commentary here:

The post Critical Mass: ARPN Commentary on the White House 100-Day Supply Chain Report & the Importance of Critical Minerals to the U.S. Technology Base appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

In this context we have long argued that while it is essential to focus on the metals and minerals that are driving headlines, such as the Rare Earths and battery tech metals like Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese and Graphite, we must not forget about the inter-relationship between what we have been calling “gateway metals” and their “co-products.”

Gateway metals – which include mainstay metals like Copper, Aluminum, Nickel, Tin, and Zinc, are not only critical to manufacturing in their own right, but “unlock” tech metals increasingly indispensable to innovation and development. For too long, these “unlocked” tech metals were dubbed “by-products,” or even “minor metals” — labels that don’t do these materials and their increasingly broad applications justice.

Courtesy of the ongoing materials science revolution, both groups of metals and minerals are increasingly becoming the building blocks of 21st Century technology, which is why we believe the “by-products” should be referred to as “co-products.” Meanwhile, many of them are fraught with similar dependency issues like the news-grabbing Rare Earths or battery tech metals.

As such, we were pleased to see that the DoD-led chapter of the White House’s 100-Day Supply Chain Report not only draws attention to this issue complex, but also appears to have embraced the “co-product” label – using it interchangeably with the term “byproduct.”

Under the header “Byproduct and Coproduction Dependency,” the DoD chapter argues that “[b]yproduct production of strategic and critical materials can add significant value to an existing production operation and improve the business case for a nascent producer. However, some strategic and critical materials are derived exclusively from byproduct production, which means a fairly small market depends on the prevailing dynamics of a separate but much larger commodity market. (…) In some cases the concentration of supply can be so extreme that U.S. or global production is concentrated in a single source. (…) More generally, in DoD modeling of strategic and critical materials under national emergency conditions, a domestic sole-source provider exists for 29 of the 53 unclassified shortfall materials, and 18 materials have no domestic production at all.”

This is a significant development, because unlike the recently released Canadian government’s official critical minerals list, the U.S. Government’s List of 35, released in 2018, did not acknowledge the connection between primary mining materials and their critical-co-products.

With the gateway/co-product challenge finding its way into public discourse by way of the 100-Day Supply Chain report, there is hope that the drafters of a forthcoming updated U.S. Government Critical Minerals List will acknowledge the importance of Gateway Metals — and that policy makers will factor this issue complex into the “all of the above” approach. As yesterday’s “minor metals” become major materials in tech applications, America’s mineral resource security may well hinge on encouraging innovative sources of supply.

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