green energy transition

The Biden Administration has announced the “most aggressive” plan to curb tailpipe emissions to date, with new vehicle pollution standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and announced by the White House last week.

If finalized, the proposed rules would require automakers to reduce carbon emissions by 56% in their 2032 models compared to 2026 models.  The expectation is that with the rules in place, 67% of new light-duty car purchases will be electric by 2032.

The move comes at a time when geopolitical and trade tensions between the United States and our allies on one hand, and China on the other are soaring, and observers argue that the ambitious plans could play into Beijing’s hands.

While the United States has taken several important steps to decouple its critical mineral supply chains from China, Beijing, having systematically built out its dominance across the entire value chain from mining over processing to manufacturing, still has a chokehold on the EV battery supply chain, and the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries report confirmed that for all of the recent U.S. policy efforts, our dependencies still persist.

In case anyone needed a reminder, here is an infographic from last November, compiled by our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence clearly visualizing China’s dominance of the battery supply chain.

The Biden Administration has, in recent weeks, stepped up its friend-shoring initiatives to bolster U.S. supply chains, with recent trade deliberations having yielded a free trade Critical Minerals agreement with Tokyo and a likely similar accord between the U.S. and EU. U.S.-Canadian critical minerals cooperation has also seen a boost.

Embedded into a comprehensive “All of the Above” strategy, these friend-shoring initiatives can play an important role in strengthening critical mineral supply chains.  And yet there are mounting concerns that the Biden Administration, in spite of verbal affirmations of wanting to responsibly expand domestic resource development and processing, continues to cater to the “not-in-my-backyard” sentiment, which still runs strong in discussions on resource development.

This brings us back to the “inherent irony” or “paradox of the green revolution” Reuters columnist Andy Home has invoked in several instances when covering critical mineral resource supply chains for the very materials underpinning the green energy transition — the paradox that “public opinion is firmly in favour of decarbonisation but not the mines and smelters needed to get there.”

It’s not that there is a lack of promising domestic resource development projects, especially for the Battery Criticals — lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, and manganese.

ARPN recently looked at each of these materials, now deemed under President Biden’s DPA determination to be “essential to the national defense,” and the U.S.-based projects working to urgently needed new supply into production. [See our discussions linked here: Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Nickel, Manganese]

And let’s not forget copper, which has increasingly been recognized – most recently by the EU — as a critical raw material in light of its key role in the green energy transition, and for which a push to have the metal added to the U.S. Government Critical Minerals List is currently underway.

As ARPN has previously pointed out, lofty goals of net carbon neutrality – and that includes the just released proposed EPA emission standards –  will not be achievable if we don’t embrace a push to secure critical mineral supply chains from “soup to nuts” to borrow a term used by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

After all, as we’ve noted often at ARPN, the first word in supply chain is… supply.

Earlier this week, the Biden Administration unveiled a road map for reducing the transportation sector’s carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Two weeks into the new year, the green energy transition continues to gain steam.  However, as Morgan D. Bazilian of the Colorado School of Mines and Gregory Brew from the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University argue in a new piece for Foreign Affairs, while this general trend represents

“welcome and overdue progress, (…) implementing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could be stymied in part by a material obstacle: the procurement of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper that are essential to clean energy systems.” 

As followers of ARPN well know, 2022 saw several important developments to boost domestic critical mineral supply chains.  (See our Year in Review post here.). And we can’t resist noting that copper – rightly referenced by Bazilian and Brew as an essential material for clean energy applications – is not officially a Critical Mineral, despite ARPN’s consistent case for copper’s criticality.

In any case, with demand outpacing supply for many of the metals and minerals underpinning the pursuit of net zero carbon emissions, Bazilian and Brewer lament that “[t]he way the United States seems intent on obtaining these minerals (…) is myopic.”

They argue that “[t]o win the energy battle of the twenty-first century, the United States must avoid repeating the policy mistakes of past eras and focus on increasing domestic production and advanced manufacturing at home, while establishing secure and resilient supply chains with allies—and even foes—abroad.”

As Bazilian and Brewer outline, the level of supply production needed to implement plans to reduce emissions “does not yet exist. New mines will have to be dug, and processing and refining industrial complexes will need to be built—both exceedingly difficult to do with existing permitting rules. The existing facilities, moreover, are almost entirely outside the United States. The production of critical minerals is concentrated in a handful of countries. 

Against the backdrop of heightened geopolitical competition, they say, “Washington should avoid the counterproductive strategies of the oil era and adopt a varied approach combining domestic policy options with a flexible foreign policy. The goal should be to build a secure position for itself and its allies, reduce dependence on Chinese supplies, and recognize the competitive environment without resorting to brute force or nationalistic tendencies.”

Specifically, they suggest the United States should:

• accelerate the development of its domestic critical mineral resources and streamline the mining permitting process to further expand mining capacity;
• work with allies to develop supply chains for critical minerals;
• and work with allies to regulate critical mineral markets to reduce volatility to encourage investment and prevent disruptions due to price spikes.

To be sure, progress has been made on several fronts. As ARPN outlined in our 2022 recap, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to spur domestic resource development and Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August, both of which have sent strong signals to investors and industry that the United States is serious about confronting the critical minerals supply chain challenge head-on.

At the same time, as scholars at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Center have pointed out, “the Biden administration’s efforts to free up federal funds for domestic mining activities has highlighted the inherent conflict between accessing the minerals needed for climate action and the administration’s commitment to environmental and social justice.”

Developments like the recent Biden administration halt on progress on the Ambler Road project in Alaska, which proponents say would unlock access to critical minerals and create new jobs, point to conflicting viewpoints between the President’s stated objectives and his Administration’s policy.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy lamented the Administration’s Ambler Mining District decision during a 2022 critical minerals summit held in Fairbanks, which we covered here:

“This administration must speak with one voice. It wants critical minerals, or it doesn’t. It wants the lower energy prices, or it doesn’t.  It wants to create jobs in the U.S. or it doesn’t.  It wants to protect the environment or it doesn’t. It cares about human rights, or it doesn’t. (…) The disjointed federal permitting process doesn’t just hurt Alaskans (…), it hurts every industry, and every state. (…) 

If we set ambitious goals for EVs or renewables without permitting the production of critical minerals here, those minerals will still be produced, they just won’t be produced in here in America or Alaska, they’ll be produced by child labor, potentially, they’ll be produced without environmental standards, potentially, they’ll be produced at the expense of the American worker, to the benefit, potentially, of our adversaries.”  

The stakes are high, and the Wilson Center Environmental Change and Security Program believes that “Critical Minerals and Energy Security” will be one of the top three issues in the coming months as 2023 promises to be a “pivotal moment for U.S. foreign and domestic policy on critical minerals.”

We are here for it, and ARPN will be documenting and analyzing the developments and decisions that will “determine national fortunes and human progress in decades ahead.”

Happy New Year! For most of us, the first week of January means it’s time to go back to the grind after an extended period of family time, food coma, rest and – hypothetically, at least — reflection.  It also means trying shake the brain fog and mental rust that has settled in order to dive [...]

In recent months, and in particular in the wake of the recently-passed congressional Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), we have seen a long overdue uptick in efforts to build out a secure North American critical minerals supply chain. Not surprisingly, many of these efforts are focused on what ARPN has dubbed the “super-criticals” – the five battery materials, plus [...]

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

Underscoring the importance of the green energy transition to modern society, the U.S. Senate earlier this week passed a resolution, the U.S. House of Representatives  introduced a corresponding resolution, and several governors issued their own declarations designating September 26th through 30th “National Clean Energy Week.” National Clean Energy Week is billed as an annual week-long “celebration of clean energy innovation” to “help solve [...]

In a comprehensive new piece for Foreign Policy, 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 take a closer look at the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act’s energy provisions, which in their [...]

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

As countries and corporations continue the global quest towards net zero carbon emissions, the U.S. Congress has passed what some consider landmark legislation to address climate change and bolster our nation’s economic and national security. The clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) — [...]

In a new piece for RealClearEnergy, John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), argues that the newly proposed Inflation Reduction Act, negotiated by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) is not only the most ambitious climate bill in U.S. history, but also represents an opportunity to bolster our nation’s economic and national security.  General [...]