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.

Google now supports mining?  Not just the crypto kind, or the data kind, but mining mining, the 400-ton-hauler-and-60-ton-bucket-hydraulic-shovel kind.

Don’t believe me?  You can Google it:  tap in Google supports mining?  Click on the first article, from GreenBiz:

You’ll see that Google has moved from support for “urban mining” – recycling the mountains of cell phones and other electronic gadgets we generate as we upgrade to new devices – to the kind of mining that’s not a metaphor, involving extracting metals and minerals from the ground.

So says Google exec Mike Werner, head of circular economy at the company, as reported by GreenBiz.  Urban mining “…won’t be enough to uncover all the minerals and metals to make new Google hardware that is sustainably sourced or to meet the needs of the clean energy systems behind the company’s net-zero goals, according to Mike Werner, head of circular economy for Google. ‘We’ve done some modeling, and it’s pretty clear that we are not going to reach net zero without significant mining,’ Werner told an audience last week at the Circularity 23 conference. ‘I don’t know that the broad sustainability community has really understood that.’”     

Werner reiterated that “while urban mining will ‘play an important role into the market, it is insufficient to meet the demands of net zero.’”

As I’ve said since the early days of ARPN, however much our new world moves cell calls through the air and data to the Cloud, the invisible hand of technology hides the fact that, as in the old George Carlin monologue, our stuff is still made of stuff.  Without access to the requisite materials in the required supply, the United States will continue to be a place where the stuff we buy may say “Designed in the U.S.,” but “Made in China,” or some other country, as factories move to where the metals are.

So hats off to Google, as it comes to grips with the mineral and metals intensity of our new world, and what that means for resource exploration, development and production.  The Tech Metals Age is here to stay.

The post Google It: Google Supports Mining appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Ali points to the inherent irony of the green energy transition — renewable technologies requiring vast and increasing amounts of metals and minerals like lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese and REEs, but the U.S. Administration finding itself in a bind with the climate movement, a core part of President Joe Biden’s base, not wanting to mine them, “certainly not close to home.”

Ali cites the January 2023 Boundary Waters decision, in which the U.S. Department of the Interior closed over 350 square miles of the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota – an area that holds some of the nation’s largest undeveloped deposits of copper and nickel but is also known for its pristine lakes — to mineral and geothermal leasing for twenty years.

Arguing that while the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) sentiment has gone global – Ali points to Serbia’s Jadar lithium mining project being stopped in response to environmentalist pressures — the “United States seems particularly stuck.”  

(See ARPN’S coverage of the NIMBY movement here.)

Relying on allies, such as Australia and Canada, and countries with “controversial domestic-labour policies and environmental standards, including Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo” rather than developing its own resources has led to the U.S. yielding to China which has “benefited from the uncompromising US opposition to domestic mining and has built up a formidable dominance in critical metal extraction and processing over the past 30 years.”

Ali notes that while “[m]ining has a sordid history of exploitation and plunder, particularly with respect to Indigenous people,” “contemporary mines with regulatory oversight can have workable impact–benefit agreements with communities,” citing specific examples exemplifying such agreements, including Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in Canada and Red Dog Mine in Alaska, which preferentially employ Indigenous people, respect traditional hunting seasons and include incremental royalties and partial resource ownership.

Ali suggests:

“The country is in danger of forgetting one of the four laws of ecology that Barry Commoner (…) established in his 1971 book A Closing Circle: ‘There is no such thing as a free lunch.’ All industrial activities have some ecological impact. As researchers, and as informed societies, we must consider the benefits and trade-offs in concert.”

adding that

“as the world prepares for the 2023 COP28 climate conference — where even free conference lunches are not really free — the United States should revisit Commoner’s wisdom: there is virtue in embracing tough trade-offs.”

All in all, a welcome if somewhat unexpected proposition coming in an article from (mostly) peer-reviewed Nature.

The post Nature Magazine Column Calls on U.S. to “Embrace Tough Trade-Offs” and “Get Serious” About Domestic Mining to Support Green Energy Shift appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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.

As we previously pointed out, China may only account for 13% of total production, but It has not only consistently developed domestic mining capabilities — it has also acquired lithium assets in countries like Chile, Canada and Australia, and, one link down the lithium supply chain, it is now home to 60% of global refining capacity. In light of skyrocketing demand projections, the country has stepped up its involvement in the electric game, and has recently beat out automaker Tesla in a bid to mine for lithium in Nigeria.

As for the United States, according to the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, “[c]ommercial-scale lithium production […] was from one continental brine operation in Nevada. Lithium was also commercially produced from the brine-sourced waste tailings of a Utah-based magnesium producer. Two companies produced a wide range of downstream lithium compounds in the United States from domestic or imported lithium carbonate, lithium chloride, and lithium hydroxide.”

Big picture, the U.S. simply cannot realize its aspirations to be a global player in the renewable revolution while producing 1% of worldwide lithium supply.

Efforts to strengthen the lithium supply chain are underway. Followers of ARPN are aware of the green energy-related provisions of 2021 congressional infrastructure package, as well as the 2022 invocation of the Defense Production Act for lithium and the battery criticals and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

[Lithium is the latest in ARPN’s feature series reviewing the battery criticals against the backdrop of the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. View our posts on graphite, manganese, cobalt, and nickel.]   

In January of this year, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced a conditional commitment to Ioneer to advance the domestic production of lithium and boron at its Rhyolite Ridge project.

Rhyolite Ridge would become the second lithium mine in the United States, but – while DOE is providing a 9-digit loan guarantee – the project is still pending approval from DOI, the Department of the Interior, where it is mired in the inherent irony of the green energy transition, with environmentalists opposing the project on grounds that Thiem’s buckwheat, a rare wildflower found on the proposed mine site, was added to the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service only a few weeks ago.   We have seen this paradox elsewhere. As Reuters columnist Andy Home phrased it: “public opinion is firmly in favour of decarbonisation but not the mines and smelters needed to get there.”

Also in January, General Motors announced that it would jointly invest with Lithium Americas Corp. to develop the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, which is the largest known source of lithium in the United States, and is considered the third largest in the world.  With a $650 million equity investment, this would represent the “largest investment by an automakers to produce battery raw materials” in GM’s own words. Under the agreement, GM will have exclusive access to the lithium once the investment is complete. The company expects that once the mine is operational in the second half of 2026, the batteries bearing Rhyolite Ridge lithium could power up to 1 million EVs.

Not surprisingly, the Thacker Mine, too, is embroiled in a high stakes legal battle, with environmentalists and tribal leaders attempting to block the project near the Oregon line.  Just last week, however, a federal judge – for the third time in two years – sided with the Biden Administration and Lithium Americas, denying the opposition’s request for an emergency injunction until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can hear their latest appeal.  Based on the judge’s decision, construction could begin as early as this week.

In addition to projects pursuing lithium as a primary material, Rio Tinto’s U.S. Borax Mine in California has recovered lithium from 90-year old waste piles.  The effort has leveraged a public-private partnership linking Rio Tinto with DOE’s Critical Materials Institute, to work through processing challenges.  It’s the kind of unconventional thinking that finds a 21^st Century tech material in the mine tailings of the 1920s, turning a “waste stream” into a “work stream” in a world hungry for lithium.

Achieving global (and domestic) decarbonization goals while at the same time strengthening our supply chains and reducing our over-reliance on critical minerals from China will require a comprehensive “all of the above” approach across the entire value chain, and,  ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty has consistently  pointed out, “we don’t have the luxury of time” anymore.

The post Strengthening the Supply Chains for the “Fuel of the Green Revolution” – A Look at Lithium appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

You might not recognize how mining plays a role in your daily life. Most people do not see the raw materials produced by mining, from metals and minerals to coal and stone, sand, and gravel. Instead, we use items every day that come from mined raw materials, never knowing that mining played an integral part in the development of the mobile devices we use, the roads we travel on, the cookware we use to make our meals, and the mined fertilizers that helped grow our food. These products, in addition to countless other necessities and conveniences, start with mining.”

This is not an excerpt from a puff piece written by a trade association – it’s a snippet from the CDC website today, and many other U.S. government agencies, as well as Members of Congress have put out similar statements acknowledging the mining industry’s contributions to our modern way of life.

Since 2009, when National Miners Day was first proclaimed by Congress to be observed every December 6, awareness of the importance of metals and minerals, and securing their supply chains, has steadily grown.

Fueled by a global pandemic severing supply chains and compounded by mounting environmental and geopolitical pressures, and the realization that our green energy future will be mineral intensive, critical mineral supply chain security today is more than a buzz word, and stakeholders understand the need to — responsibly and sustainably — mine and process the metals and minerals that underpin the global push towards net zero carbon emissions and 21^stCentury technology in the broader sense.

Thankfully, the mining industry is ready to meet the challenge and is not only upping the ante on the ESG front in general, but is specifically leveraging the materials science revolution to sustainably develop and process the metals and minerals we need today and in the future.

In recent years, ARPN has been showcasing initiatives by mining companies to sustainably green the future, ranging from overhauling supply chain policies to ensure suppliers conform to certain environmental and social standards to incorporating renewable power sources into their operations to offset some of the carbon costs for resource development.

Perhaps most recently, in November of 2022, mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar announced a successful demonstration of its first battery electric large mining truck, going hand in hand with a “significant investment to transform its Arizona-based proving ground into a sustainable testing and validation hub of the future.”

Many more initiatives are underway (several are featured here and here), and we will continue to feature them going forward.

The post On National Miners Day, A Look at The Mining Industry’s Contributions to Sustainably Greening our Future appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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.” 

Mr. Xi’s confirmation to another term was hardly a surprise, but in his landmark speech addressing the CCP Congress, he emphasized the the need to increase China’s self-sufficiency in technology and supply chains, and reaffirmed 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.”

Aware 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 United States and its partners have stepped up efforts to decouple from China.

These may become all the more pressing in light of current fears, as Damon Kitney reports for The Australian, that China may seek to retaliate after the U.S. Department of Commerce announced sweeping limitations to semiconductor and chip-making equipment sales to Chinese customers this fall.

Speaking to a private forum in Melbourne, earlier this month, Australia’s former Ambassador to the U.S. and federal Treasurer Joe Hockey told attendees:

“In terms of critical minerals, my concern is – and there has started to be a few reports in the US suggesting this – is that after the midterm elections, and with a re-empowered (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, as of next year China will start to turn down the tap on the supply of critical minerals to the US and other places.”

Followers of ARPN have long known that China is no stranger to playing politics with its near-total rare earths supply monopoly, and just last year, we saw the country threatening to limit rare earth shipments to U.S. defense contractors over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Thankfully, U.S. domestic efforts to bolster supply chains can be complemented with leveraging close cooperation with allied nations including Canada and Australia.

Australia is ready to step up its rare earths game and challenge China in this segment.  As Phil Mercer writes for BBC News, Sydney, “Australia, a superpower exporter of iron ore and coal with rich mining traditions believes it is well-placed to join the race to exploit minerals that provide critical parts for electric vehicles and wind turbines.” He cites John Coyne of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who — while warning that China will not easily surrender its dominance of the sector — says:

“Australia has the world’s sixth-largest reserves of rare earth minerals. However, they remain largely untapped with only two mines producing them.  There is significant potential in the establishment of multi-ore mineral-processing hubs in Australia. After all, there is no point in creating supply chain resilience for [rare earth] ores if miners must still send them to China for processing.”

Mercer points to the U.S. Defense Department’s deal with Australian miner Lynas Rare Earths, which has been contracted to construct a REE processing facility in the U.S..

In the same vein,  the Canadian government has inked an agreement with Rio Tinto to jointly invest $737 million to modernize the company’s Sorel-Tracy, Quebec metals processing plant, with  Rio Tinto’ chief executive Jakob Stausholm warning of the “excesses of globalization” in critical mineral supply chains. The move is said to strengthen “North America’s first production capacity for titanium metal, a lightweight but strong material important to aerospace and defense groups such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.” 

Stateside, the U.S. Department of Energy has just announced the first round of funding under the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure act for projects aimed at “supercharging” U.S. manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and electric grid — another important step in the decoupling from adversaries like China.

With a newly-emboldened Mr. Xi reportedly seeing the possibility of a showdown with the West as “increasingly likely”in the context of his goal to “restore China to what he believes is its rightful place as a global player and a peer of the U.S,” as the Wall Street Journal writes, these efforts could not be more urgent.

The post President Xi Jinping’s “Coronation” Adds Fuel to the Fire to Decouple Critical Mineral Supply Chains from China appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The mass-adoption of green technologies, as followers of ARPN well know, requires drastically increased amounts of critical minerals, including the Rare Earths and mainstays such as copper, as well as, perhaps most notably, the so-called “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — key  inputs for EV battery technology, which is at the heart of the green energy transition.

Randall writes that the U.S. has passed a “critical EV tipping point: 5% of new car sales powered only by batteries,”and argues that “[i]f the U.S follows the trend established by 18 countries that preceded it, a quarter of new car sales could be electric by the end of 2025.”

These emerging trend lines, along with the realization that supply chains for many metals and minerals leave us at the mercy of adversary nations like China who control much of the material supplies and processing capabilities, have prompted the Biden Administration and members of Congress to finally give the critical mineral supply chain conundrum ARPN and others have long warned of the attention it deserves.

Thus, in recent years, stakeholders began taking steps to strengthen domestic supply chains for critical minerals, with the supply chain chaos resulting from coronavirus pandemic and rising geopolitical tensions kicking these efforts into high gear in 2022.

Much of these efforts have focused on the rare earths and battery criticals, such as the March 2022 Presidential Determination to invoke the Defense Production Act for these materials, which grants the  federal government the authority to direct taxpayer funds to private companies for the extraction of said minerals.

However, untangling the supply chains is proving more difficult than some would have thought — and new sourcing requirements for the battery criticals contained in the energy provisions of the the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act may have added another layer of complications to an already challenging situation.

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.”   U.S. Senator Tom Cotton recently called for additional information from the Department of Energy regarding the alleged China connection of the project, which we  discussed here.

The Nevada project is 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.

In the same vein, as Miller writes discussing the above-referenced project in Nevada, “critics say the scenario would increase U.S. energy dependence on a hostile power – one accused of using forced labor in the manufacture of both lithium batteries and solar panels – and undercuts the Biden administration’s emphasis on domestic sourcing of green energy,” 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.”

Both assertions are accurate — yet, as we previously outlined:

“Senator Cotton’s point [regarding the Nevada project] that questions of foreign control deserve to be fully investigated before the U.S. Government confers funding seems unarguable. Government programs intended to alleviate worrisome foreign resource dependencies should not unwittingly strengthen those dependencies at the expense of the American taxpayer – and American national security.”

As clean energy adoption reaches a “tipping point,” this is all the more reason for stakeholders to place an even stronger emphasis on formulating and implementing a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” strategy for domestic critical mineral resource supply chain security — today.

The post As Clean Energy Adoption Reaches “Tipping Point,” the Challenge of Untangling Critical Mineral Supply Chains Looms Larger than Ever 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.

During her State of the Union address on September 14, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced plans to introduce legislation to identify potential strategic critical raw material projects along the supply chain and build up reserves in areas where supply is at risk.

Highlighting that almost 90% of rare earths and 60% of lithium are currently being processed in China, Von der Leyen said “[a] single country currently dominates almost the entire market. We must avoid becoming dependent again, as with oil and gas.”

She added:

“We know this approach can work. Five years ago, Europe launched the Battery Alliance. And soon, two third of the batteries we need will be produced in Europe.

Last year I announced the European Chips Act. And the first chips gigafactory will break ground in the coming months.”

The announcement is more than timely.  The European Union expects its own demand for rare earths alone to increase fivefold by 2030.  And the latest analysis by ARPN’s friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence finds that more than 300 new mines for graphite, lithium, nickel and cobalt would “need to be built over the next decade to meet [global] demand for electric vehicle and energy storage batteries,” and that is already taking into account the recycling of raw materials — without factoring in closed loop solutions, the number shoots up to almost 400.

In the U.S., the energy provisions in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, following on the heels of the invocation the Defense Production Act for the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and manganese, are expected to send a strong signal to investors that the United States, too, is serious about “building the secure, responsible industrial base our economy and national security needs.”

However, many issues remain.

One of them is the “costly and inefficient permitting process” making it “difficult for American businesses to invest in the extraction and processing of critical minerals in the United States,” as Ford Motor Company’s chief government affairs officer Christopher Smith lamented in a recent letter to the U.S. Department of Interior.

The other challenge is an “inter-departmental tug-o-war” that hinders actual progress.  As Shane Lasley  wroterecently for North of 60 Mining News:

“While the departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy are forging ahead with programs and investments aimed at ensuring America has the minerals and metals needed to support the clean energy objectives outlined by the White House, and enabled by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, DOI is pumping the breaks on a domestic project that would produce the requisite raw materials.”

It remains to be seen if stakeholders on both sides of the Atlantic are able to advance their critical mineral ambitions, but one thing, in the words of Forbes contributor Wal van Lierop, is clear: “[W]ithout massive investments in base metals and key minerals, Europe and North America will fail to meet their carbon emission targets and face a new form of energy insecurity.” 

The post European Union to Step Up its Critical Minerals Game against the Backdrop of Surging Demand Forecasts appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Bearing testimony to these new realities, ABC News has put together a brief yet insightful video clip on “Critical Minerals in the Climate Fight.”

In the clip, policy experts Reed Blakemore, deputy director, Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and Abigail Wulf, vice president and director, critical minerals strategy at SAFE, underscore the need to — responsibly and sustainably — mine and process the metals and minerals that underpin the global push towards a net zero carbon future in the United States to ensure resilient supply chains.

Thankfully, the mining industry, as we have outlined on several occasions, is ready to meet the challenge and is leveraging the materials science revolution to sustainable develop and process the materials underpinning 21st century technology.

Says Abigail Wulf:

“We’re not just digging for digging’s sake. We’re trying to make sure that we can solve the climate crisis and also that we can make sure that we can compete in the new economies of the future, which will be electric and which will run on minerals.”

Click here to view the full clip.

The post Critical Minerals Go Mainstream: ABC News Clip on Critical Minerals in the Climate Fight appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.