mining

Evolving out of its 2017 report “The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future”, which found that the sought-after transition to a “low-carbon future will be significantly more mineral intensive than a business as usual scenario,” the World Bank developed its “Climate-Smart Mining” initiative, which ARPN discussed a few weeks ago.

Against this backdrop, earlier this month, representatives from public and private sectors from all over the world met in Washington, D.C. for the “Minerals for Climate Action” conference, to launch the World Bank’s “Climate-Smart Mining Facility.”  This multi-donor trust fund has the stated goal of “help[ing] resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals, while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the environmental and climate footprint.”

According to the World Bank, 

“[t]he Facility supports the sustainable extraction and processing of minerals and metals to secure supply for clean energy technologies by minimizing the social, environmental, and climate footprint throughout the value chain of those materials by scaling up technical assistance and investments in resource-rich developing countries.”

Initial support for the trust fund, which will support specific projects aimed at helping developing countries and emerging economies devise and implement “sustainable and responsible strategies and practices across the mineral value chain,” comes from the German government, as well as private sector companies Rio Tinto and Anglo American.

According to the World Bank’s press release, “[t]he Facility will also assist governments to build a robust policy, regulatory and legal framework that promotes climate-smart mining and creates an enabling environment for private capital.”

As followers of ARPN know from our Materials Science Profiles of Progress blog series , public-private partnerships are fueling the materials science revolution which is transforming the ways in which we use and obtain metals and minerals. In the context of the series, we have been featuring a number of domestic public-private partnerships develop practical solutions to critical minerals issues.  

Seeing these types of partnerships further the goal of sustainably greening the future by responsibly harnessing metals and minerals on an international level is a welcome development, and we’ll be keeping tabs on the “Climate Smart Mining Initiative.”

Followers of ARPN have long known that China is the big elephant in the room. 

In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Ezekiel Emanuel, Amy Gadsden and Scott Moore lament that while there is a growing  awareness that China may be the – in the words of Sec. of State Mike Pompeo “greatest challenge that the United States will face in the medium to long term” – the United States has largely responded with “defensive measures” like tariffs.

“[T]he challenge can’t be answered just by demanding that China plays fair,” they argue.

Their advice: 

“The U.S. needs to meet strength with strength, and the best way to do that is to renew a longstanding American advantage: innovation. To compete and win in the century ahead, the U.S. urgently needs to fix the mismatch between its declared national technology priorities and the deployment of our research funding.”

Emanuel, Gadsden and Moore point to an erosion of America’s lead in science and technology fields stemming from “steadily declining U.S budgets for basic scientific research and a lopsided emphasis on the life sciences to the detriment of emerging technologies.”

Against the backdrop of misguided U.S. government spending priorities, China has made massive investments in science, technology and engineering research and development – to the tune of $410 billion in 2016, which, according to the authors of the piece, is more than that of Japan, Germany and South Korea combined. 

And while private investment in R&D has increased, Emanuel, Gadsden and Moore argue it’s “not nearly enough.”

Indeed, targeted investments in R&D can yield great results — as some of the recent examples of public-private partnerships featured as part of our “Profiles of Progress” series have shown.

However, increased spending can and should not occur in a vacuum, but should rather be part of a comprehensive policy overhaul.   The mineral resource sector serves as a case in point: Here, decades of misguided government policies —  from the duplicative and lengthy permitting process for mining projects adding cost and uncertainty, to land access policies — have been discouraging private investment. This, as ARPN followers know all too well, has left the United States increasingly reliant on foreign mineral resources.  

As U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski recently argued in a Congressional hearing:

“In contrast to the energy sector, our nation is headed in the wrong direction on mineral imports. This is our Achilles’ heel that serves to empower and enrich other nations, while costing us jobs and international competitiveness.” 

Emanuel, Gadsden, and Moore are right when they argue “America needs to do what it does best: compete,”  but revisiting spending priorities is only a part of the puzzle.

What we need is a comprehensive policy overhaul of the U.S.’s resource development policy.

However, 16 months after the President issued his Executive Order on Critical Minerals (which has arguably led to some positive first steps towards mineral resource policy reform) we are still awaiting the release of a report by the Department of Commerce outlining a “broader strategy” and recommending specific policy steps to implement it.

Meanwhile, China presses on — both on R&D and securing access to critical minerals. 

In the past few months, we have seen indications for a growing awareness of the need for mineral resource policy reform. Much emphasis has —rightfully — been placed on the national security aspects of our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources, as well as the nascent realization that the pursuit of the green energy transition is [...]

ARPN expert panel member and managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence Simon Moores must have struck a nerve when he called the U.S. a “bystander” in the current battery arms race during a recent Congressional hearing. His message  —  “Those who control these critical raw materials and those who possess the manufacturing and processing know how, will [...]

At ARPN, we’ve long made the case that the current push towards a lower-carbon future is not possible without mining, as green energy technology relies heavily on a score of critical metals and minerals. In 2017, the World Bank World Bank published “The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future”, which echoed [...]

“Electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids are the future, but getting past our current reliance on internal combustion engines will require secure, domestic sources for a plethora of important minerals, such as rare earth metals,” writes Major General Robert H. Latiff, a retired Air Force general with a background in materials science and manufacturing technology — and [...]

The partial shutdown of the federal government at the beginning of this year had delayed its release, but last week, USGS published its 2019 Mineral Commodity Summaries. Followers of ARPN will know that we await the publication’s release with somewhat bated breath every year, as especially “Page 6” – the chart depicting U.S. Net Import [...]

Followers of ARPN will know that Copper is more than just an old school mainstay industrial metal.   We’ve long touted its versatility, stemming from its traditional uses, new applications and Gateway Metal status. Courtesy of the ongoing materials science revolution, scientists are constantly discovering new uses – with the latest case in point being [...]

In his latest piece for The Hill, Ned Mamula, member of the ARPN panel of experts and adjunct scholar in geosciences at the Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute, zeroes in on what we have called the “inherent irony” of the Green New Deal – the fact that a green energy transition requires large quantities [...]

There is much talk about the so-called “Green New Deal,” a concept originally floated by the Green Party and now championed by newly-elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).  Amidst much of the information (and misinformation) that is being spread with regards to the plan that seeks to implement a sweeping transition to green renewable energy, one aspect has [...]