Somewhat lost in the shuffle of work parties, family gatherings and holiday shopping was the Chinese government’s announcement on December 21 that it would ban the export of technology to make rare earth magnets, adding to a ban already in place on extraction and separation technologies for REEs.

In what Reuters calls an “escalating battle with the West over control of critical minerals,” Beijing significantly tightened rules guiding exports of several metals in 2023. (see ARPN’s reprise post of 2023’s main events in the critical minerals realm for more on China’s tightening of the export control ratchet).

Don Swartz, CEO of American Rare Earths, a company currently developing a REE mine and processing facility in Wyoming, sees China’s move, which follows a November 2023 directive from the Chinese government to REE exporters to report transaction details, as a clear sign that “China is driven to maintain its market dominance,” with Swartz adding that “[t]his is now a race.”

Meanwhile, for all the tit for tat in the grander scheme of the Tech Wars and a flurry of activity on the resource policy front, the West has struggled to effectively decouple its critical mineral supply chains from China.

In the case of rare earths, China, which still accounts for nearly 90% of global refined output, controls the refinement process, and area that has Western REE companies struggling because of “technical complexities and pollution concerns” in the solvent extraction process, as Reuters points out.

Nonetheless, experts believe the latest announcement should be “a clarion call that dependence on China in any part of the value chain is not sustainable.” 

The West may have kicked off the new year already, but Chinese New Year is still upon us. 2023, the Lunar Year of the Rabbit, was supposed to bring us “relaxation, fluidity, quietness and contemplation.”  What we got, was an escalation of the Tech Wars, more resource nationalism and more geopolitical instability.  At the same time, these developments also served as catalysts kicking efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains into high gear.

With 2024 moving us into the Lunar Year of the Dragon, the overall energy of which is said to be “vital and competitive,” we may be in for a tumultuous ride.

Read ARPN’s Year in Review – A Look at 2023 Through the Prism of Critical Mineral Resource Policy here. 

The post New Year, New Round of Tech Wars Escalation? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Against the backdrop of China’s recently announced restrictions on graphite exports (see ARPN’s coverage here) set to take effect on Friday, the Washington Post zeroes in on China having opened a “next front in the Tech War” that is unfolding between Washington, D.C. and Beijing – Graphite (and clean energy).  Beginning this Friday, exporters of high-grade graphite will have to seek government approval and disclose details of their buyers, allowing Chinese authorities to pick and choose which applications to approve or deny based on national security grounds.

As Lily Kuo writes for the Post, Beijing has made clear that its latest salvo of critical mineral export restrictions is to be considered “payback for Washington’s efforts to curtail Chinese access to advanced American semiconductors,” and is merely “just the beginning.”   Thus were the words of China’s former commerce minister Wei Jianguo who warned earlier this summer, when Beijing announced the curtailment of gallium and germanium exports, that “China has many means and types of sanctions it can use,” adding that “if restrictions on our high-tech industry continue to escalate, China’s countermeasures will also escalate.”

Pointing to the fact that the U.S. Government has deemed all three minerals currently targeted by Beijing – graphite, gallium and germanium – critical minerals and the U.S. is import reliant for all three, with China accounting for the largest share of imports to date, Kuo says China’s tightening of the export control ratchet may be Beijing’s “most potent weapon to wield in its competition with Washington, one that could strike at the heart of American efforts to create green jobs while weaning the country off fossil fuels.”

As ARPN previously outlined, diversifying away from China represents a massive challenge. In the EV battery segment, China “is on track to retain over 85% of the global anode market share by the end of the decade,”according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data.

The U.S. has taken several important steps to decouple critical mineral supply chains from China, especially those for battery materials and chip manufacturing in the last few years, ranging from DPA Title III designations and subsequent Department of Defense funding of projects to federal legislation providing funding for projects from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In the case of graphite, projects currently underway are expected to qualify for the IRA credits, and ultimately help “domesticate” the graphite supply chain, including Graphex’s pitch coating facility coming online in Michigan, and Graphite One Inc.’s effort to establish an all-American mine-to-manufacturing supply chain. Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska was recently recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey as the largest U.S. graphite deposit and among the largest in the world, and, since July, the company has been selected for two Department of Defense grants, under the Defense Production Act’s Title III authorities and by the Defense Logistics Agency.

As tensions mount, rumblings over China blocking American access to rare earths are getting louder, with China’s Commerce Ministry issuing new rules requiring exporters to report details of their overseas shipments, and the People’s Daily running a piece stating, according to Kuo, “there was ‘no mystery’ about whether China would use its rare earths as a ‘counter weapon.’”

While Kuo says China’s exports controls could kill two birds with one stone by not only punishing the U.S., but also encouraging domestic companies to export finished products rather than raw materials, she argues that the strategy “is not without risks,” and has garnered criticism even within China, as it could – in the case of rare earths -  “weaken the international influence” of China’s REE industry as manufacturers could not only turn to other sources of supply, but move away from using rare earths entirely.

Tesla made headlines earlier this year saying it would cut REEs from its next-gen EVs, but Tesla is not the only automaker developing low- to zero rare earth content engines. Nissan is reported to pursue a dual strategy to develop both newer EESM (externally excited synchronous machine) motors, but also develop permanent magnet motors that will ultimately eliminate REE content.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has just announced a series of new actions to strengthen U.S. supply chains across the board.  One highly anticipated component is the Department of Defense’s release of a first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), which, according to the White House, “will guide engagement, policy development, and investment in the defense industrial base over the next three to five years.”

Whether or not China overplays its hand in the long run is almost beside the point, as, in the short- to medium term its chokehold in the sector is strong, and we know that the country does not shy away from confrontation.   To not fall behind in the Tech War, decoupling our critical mineral supply chains from China must be the name of the game.

As ARPN previously outlined,

“In the process, we will have to carefully balance domestic and global policy approaches — as well as public and private sector roles with economic and security concerns to reflect the geopolitical realities of our times.

And, as followers of ARPN well know, this can be best achieved within the context of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach that focuses on domestic resource development where possible and leverages partnerships where needed.”

The post A New Note From the Front: Chinese Export Restrictions Underscore That to Win Tech War, U.S. Must Diversify Critical Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Startups and joint ventures are stepping up to the plate, harnessing machine learning, cutting-edge chemistry, and breakthrough processes provided courtesy of the materials science revolution.

A case in point, as per a recent Wall Street Journal story: Startup Urbix, an Arizona-based graphite producer leveraging machine learning to discern how to create “uniform graphite anodes fit for use in EV batteries from a range of natural and synthetic forms of graphite.” The company says that its machine learning technique drastically reduces waste — whereas traditional methods result in a roughly 30 to 35 percent yield, Urbix’s technique allows for 80% of raw material inputs to end up in the final product.

Meanwhile, Locus Fermentation Solutions, an Ohio-based chemical business, has begun using bio-surfactants, chemicals from microbes capable of breaking a material’s surface tension, to increase the yield in the copper production process. According to the company, bio surfactants can be utilized for either of the main copper processing techniques and can increase copper yields by 7%, while at the same time saving energy as less rock needs to be crushed.

Mine tailings can also be fertile grounds for resource harvesting.  Massachusetts-based startup Phoenix Tailings currently specializes on finding mine sites free from radioactive materials such as thorium and uranium and recovering REEs from these sites. The company says that at its pilot facility in upstart New York, where it processes the tailings, zero waste is produced as leftovers from the process are recycled.

Other companies, and even governments are also looking to “turn the same stone twice.”

As ARPN previously outlined, in Australia, New Century Resources currently owns and runs the largest tailings retreatment operation at its zinc tailings operation in Queensland.

In the rare earths realm, Reuters lists six major projects outside of China aimed at extracting the critical minerals from waste or byproducts, including Iluka Resources Ltd’s and VHM Ltd’s operations in Australia, Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd’s endeavor in northeast South Africa, Swedish state-owned LKAB’s plans to extract REEs from two existing mines, and two U.S. operations, one of them being the above-referenced Phoenix Tailings, and the other being U.S. Energy Fuels.  U.S. Energy Fuels originally focused on uranium production, started acquiring monazite, a byproduct of mineral sands, to extract REEs with plans to open its own separation plant by 2024.

Beyond the rare earths, global miner Rio Tinto began producing tellurium at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah, where roughly 20 tons of the material are generated from by-product streams generated during the copper refining process. As America’s oldest copper mine, now in its 117th year of operations, there’s no telling how many critical minerals may reside in Kennecott’s historic waste piles.

In addition to recovering tellurium from Kennecott, after commencing production of battery-grade lithium from waste rock at a lithium demonstration site at its Boron mine site in California in 2021, Rio Tinto last fall began partnering with CR Minerals Co. LLC in an effort to extract a material called pozzolans from the facility’s tailings, which can be substituted for or combined with cement to decarbonization construction materials. In Canada, the miner is producing scandium from titanium waste, becoming the first North American producer of scandium in the process.

Meanwhile, as Australia’s Financial Post reported earlier this summer, the Australian government has launched the “Atlas of Australian Mine Waste,”  a mapping project of sites containing mine waste with reprocessing potential.

Acknowledging the potential held by mine waste and tailings, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earlier this spring solicited proposals for FY2023 grants to collect data on mine waste, using funds from Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in the context of the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI).

At a time when geopolitical tensions are rising along side ever-increasing pressures to accelerate the shift towards renewable energy, the materials science revolution — thankfully — continues to unlock new technologies and techniques allowing for the safe and commercially viable recovery of critical minerals from a variety of previously largely untapped sources, including mine tailings.  It’s ARPN’s view that stakeholders should embrace and further these developments in the context of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to bolster critical mineral supply chains.

The post Materials Science Revolution Unlocks Technologies and Techniques to Harness Previously Untapped Sources and Increase Material Yield appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

While some chipmakers have played down fears of shortages, former Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wei Jianguo’s comments to the China Daily newspaper “that countries should brace for more should they continue to pressure China, describing the controls as a ‘well-thought-out heavy punch’ and ‘just a start,’” have prompted fears that more export curbs on critical materials, including on rare earths could be on the menu.

With China controlling roughly 90 percent of the global refined output of rare earths, and the specter of more Chinese export controls looming large, analysts suggest that the United States and its partners must kick their efforts to reduce their reliance on Chinese into high gear.

According to Goldman Sachs analysts, “China is the source of more than 70 percent of the world’s [neodymium and praseodymium] and accounts for over 90 percent of the downstream metal and magnet segment.”

To replicate China’s annual output of 50,000 tons, the West would have to invest anywhere between $15 billion and $30 billion, Goldman says.

The Goldman analysis brings into focus the immense challenges associated with decoupling from China — most notably perhaps permitting:

The analysts note that while demand for NdPr could exceed supply from 2028 onward in light of surging demand in the EV and wind turbine segment, “out of more than 20 projects outside China that could produce some 20,000 tons of NdPr annually, (…) only two to three of these projects can get off the ground this decade.”

Both the United States and the European Union have resolved to make permitting reform a key priority. In the U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) just told his colleagues that the push would be a focus in the weeks leading up to the August recess, while the European Union’s recently released Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) calls for streamlining the permitting process for raw materials projects.

However, as followers of ARPN well know, all affirmations of a desire to strengthen domestic supply chains aside, the perennial not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sentiment is still strong – not just in the United States, but also in Europe.

Meanwhile, the urgency for reform cannot be overstated, as Beijing will not slow down its global quest for resource dominance, and the critical minerals arms race in the context of the Tech Wars will continue to heat up.

The post As China Ratchets Up Weaponization of Trade, Analysts Call for Massive Investments to Counter Beijing in Critical Minerals Arms Race appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

As Australia’s Financial Post reports, the Australian government has completed a mapping project of sites containing mine waste with reprocessing potential.

The “Atlas of Australian Mine Waste“ was launched this week by Geoscience Australia in partnership with RMIT University, the University of Queensland, as well as geological surveys across the country.

As Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King stated, “[s]ome of the minerals we need now, and into the future, may not just be in the ground—they’re also in rock piles and tailings on mine sites around the country.”

She added:

“These minerals might not have been of interest when first extracted but could now be in hot demand as the world seeks to decarbonize—for example, cobalt in the tailings of old copper mines.”

Acknowledging the potential held by mine waste and tailings, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earlier this spring solicited proposals for FY2023 grants to collect data on mine waste, using funds from Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in the context of the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI).

Earth MRI provides more than $74 million in new mapping funding each year to “modernize our understanding of the Nation’s fundamental geologic framework and improve knowledge of domestic critical-mineral resources both still in the ground and in mine waste.”

As announced this May, more than $5.8 million will go towards mapping critical-mineral resources in Alaska in partnership with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Minerals included in the context of USGS and the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Survey research projects Alaska are: Arsenic, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, graphite, indium, platinum group metals, rare earth elements tantalum, tellurium and tin.

Miners have long realized the potential of reprocessing tailings, and have already “made a business out of reprocessing old mine waste to extract metal, as part of a mine remediation process,” as the Financial Post reports.  Many efforts have sprung up in recent years, and we’re featuring a few examples below:

In Australia, New Century Resources currently owns and runs the largest tailings retreatment operation at its zinc tailings retreatment operation in Queensland.

In the rare earths realm, Reuters lists six major projects outside of China aimed at extracting the critical minerals from waste or byproducts, including Iluka Resources Ltd’s and VHM Ltd’s operations in Australia, Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd’s endeavor in northeast South Africa, Swedish state-owned LKAB’s plans to extract REEs from two existing mines, and two U.S. operations:

Phoenix Tailings, a privately held U.S. company plans to launch operations using waste materials from a former iron ore mine in New York using its own processing technology.

U.S. Energy Fuels, originally focused on uranium production, started acquiring monazite, a byproduct of mineral sands, to extract REEs with plans to open its own separation plant by 2024.

Global miner Rio Tinto began producing tellurium at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah, where roughly 20 tons of the material are generated from by-product streams generated during the copper refining process. As America’s oldest copper mine, now in its 117^th year of operations, there’s no telling how many critical minerals may reside in Kennecott’s historic waste piles.

In addition to recovering tellurium from Kennecott, after commencing production of battery-grade lithium from waste rock at a lithium demonstration site at its Boron mine site in California in 2021, the company last fall began partnering with CR Minerals Co. LLC in an effort to extract a material called pozzolans from the facility’s tailings, which can be substituted for or combined with cement to decarbonization construction materials. Meanwhile, in Canada, the miner is producing scandium from titanium waste, becoming the first North American producer of scandium in the process.

As the materials science revolution marches on and continues to unlock new technologies allowing for the safe and commercially viable recovery of mine waste tailings, harnessing this – to date largely untapped — potential could play a significant role in a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to bolstering critical mineral supply chains.

The post Turning the Same Stone Twice: Governments, Miners Turn to Mine Tailings to Bolster Critical Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

It’s fitting that ARPN reviews the report on Groundhog Day, February 2^nd, because just like in the Bill Murray classic movie, in which the clock jumps back to the same day all over again every morning, the Critical Mineral movie appears to bring us back to a situation of ongoing deep dependency on foreign sourced metals and minerals every year – at least in recent memory.

While there are some changes from last year’s report, the number of metals and minerals for which we are 100% import dependent dropped by two from 17 to 15, the only significant change here is a drop for Vanadium, with recalculations made for overall import reliance suggesting that its inclusion in the 100% segment has been overstated for several years. (The drop for nepheline syenite from 100% to greater than 95% is less significant, with the numerical drop small and material not featuring on the critical minerals list.)

And for all the talk about reducing the United States’ resource dependence in recent years,  a deeper look at the chart depicting U.S. Net Import Reliance — or the “Blue Wall of Dependency,” as we have dubbed it based on the many blue bars showing our significant degree of import dependence, reveals that the number of metals and minerals for which we are 50% or more import-dependent has even gone up over last year — with the new report pegging it at 51 versus 47 in 2022.

When cross-referencing the U.S. Net Import Reliance chart with the 2022 Final list of Critical Minerals, the United States was 100% net import reliant for 12, and an additional 31 critical mineral commodities (including 14 lanthanides, which are listed under rare earths) had a net import reliance greater than 50% of apparent consumption.

Once more, we can’t help but observe that this represents a stark contrast to our import reliance for metals and minerals in 1984, when we were 100% import reliant for just 11 mineral commodities.

A few changes for individual metals and minerals included in the report are notable and significant, particularly in the context of the accelerating global green energy transition:

For the Rare Earths, a key group of tech metals underpinning 21st Century technology and the accelerating green energy transition, our import reliance had dropped from 100% in the 2021 report to “greater than 90%” in the 2022 report. It is now back up to “greater than 95%”, and the rare earth concentrate being extracted in the U.S. currently sent to China for separation.  Once again, a single link lacking in a supply chain continues U.S. dependency.

For Lithium, perhaps the most frequently cited battery tech mineral, and Cobalt, another one of Lithium’s “battery critical” peers, U.S. import reliance stayed the same at “greater than 25%” for lithium, and Cobalt at 76% respectively.

For Graphite and Manganese, both battery criticals – the USGS report shows both still pegged at an unchanged 100% import reliance.

For Nickel, the final battery critical and a new element on the 2022 Critical Mineral List, import-reliance jumped from 48% last year to 56% in this year’s report.

In upcoming posts, ARPN will focus on each of these battery criticals, and the U.S.-based projects working to urgently needed new supply into production.

As in previous iterations of the report, China continues to be the elephant in the data room. And against all pledges in recent years for the United States to reduce import reliance on supplies from China, the 2022 Mineral Commodity Summaries lists still China an unchanged 25 times as one of the major import sources of metals and minerals for which our net import reliance is 50% or greater – and recent developments in China show that the country has no intention of loosening its grip on the critical minerals supply chain [see our recent posts on Chinese resource policy here].

Owing to the growing focus on critical minerals on the part of U.S. policy stakeholders, this year’s Mineral Commodity Summaries report features an expanded chapter on developments in the critical minerals realm, identifying trend lines, and supply chain security and U.S. government critical minerals initiatives as well as critical mineral investments.

While the urgency of the need to secure critical mineral supply chains has registered with stakeholders over the past few years, USGS’s findings underscore once more that supply chains in the 21st Century are extremely complex and meaningful change takes time – and the developments of 2022 ranging from increased resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere over war in Ukraine to rising geopolitical tensions have not made untangling supply chains any easier.

In Bill Murray’s movie, it took the protagonist several years to realize how to change behavior to break the cycle.  We know by now that to break our cycle of resource dependence, it will take a comprehensive “all of the above” approach to critical mineral resource policy – and stakeholders have come to realize this and have increasingly embraced the concept.  We continue to stand by what ARPN’s Dan McGroarty stated during a congressional hearing in 2019 – “we can’t admire the problem anymore. We don’t have the luxury of time.”

If we act swiftly and comprehensively, there may just be a chance that we will wake up twelve months from now not to another Groundhog Day, but to a 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries that paints a picture of reduced resource dependence.

The post Groundhog Day 2023 – Another Year of Critical Mineral Resource Dependence? USGS Releases Annual Mineral Commodity Summaries Report appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that it is investigating a recently-unearthed disinformation campaign against Australian company Lynas Rare Earths, which is contracted to construct a REE separation facility in Texas.

Cybersecurity firm Mandiant first reported the efforts of Dragonbridge, a network of “thousands of inauthentic accounts across numerous social media platforms, websites, and forums that have promoted various narratives in support of the political interests of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” targeting the Australian Miner with content aimed at discrediting the company’s environmental record and instigating local protests of the company’s planned processing facility by posing as local residents on social media.

While, according to Mandiant, the campaign to date hasn’t been particularly sophisticated, the company has warned that its analysts expect the network to refine its technique as broadens its effort. In June, Dragonbridge began targeting additional REE mining companies, notably Canadian Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp., which is exploring a project in Saskatchewan, Canada, and American REE supplier USA Rare Earth, LLC., with a REE mining project in Texas and a planned processing and magnet manufacturing facility in Oklahoma, with similar disinformation and negative messaging campaigns.

As Metal Tech News’s Shane Lasley writes in a new piece for the publication, “[g]iven the economic and geopolitical clout rare earths provide the People’s Republic of China, it is no surprise that the government would sponsor a social media attack on projects that threaten this leverage.”

Followers of ARPN are well-aware of China’s long-standing near-total supply chain monopoly on Rare Earths and know that Beijing is no stranger to weaponizing these tech metals.  The fact that it now appears to engage in cyber warfare aimed at private companies leveraging a “unique attack vector” by weaponizing the NIMBY sentiment should place industry stakeholders and policymakers on high alert, because as John Hultquist, vice president of Mandiant Threat Intelligence, told Defense One:

“One of the things that’s distinct about Chinese activity, compared to some of their peers, is that they’re always highly economically focused. There’s a whole new group of targets that probably don’t have strong experience dealing with this problem. As that process gets underway, more industries will find themselves the same sort of strategic situation that rare earth metals are now.”

In the words of Metal Tech News’s Lasley, “the China rare earths dragon awakens.” The question is, are we ready?

The post The Newest Frontier in the Global Resource Wars: Virtual Weaponized NIMBYism appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

From a critical mineral resource perspective, we at ARPN have always used the occasion of Independence Day to remind ourselves that “while we cherish the freedom we are blessed with in so many ways, we must not become complacent, as there are areas where we’re increasingly becoming less independent” — with our reliance on foreign mineral resources being a case in point.

The good news is that on the back of the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine and growing resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere, stakeholders have begun to realize the extent of our mineral resource supply chain vulnerabilities, which significantly increased over the course of the past 65 years.

A case in point:  the U.S. Congress is taking aim strengthening critical mineral supply chains via the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

A provision in the Senate’s annual defense authorization bill, advanced by the Armed Services Committee earlier this month, contains a provision which would authorize $1 billion in funding for the National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund for “the acquisition of materials determined to be strategic and critical materials required to meet the defense, industrial, and essential civilian needs of the United States.”

The fund includes many of the metals and minerals considered essential to national defense supply chains, including rare earth elements, titanium, tungsten, cobalt and antimony, a metal we recently discussed as it has its own provisions incorporated in this year’s senate and house bills, which will need to be reconciled and voted on later this year.

According to Defense News, the S1 billion senate-sought allocation would cover not only the $253.5 million requested by the Department of Defense (DoD)for FY 2023, but would also allow for the backfilling of multiple funding requests by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), a combat-support agency of the DoD, which manages the fund.

At its peak in 1952, the fund was valued at $42 billion in today’s dollars, but has subsequently been depleted to dip to its current level of $888 million, with lawmakers fearing the National Defense Stockpile becoming insolvent by FY2025 absent congressional action.

With the end of the Cold War in 1989, Congress authorized the sale of excess stockpile materials with proceeds transferred to DoD or other federal programs.  However, as Maya Clark points out in a Heritage Foundation report from earlier this year, “the threat environment today is more similar to the Cold War than to the 1990s.”

Clark cites the National Defense Strategy Commission which stated in a 2018 report that “[t]he United States confronts more numerous – and more severe – threats than at any time in decades.”  Fast-forward to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and other geopolitical challenges we’ve discussed over the past few months, and the threat environment is even more severe than it was a mere four years ago.

The push to boost the United States’ National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund ties into the overall realization that our nation’s critical mineral woes can no longer be ignored. Additional promising initiatives tying into an overall comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach are currently being pursued by members of Congress as well as the Administration, and range from increasing cooperation with allies to secure critical mineral resources over leveraging “closed-loop” solutions to boosting domestic production and processing.

However, as we have previously argued:

“Those familiar with the inner-workings of Washington, D.C. know all too well that particularly in an election year policy efforts can quickly lose steam or fizzle over attempts to placate certain constituencies. Against all affirmations to strengthen domestic supply chains, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sentiment is still strong.”

As followers of ARPN well know, the stakes are too high to let the momentum for comprehensive reform fizzle.

At the beginning of this year, we posited the question of whether 2022 could be the year that strengthening tech metal supply chains can move from rhetoric to reality.  As we mark Independence Day 2022, with efforts galvanized by heightened national and economic security concerns, it certainly appears that we are getting closer to that goal.

The post Independence Day 2022 – Are We Getting Closer to Critical Mineral Resource Independence? — As Stakes Rise, National Defense Stockpile Could Receive Boost Via NDAA appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

This Visual Capitalist graphic may not exactly qualify as a picture – but is certainly reveals a lot about the complexity and urgency of the West’s critical mineral woes, and underscores how China has managed to corner the strategic and clean energy materials supply chain especially when it comes to processing.

According to the graphic, China has the edge when it comes to producing Rare Earths, currently accounting for 60 percent of global production.  China also produces 13 percent of global lithium supplies – another key material underpinning the green energy transition.  However, it is the processing segment of the supply chain where China has systematically established firm grip and has attained a startling level of control, accounting for 35 percent of global nickel refining, 58 percent of lithium refining, 65 percent of cobalt refining, and a whopping 87% of global REE refining. Expressed a little flippantly, it’s the processing, stupid.

The chart must be viewed against the backdrop of the accelerating global push towards carbon neutrality, evidenced most recently by electric vehicle sales outpacing diesel car sales in Europe for the first time in history.

In light of the growing urgency to secure critical mineral supply chains, the United States’ notable absence from the Visual Capitalist chart should give pause to stakeholders.

As National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan argued in a November 2021 op-ed, while the United States still has a shot at winning the EV revolution, it is currently not only not in the lead, but is “being lapped” by China.

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data shows that while battery megafactories have gone mainstream, with 225 plants in the pipeline as of August 2021.  While the U.S. is no longer a bystander in this race, only very few megafactories are currently located in the United States.

To succeed in this environment, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Simon Moores says stakeholders will need to understand the lithium-ion-to-EV supply chain, its individual sections, and the linkage between them:

“Automakers who quickly understand the importance of these linked steps in the battery supply chain to the quality and cost of their EVs will be the most successful at navigating the next decade. 

For governments, the shifts in the economics of the supply chain […] provide opportunities to create jobs, garner influence over a strategic industry, and establish new trading relationships, particularly relevant as Europe and the United States, under a Biden presidency, will seek to reduce reliance on China as a single point in the supply chain.”

While first steps to strengthen supply chains have been taken (refer to our comprehensive Year in Review post from December 2021) and stakeholders are increasingly realizing the severity of the problem we’re facing, many have yet to fully embrace a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” strategy to secure our supply chains.

What we outlined in December of last year remains true today:

“The challenge is too large to address piecemeal. While recycling, substitution, and partnering with allies should be part of any overall comprehensive strategy, strengthening domestic mineral resource development across the entire value chain must be a key focal point of our efforts if we want to ensure reliable access to the critical minerals we need to meet our current and future needs.”

China will certainly not wait for us to catch up.

The post It’s the Processing, Stupid? The Critical Mineral Supply Chain Challenge Visualized appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The 2018 list was developed in consultation with other cabinet agencies pursuant to Executive Order 13817, and set off a flurry of activities relating to critical mineral resource policy.  Later codified into law, the Critical Minerals List statute directs that “…the methodology and list shall be reviewed at least every 3 years.”  The 2021 revised list is the first such review.

In those three years, as friends of ARPN appreciate, a lot has happened.  The ongoing coronavirus pandemic caused a global health crisis, threw markets into turmoil and disrupted public life, and trained  a spotlight on the complexities and vulnerabilities of supply chains — not only for medical or food supplies and consumer goods, but also for critical minerals.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of an accelerating global push towards a carbon-neutral energy future, a series of studies make it increasingly clear that this push cannot succeed without massive inputs of critical minerals.  As the World Bank and IEA have concluded — and as Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines told members of Congress after the publication of the first Critical Minerals List — “the future energy system will be far more mineral and metal-intensive than it is today.”

With pressures mounting, and policy makers grappling with the new realities of 21^st Century resource policy imperatives, it is only appropriate that 2021 sees an update to the U.S. Government’s 2018 Critical Minerals List.

While the 2018 list comprised 35 metals and minerals, this year’s draft update has grown to 50, and includes the following:

“Aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, praseodymium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, and zirconium.”

Recognizing the REEs and PGMs

As USGS explains, “[m]uch of the increase in the number of mineral commodities, from 35 commodities and groups on the final 2018 list to 50 commodities on the 2021 draft list, is the result of splitting the rare earth elements and platinum group elements into individual entries rather than including them as mineral groups.”

ARPN sees this additional articulation as a welcome development.  Not all Rare Earths are created equal, and the 2018 List’s generic category of REEs, plus a separate listing for the non-lanthanide Scandium, masked the myriad technological and market-driven differences between the individual 17 Rare Earths.  By referencing 16 REEs – only lab-synthesized Prometheum remains off-list — the 2021 Critical Mineral List invites a more granular approach to a remarkably versatile group.  The same is true of the smaller set of Platinum Group Metals, where only Osmium fell short of list-worthiness.

More on this in future posts, but for now – suffice to say that this broader articulation will encourage policymakers to understand that Rare Earth and PGM deposits can and will differ in the degree to which they afford access to the full range of these key materials.

Additions and Subtractions

USGS goes on to note that in addition to the REE and PGM build-out, “the 2021 draft list adds nickel and zinc and removes helium, potash, rhenium, and strontium.”   Uranium, too, disappears from the List, on a procedural technicality.

Leading up to the release of the final 2018 list, ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty had submitted public comments calling for the inclusion of Copper, Zinc, Nickel and Lead into the list, so we’re pleased to see that two of those four are included in the 2021 draft list.  That said, the rationale for adding Copper and, to a lesser degree, Lead remains strong.

The de-listing of rhenium and strontium deserve closer examination, for a variety of reasons – another subject for a future post.

For now, and by way of a final, first look, the new Critical Minerals List bumps the total number of elements to 50 – essentially half of the naturally-occurring elements on the Periodic Table.  As ARPN’s Dan McGroarty noted in his keynote at the Australian In the Zone conference in 2019 that’s proof of the role these materials play in our Tech Metal Era – and of the scope of the challenge we face in discovering and developing robust and reliable sources of such a multitude of critical resources.

As the public comment period commences, ARPN will be covering developments surrounding the new draft list in the weeks to come, so stay tuned for updates.

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