The post The Blessings of a New World – Thanksgiving 2023 appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With the continent’s “geopolitical stock” on the rise, observers see African countries becoming more assertive in negotiating mineral deals with external actors, and resorting to resource nationalism “in some economies where we see an insistence on local processing, more stringent local content requirements and generally attempts to integrate these critical mineral supply chains with a broad drive for industrialization.”

Most recently, Kenya is making headlines with legislation pending that would establish a Mining Regulatory Authority to replace the current Mining Rights Board, which would, unlike its predecessor which was an advisory body, “control the exploration, extraction, production, processing, refining, transportation, storage exportation, importation and sale of minerals.”

Kenya is home to significant deposits of copper, graphite, manganese, nickel and iron ore, demand scenarios for which are surging.

With the coronavirus pandemic spotlighting supply chain security issues for critical minerals and against the backdrop of ever-increasing demand, export controls have gained in popularity as a policy tool.

Earlier this summer, reports of India considering an export ban on four key metals – lithium, beryllium, niobium, and tantalum — made headlines on the heels of China announcing export restrictions on gallium and germanium, followed by controls on certain drones and drone-related equipment.

Zimbabwe banned lithium ore exports last December, and Namibia recently banned the export of unprocessed lithium and other critical minerals.

All these announcements tie into a larger trend, which has been noticeable particularly in Latin America, a region with a historic penchant for nationalism, but also elsewhere.

ARPN has featured recent nationalist moves in Chile, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as in Myanmar, Indonesia, and China, and has showcased that even in the Western world, government involvement in the critical minerals sector is on the rise.

Some argue that rather than seeing emerging resource nationalism as a cause for concern, we should embrace it and understand it as an opportunity as “raw material export bans would encourage the construction of processing facilities in producer countries, allow them to claim a larger share of the value chain, (…) encourage the global dispersion of processing capacity that is today dangerously concentrated in China,” and the U.S. could harness this development via an expansion of its friend-shoring network.

Opportunity or threat – resource nationalism is increasingly becoming a policy tool the U.S. and our allies will have to factor into our efforts to decouple from adversary nations, i.e. China. In the process, as ARPN previously outlined, 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.

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Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving – a celebration of the blessings afforded by our forefathers as they overcame adversity in a new land, laboring to obtain from the resources around them the necessities of life: food, shelter, and warmth against winter’s cold.

Since that first winter, the bounty of Thanksgiving has become a symbol of the abundant resources the New World provided. From the raw materials that built our modern cities to the energy that has powered innovation in all its variety, these resources have enriched the lives of millions of people in America and around the world – making possible a way of life those who gathered around that first Thanksgiving table could never have imagined.

Last year, Thanksgiving looked different for many people, with many families are unable to gather around the table and share food and fellowship the way we are used to due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.   While we are still a far cry from being back to normal, there remains much to be thankful for — including the ingenuity and innovation that have, at neck-breaking speeds, yielded a vaccine and promising therapeutics to fight the virus that has turned life as we know it on its head.

As we carve the turkey this year, we know that too many are still doing without the basic necessities of life. And yet the resources around us – those literally under our feet – remain plentiful. All too often complacency and ideology lock us into inaction, blocking us from making use of the still-rich resources of this new world. Minerals, metals, fuel and timber that could create jobs, opportunities, and rewards for the American people are left untouched.

Our forefathers understood privation and want. They understood that nature sometimes rewards tireless work with a poor harvest. But they also understood nature’s bounty. What they would find beyond comprehending in our day is the willful failure to use resources we have at hand to ease hardship and make a better life for ourselves and for others.

On this Thanksgiving, as we give thanks for our many blessings and continue to hope for this pandemic to end soon, we may we also remember the lessons dating back to Plymouth Rock, that teach us to use our resources — and our resourcefulness — to make an even newer and better world.

The post The Blessings of a New World — Thanksgiving 2021 appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving – a celebration of the blessings afforded by our forefathers as they overcame adversity in a new land, laboring to obtain from the resources around them the necessities of life: food, shelter, and warmth against winter’s cold.

Since that first winter, the bounty of Thanksgiving has become a symbol of the abundant resources the New World provided. From the raw materials that built our modern cities to the energy that has powered innovation in all its variety, these resources have enriched the lives of millions of people in America and around the world – making possible a way of life those who gathered around that first Thanksgiving table could never have imagined.

For many of us, Thanksgiving will look different this year. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many families are unable to gather around the table and share food and fellowship the way we are used to. Times may be challenging, yet there is much to be thankful for, including the ingenuity and innovation that have yielded promise with regards to a vaccine against the virus that has turned life as we know it on its head.

As we carve the (in many cases much smaller than usual) turkey this year, we know that too many are still doing without the basic necessities of life. And yet the resources around us – those literally under our feet – remain plentiful. All too often complacency and ideology lock us into inaction, blocking us from making use of the still-rich resources of this new world. Minerals, metals, fuel and timber that could create jobs, opportunities, and rewards for the American people are left untouched.

Our forefathers understood privation and want. They understood that nature sometimes rewards tireless work with a poor harvest. But they also understood nature’s bounty. What they would find beyond comprehending in our day is the willful failure to use resources we have at hand to ease hardship and make a better life for ourselves and for others.

On this Thanksgiving, as we give thanks for our many blessings, and hope for this pandemic to end soon, we may we also remember the lessons dating back to Plymouth Rock, that teach us to use our resources and resourcefulness to make an even newer and better world.

The post The Blessings of a New World appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Embedding the discussion in the context of American mining and production of critical minerals in recent decades being “a self-inflicted wound that could imperil our economy and national security,” they point to the fact that while the United States is home to vast domestic Uranium resources and reserves, “more than 90 percent of U.S. uranium requirements are now imported.” More than 40 percent of the total of these imports, come from a “potentially adversarial trading bloc,” Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

“This is not a friendly free-market group that America can depend on, especially in an emergency,” they lament. 

Globally, the percentage of uranium production “coming from state-controlled companies not located in Western market-based economies,” is on the rise.

Meanwhile, domestic issues have contributed to a drastic decrease in U.S. uranium production prompting U.S. Congressmen Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rob Bishop (R -Utah), and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), spoke of a “dying” industry in an op-ed for Fox News earlier this year.  

Acknowledging the national security implications of the issue, earlier this summer, President Trump announced the formation of a “U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group” to conduct a “fuller analysis of national security considerations with respect to the entire nuclear fuel supply chain.” The findings of the working group are due soon, and it will be interesting to see what the recommendations to alleviate “America’s Uranium crisis” are going to be. 

Moore and Mamula argue that — as non-supporters of trade protectionism they are unsure what the best solution to address the issue of imports coming from “nations that are not allies,” but one thing is certain, they argue:

“The strategy of benign neglect is not working and must be replaced with a smart strategy that ensures reliable and affordable uranium for years to come.”

***

To read the full piece, click here.

For more context, see Ned Mamula’s series for Capital Research Center on “Uranium, an underappreciated energy source.”

The post Uranium: From “Benign Neglect” to a Smart Strategy? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing materials science revolution and the intensifying battery arms race, it is only fitting that this month, three pioneers of Lithium-ion battery technology were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.   Through their innovations, John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, in the words of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awards the prestigious prize every year, “created a rechargeable world.” 

A post for Quantamagazine’s Abstractions blog outlines some of the details of the research accomplishments by Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino, who, by building on each other’s work, developed a Lithium-ion battery that — unlike the ones used before — were safe, lightweight, and highly efficient. According to Quantamagazine: “That design is ubiquitous today, powering portable electronics and helping to shift the world’s energy infrastructure in a more sustainable direction, as it allows electricity produced from renewable sources, such as the sun and the wind, to be efficiently stored and put to work.”

Ultimately, in a nutshell, “Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized our lives since they first entered the market in 1991.  They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Battery technology indeed has come a long way since the three Nobel Prize winners began their work in the field in the 1970s. After Sony introduced the first commercialized the Lithium-ion battery in 1991, camcorders were the biggest driver of demand for several years. Laptops replaced camcorders as biggest source of demand by 2000, and by 2010, the smart phone was the biggest driver of demand for Lithium-ion battery technology.

Recently, however, fueled in particular by the advent of the electric vehicle (EV), developments in the field of battery technology have been kicked into high gear.

The fact that Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino have finally been recognized for their contributions to the advancement of Lithium-ion battery technology is a testament to these developments and to the growing realization that, in the words of Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and a member of the ARPN panel of experts: “we have reached a new gear in this energy storage revolution which is now having a profound impact on supply chains and the raw materials that fuel it.” 

Commenting on this year’s Nobel Prize award, Prof. Dame Carol Robinson, president of the British Royal Society of Chemistry, stated that battery tech research will remain an exciting field: 

“It’s not the end of the journey, as lithium is a finite resource and many scientists around the world are building on the foundations laid by these three brilliant chemists.” 

The post Against Backdrop of Battery Arms Race, Chemists Receive Nobel Prize for Work on Lithium-Ion Technology appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The following is a transcript of his speech, as delivered.

Are we Ready for the Tech Metals Age? Thoughts on Critical Minerals, Public Policy and the Private Sector

By Daniel McGroarty

Thank you, Gordon [Flake, Chief Executive Officer, Perth USAsia Centre, University of Western Australia], for this opportunity to be In the Zone with so many of the key thought-leaders and decision-makers in the critical materials space.

As I start, a quick comment on where I’m coming from: I’ve served in the U.S. Government, at the White House and the Pentagon, and I now serve on the advisory boards of companies developing U.S. sources of a dozen of the metals and minerals on the US Critical List – one of those being Rio Tinto/U.S.

…so the points I want to share today come from my efforts to bring a public policy perspective / to private sector projects.

Think of it this way: Is there a way to align a private project to key public policy goals – in a way that advanced the interests of both?

If it sounds simple, as many of you know — it’s anything but.

Try as it might, the private sector has a very hard time meshing to the pace of government policymaking – I’m being diplomatic here — and policymakers have nothing in their mandate that requires them to appreciate — to really feel — the pressures of private sector competition.

Same planet, different worlds.

But as we’re seeing here today, the Critical Minerals Challenge is a huge challenge – and if we are collectively going to meet it, private sector leaders and public policy makers are going to have to perform a thought-experiment – a shift in mindset — to see the challenge from both sides, to find the common ground to move us forward.

Critical Minerals is a huge challenge. It’s so often said – we don’t step back to see the context.

Much of human progress was built with – literally – a handful of metals and minerals. It goes back to the early markers of human progress:

We had the Bronze Age – copper and tin – and the Iron Age to follow.

Geologically, the rest of the Periodic Table was ready and waiting, but we – as human-makers – we had no use for it.

It’s different now.

Take the U.S. Critical Minerals List: 35 minerals and metals – but really, as elements, it’s more than that. The rare earths count as 2 – Scandium gets its own mention – not 17, and the PGMs count as one, not 6.

Add them all in — and the U.S. List grows to 55.

But wait: there’s more.

If we overlay on top the U.S. List the Australian and Japanese and EU critical lists, and add the unique elements, we get 10 more:

A total of 65 in all.

We’re sneaking up on two-thirds of the naturally-occurringelements on the Periodic Table.

>>> You look at what’s not on the Lists – all I can say is that Hydrogen and Oxygen must feel a little left out. <<<

Welcome to the Tech Metals Age – where we need a lot of different elements, and a lot of each of them.

I said the challenge was huge – that’s one part of it. The sheer number of metals and minerals.

With that in mind, think of the average U.S. Senator or Congressperson navigating this issue: You’re asking them – along with all their other issues – to know how to incentivize, essentially, domestic production of bulk of the Periodic Table. //

The second part – is what I call the co-product challenge. Our language has to change here – we used to talk about certain deposits having by-products – we used to talk about “minor metals.”

Those terms just don’t fit anymore.

Example: You have a Rare Earths project in Texas – Round Top, with considerable Australian investment I should add – and it has the full range of rare earths – but also lithium for EV batteries, uranium, beryllium, and gallium – for supercomputing chips.

What’s minor? What’s a by-product? Different application, different answers. And technology – materials science — will drive demand over time.

So: we’ve got to think of co-products – and how we can extract all of the useful metals and minerals from each deposit.

Take copper, for instance, which isn’t even on the U.S. or Australian lists. It’s the gateway to tellurium, rhenium and sometimes cobalt and perhaps even the rare earths. If you need those, then copper too is critical.

Then – the third challenge:

As we’ve heard today, each metal and mineral requires its own supply chain. Scores of them – not only to bring them out of the ground, but to process them into the advanced materials needed for all manner of tech apps.

So in the Rare Earths, certainly, but elsewhere as well — we’re seeing private sector players reaching out to partners — building out their own supply chains. It’s much more challenging than simply developing a mine.

And finally – the fourth challenge: While all that digging is going on – what’s going on above ground?

Geopolitics.

The tech metal age is going to redefine geopolitics. We’ll see the emergence of a new group of countries, tech metal “haves” and “have-nots.” The good news is that Australia and the U.S. are among the “haves” – because being among the “have-nots” is not a happy place to be.

My flight from Washington connected through Qatar. An amazing place – literally, castles in the sand. Built by energy resources. And all since 1940 – the date oil was first discovered there. I did a little Googling to see what the main economic driver was in Qatar before oil.

Pearl diving.

From pearls to oil – and in one generation Qatar was transformed.

Geopolitically, the tech metals will be transformative, too.

Are we ready for the emergence of new regions, new countries that will be defined by their tech metals status?

Should someone buy Greenland – should Greenland be For Sale? Or will Greenland become the tech metal Qatar of our 21st Century?

Do our public policies incentivize the private sector to spend the billions in Exploration and Development to find them, mine them, and bring them to market?

Which brings us to public policy. The final challenge I want to treat.

Remember that critical mineral “list of lists?”

It’s one thing to identify the metals and minerals we need. But what if – for some of them — those markets are so small as to be commercially uninteresting?

You can’t order the private sector to pursue and produce them.

At least the U.S. and Australia – and our democratic allies — can’t.

Governments have to incentivize – collaborate to seek creative ways to bring online new production where private companies may see only risk and little reward.

And it’s happening. Rio Tinto is working under a grant from the U.S. defense department to optimize rhenium recovery at its Kennecott copper smelter – and it’s collaborated with the U.S. Department of Energy on new ways to recover critical minerals from waste streams and historic tailings.

But the effort on the part of the U.S. Government has been episodic – not systematic, certainly not strategic.

I think now, though, that’s changing – we are entering a period of action. After a decade of inaction – we’re seeing a policy shift.

I can’t overstate the impact on the U.S. scene of the Presidential Defense Production Act Title III determinationin regard to encouraging rare earth production – not just mining but all along the supply chain, from mining to magnets.

It was wrongly reported by some of the early news storiesas a Presidential Executive Order – an exercise of American government authority that can be enacted by one president and undone by the next, lacking the permanence of a duly passed law. But Title III is law – it dates back to the Korean War, and confers on the president the authority to determine strategic need for a given material.

What are the tools of Title III? It gives the Secretary of Defense power to make direct investments – to support development of the material in question with loan guarantees – purchases for the Defense Stockpile, and even “commitments to purchase” – what we’d call offtakes.

In other words, Title III brings a warfighter focus – and a warfighter urgency. A broad “get it done” authority, after so many years of simply studying critical materials issues.

And I would hope that the dozen more metals and minerals for which the U.S. is 100% import dependent would be the focus of expanded Title III action.

And then there are the collaborative efforts between the U.S., Australia and Canada – under the umbrella of the NTIB, the National Technology Industrial Base – collaboration that is happening in real-time. Our three nations are remarkably resource-rich – and amount to nearly 30% of total global GDP. Our governments may be starting late, but no one should underestimate our abilities, once mobilized.

To the extent this scramble for tech metals takes on the form of a Tech War – metaphorically, one hopes — we need to recognize, borrowing from the language of military doctrine, that the Tech War is an Asymmetric War.

Rising powers like China are command economies. Even Russia, to the extent it plays a part in the Tech War, is what its leader likes to call a “managed democracy.” Delightful phrase.

The State backs enterprises, directly, or indirectly. Strategic goals around specific minerals can warrant a long-game in which the State covers losses on the way to driving out competitors and gaining market dominance.

In the nations based on free-markets, there’s no loss-making long game. There’s no “US 2025.” There’s only bankruptcy. No government props you up – far from it, just look at the tiny amounts of government aid on offer, certainly in the U.S.

So you might say — sounds like we’re destined to lose.

Not at all. State-controlled economies have their own downsides. They pick one path, and close the door on all the others.

Choosing control, they sacrifice creativity.

Over in the free market, we’re undisciplined, undirected, unpredictable – and because of that, we’re unconstrained and energetic and innovative.

…Just the attributes we need to prevail in an asymmetrical conflict. //

Which brings me to my final thought today.

…And Gordon: it goes straight to your comment about the “the ideological purity of the market”…

It’s a little reassurance from the author of an old book called The Wealth of Nations.

Even the father of the free market, Adam Smith – foresaw back in 1776 the challenge we face in our Tech Metals Age.

As much as he believed in free trade – he had what we would call a national security exception:

In the midst of his powerful defense of free markets, he said, when it comes to gunpowder and sailcloth – that is, the means of protecting British interests around the globe and projecting British power when needed….

…It’s best not to depend on others for your source of supply.

The need for gunpowder and sailcloth haven’t gone away:

Our gunpowder is the hypersonic missile—and our sailcloth is a wind turbine

…they’re just updated for the 21st Century.

If we get this right – and we must, for the sake of our economies and our security, we must get this right – creative collaboration between the U.S. and Australia will be a big part of it.

And I’m pleased to be a small part of that here today.

###

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Invoking President Truman’s offer to purchase Greenland in 1946 as well as Secretary of State William Henry Seward’s 1867 purchase of Alaska — for which he received much ridicule at the time (hence the term Seward’s Folly) — McGroarty argues that while “[a]pparently there’s something in the subject of Arctic land purchases that encourages levity” (…) “[t]here shouldn’t be.”

He recounts how Denmark came to control Greenland in the first place and explains why it has turned into a hot commodity (pun intended):

“the result of imperial expeditions that led to declarations of Danish sovereignty in the early 1800’s.  As for buying Greenland, there’s no evidence the indigenous Inuit of that day were compensated.

Today’s interest in Greenland is what’s beneath the ever-shrinking icecap, as Earth’s temperature warms:  Known resources of at least eight metals and minerals – taken as individual elements, including the rare earths (REEs) and platinum group metals, that’s 29 elements in all, nearly 1/3 of the naturally-occurring elements in the Periodic Table.  That gives Greenland, soon or sometime in the future, a foothold as a major metals supplier to the 21st Century Tech Revolution.

And while the U.S. most emphatically may not be purchasing Greenland, that’s not to say other interested parties aren’t already buying up strategic bits of real estate.”

McGroarty goes on to give examples of China’s “economic diplomacy” in Greenland, a topic we previously explored on our blog as well. His conclusion underscores the significance of the region and the need for more active engagement.

“In other words, Greenland may not be for sale, but its resource riches surely are.  From Truman’s offer to Trump’s Tweets, Greenland is a hot property.  Surely, Secretary Seward would have understood.”

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The Tech Wars Heat Up: U.S. Makes National Security Declarations to Spur Rare Earths Development

Forget the trade war – the tech war is heating up.  After weeks of Chinese threats that it could cut off U.S. access to the essential technology materials known as rare earths, the Trump Administration today took a counter-action of its own.

Jennifer Dlouhy has the story at Bloomberg News:  “Trump invoked the 69-year-old Defense Production Act — once used to preserve American steelmaking capacity — to remedy what he called ‘a shortfall’ in production of the super-strong magnets made with rare-earth minerals neodymium and samarium.”  In fact, the White House published five separate Title III declarations, carefully identifying each category of rare earths plus the powerful permanent magnets — and the smart bombs and precision-guided munitions — they make possible.

The Defense Production Act dates to the early months after North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950.  Title III of the act requires the specific finding made today by the president:

“domestic production capability for separation and processing of Heavy Rare Earth Elements is essential to the national defense.

Without Presidential action…, United States industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the production capability for separation and processing of Heavy Rare Earth Elements adequately and in a timely manner.”

How will China respond to the new U.S. action?  And how quickly can the U.S. close the rare earths gap — with production today at zero, even as known U.S. rare earth resources exist — before China loses its leverage over materials the U.S. Government has deemed critical to “the national economy and national security?”

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And while he continues his “mission is to help save Earth for humanity through sustainable transportation, and colonize Mars in case that doesn’t work,” he is a visionary rooted in reality — more specifically, the reality of resources.

Earlier this week, Musk said that his company might make forays into the mining business in its quest to to ensure that Tesla is able to produce sufficient amounts of batteries for its future vehicle fleet. 

The Business Standard quotes him as saying: 

“There’s not much point in adding product complexity if we don’t have enough batteries. (…) We might get into the mining business. I don’t know. (…)We’ll do whatever we have to to ensure that we can scale at the fastest rate possible.” 

We have long argued that “[y]ou need ‘stuff’ to make ‘stuff,’” and that “[i]t’s time to remind ourselves that life as we know it is made possible by the inventive use of metals and minerals. Smart phones, the Cloud, the Internet: These things may seem to work by magic, but quite often the backbone of high-tech is mineral and metal, not fairy dust.” 

It’s good to see that Elon Musk is on the same page. 

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