The New South Wales Department of Planning and environment has taken a closer look at solar panels, which, just like EV batteries, are at the core of the green energy transition, and outlines the top four metals and minerals that make solar panels work: 

Copper — a mainstay metal with perhaps unrivaled versatility, lending itself to a wide range of traditional and new applications,  and yields access to other critical minerals as a “gateway metal,” an indispensable component for advanced energy technology, ranging from EVs and wind turbines to the electric grid and solar panels.

For some of our most recent coverage of Copper, click here.

Silicon — the most abundant compound in the Earth’s crust, silicon takes the form of ordinary sand, quartz, rock crystal, amethyst, agate, flint, jasper, and opal. To produce pure silicon, the compound is hearted with carbon at extra high temperatures.  The material is used extensively in electronics because of its semiconducting properties. It is used in the manufacture of next-gen 5-nanometer (5nm) semiconductor chips, and is a key component of solar panels and photovoltaic cells.

For ARPN’s recent coverage of Silicon, click here.

Silver — By definition a “precious” metal like gold, it may come as a surprise to those who see silver primarily as shiny adornment or a means to store value that the biggest end users of silver may actually be specialized industries. More recently, the metal has evolved from “money metal to techno metal,” as North of 60 Mining News’s Shane Lasley termed it, with its true value lying in “more industrious properties that make it invaluable to high-tech applications such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and 5G networks.”

For Shane Lasley’s Treatment of Silver in the 2021 issue of “Critical Mineral Alliances” click here.

Zinc — primarily used in metallurgical applications, zinc is also a Gateway metal, yielding access to “criticals” Indium and Germanium. Today, zinc is also seeing greater application in green energy technology.

For examples of ARPN coverage of Zinc, click here and here.

These four may not make the top of the hour news at the moment, but silicon, for example, appears on the Australian and European Union’s critical minerals lists, while zinc, previously not on the U.S. Critical Minerals List, was afforded critical mineral status by the U.S. Government earlier this year, and is also deemed critical by the Canadian government.

As for copper – which Canada considers a critical mineral – followers of ARPN well know that there are good reasons to include Copper into the U.S. Government’s Critical Minerals List, and ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty has consistently argued in favor of doing so via public comments during the draft process of both the initial 2018List and its 2022 iteration.

See McGroarty’s public comments on the U.S. Critical Minerals Lists here and here.

The bottom line is, while people appear to be laser focused on achieving the green energy transition via securing supply chains for the battery criticals and rare earths, the issue is bigger than this limited group of metals and minerals.  With the materials science revolution continuing to yield research breakthroughs at neck-breaking speeds, demand scenarios for metals and minerals will be subject to change.

It is clear that in the words of Forbes contributor Wal van Lierop, “[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,” — but these investments have to be made in the context of a broad-based “all of the above” strategy.  

The post Not Just the “Battery Criticals” — Green Energy Transition’s Mineral Intensity Requires Broader Focus: A Look at the “Solar Metals” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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With its new applications, silver is a prime example of the fact that this is not your grandmother’s resource sector anymore. As their utility broadens, metals and minerals are increasingly becoming foundational elements that will drive the 21st century economy. It is time we develop a coherent strategic framework reflecting this fact while harnessing our own vast mineral potential, and creating valuable jobs in the process.

The post Silver fundamentals strong, may outperform gold appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

To generate nearly $75 million in additional federal revenues, the budget seeks to end an exemption from royalty payments for the privilege of extracting from public lands granted to most hard rock miners under a 140 year-old law. Similar to payments currently made by coal companies, fees would have to be paid into a “hard rock abandoned mine reclamation fund.”

As gold, silver and copper miners in the U.S. are already subject to significantly higher fees and taxes than miners operating in other parts of the world, the proposed “reform” would place them at a further competitive disadvantage. The envisioned switching of the old claim rights system to a leasing system would furthermore add new layers of bureaucracy to an already onerous permitting system. Ultimately, according to studies conducted by the National Mining Association, the plan would likely “discourage new mine openings and result in mine closures, significant job losses, and substantial state and federal revenue losses.”

To budget-writing bureaucrats, metals like silver and copper may just be an attractive source of revenues for federal coffers, but as we have pointed out, they are far more than your traditional adornments and industrial metals – they are highly critical resources playing an key role in securing our strategic and economic future. Particularly at a time when the rest of the world is off to the races to meet and secure its own critical mineral needs, the worst thing Washington, D.C. can do is penalize our domestic industries working towards that end.

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By definition a “precious” metal like gold, it may come as a surprise to those who see silver primarily as shiny adornment or a means to store value that the biggest end users of silver may actually be specialized industries. Anthony David highlights some of the lesser-known applications of silver for Critical Strategic Metals:

Meanwhile, after demand has increased in recent months, this trend will likely continue courtesy of emerging technologies. Among them are:

If that alone wasn’t reason enough to feature silver as our Metal of the Month, consider this: in spite of the fact that the United States is home to significant silver deposits, our import dependency rate for the precious metal currently stands at 75 percent – with further challenges for domestic producers on the horizon, as we’ll discuss in a further post in our series.

The post Happy Silver Month! appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Whether or not worries of greater state involvement in Peru’s mining sector in light of Humala’s ties to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez will materialize remains to be seen, as Humala ran on a more moderate economic platform in the runoff-election than before the first round of voting in April.

The larger issue for the U.S. is that our unnecessarily high degree of dependence on foreign imports of metals and minerals leaves us vulnerable to geopolitical changes. It doesn’t take war or major political unrest, – a couple thousand of ballots could be all it takes to potentially disrupt our supply of critical resources. Unless we explore and develop the resources beneath our own soil, all we can do in such situations is sit and wait.

The post Peruvian Elections Raise Issue of Resource Dependency for U.S. appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

This “modern day gold rush” is a manifestation of the increasing importance of metals – in this case, a precious metal – in times of turbulence.

Indeed, value-storing metals like gold, silver, and platinum are considered “safe-haven assets,” and are particularly attractive for an individual’s investment portfolio.

The strategic importance of metals, however, stretches well beyond the precious category.  As they are key ingredients in a broad range of products, securing an ongoing supply of industrial and specialty metals and minerals amidst geopolitical challenges is becoming increasingly critical for a nation’s technological advancement, economic growth, and national security. Countries like China are acting accordingly, as the race for resources has begun. But the question that remains to be answered is, “America ready to compete?”

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