Published: March 30, 2021 |

Jaak Daemen. Jaak is professor emeritus, mining engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.
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It’s increasingly doubtful we will meet our responsibilities to provide a secure supply of minerals for clean energy technologies. Not because of any lack of will on the part of mining companies, but because political obstacles are blocking the opening of new mines in the United States.

Although the need for minerals is growing rapidly, and U.S. mineral import reliance has reached alarming levels, little has been done to reorient mining policy. Warnings that shortages and sharply higher costs for mineral resources lie ahead are starting to show up everywhere.

They are appearing in supply chains for clean energy technologies, with companies paying higher prices for critically important China-sourced minerals such as lithium and nickel used in electric vehicle batteries. They are showing up in uranium markets for nuclear power plants, where electricity companies rely on imports for more than 95 percent of the uranium used to fuel reactors, much of it supplied by Russia and two former Soviet states, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The problem originates at home. Just about every mine that can provide minerals encounters strong opposition.

Despite growing demand for minerals, dozens of mines have closed in recent years, while few have opened. As a result, the United States depends heavily on imports for many essential minerals. The United States depends 100 percent on imports for 14 minerals such as manganese, tantalum and rare earths listed as “critically important” by the Department of Defense and the Interior Department. In addition, the United States is at least 50 percent dependent on imports for 35 other minerals. China supplies more than half of the minerals.

The shift away from domestic mining, decades in the making, has fractured supply chains for minerals that manufacturers rely on. While the United States set up a wide range of obstacles to mining investment, China leans in on minerals and metals, capturing a stranglehold on the materials essential to the clean energy revolution. U.S. mineral import dependence now poses a threat to our security and economy — that should be a wake-up call. It spotlights the urgent need for action.

U.S. demand for minerals has doubled over the past 25 years. The Defense Department alone consumes more than 600,000 tons of minerals annually, and minerals are needed for a multitude of new commercial technologies, ranging from laptops and smartphones to solar arrays, wind turbines and EVs.

The copper situation is emblematic of the problem. An electric car has four times or more the copper of a gasoline car. Each EV battery contains at least 90 pounds of copper, many considerably more. With the pivot to EVs all but certain and with several nations and several U.S. states mandating the transition, there needs to be an enormous increase in the supply of copper and other essential battery metals. With copper wiring the arteries of all things electric, keeping pace with demand for copper will mean humanity needs to produce the same amount of copper in the next 25 years as has been produced in the past 5,000.

The World Bank says that global production of cobalt, another of the so-called battery metals, will need to grow between 300 percent and 800 percent by 2050. Lithium production will need to rise more than 2,000 percent. There can be no meeting these targets unless the United States decides to get decisively into the game. There is only one active U.S. lithium mine. The recent announcement by Tesla that it acquired a massive lithium deposit north of its Storey County plant is a strong indicator of the expected future demand for lithium, as is the fact that multiple exploration and potential development projects are underway in the state.

Without policy that prioritizes and encourages new mineral production, U.S. mineral import reliance could become a strategic vulnerability akin to U.S. oil import reliance in the 1970s. Failure to ramp up U.S. production could slow clean energy adoption, particularly for EVs, throttling carbon emissions reduction because transportation now regularly emits more greenhouse gases than any other sector. That makes ramping up domestic production of minerals, particularly battery metals, imperative in further reducing greenhouse emissions. But there is a bee in the ointment.

Even plans for new mines that would help provide the minerals that go into clean energy technologies face significant resistance. But no amount of effort to reduce global warming emissions will succeed unless we move ahead aggressively with a smart mining strategy.

The path forward begins with acknowledging the mineral foundations of the energy transition. Continuing opposition will push mining to nations without the regulations and standards in place in the United States. Effective U.S. energy and climate policy will be built on a foundation of responsible U.S. mining. Those that care most about addressing the emissions challenge should insist on it.

By: Jaak Daemen. Jaak is professor emeritus, mining engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Source: Las Vegas Journal Review

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