NEW YORK — What if China were to cut off the United States and Europe
from access to rare minerals that are essential to electric vehicles, wind
turbines, and drones?
اضافة اعلان
At a time of frequent geopolitical friction among those three powers,
Washington and Brussels want to avoid this scenario by investing in the market
for 17 minerals with unique properties that today are largely extracted and
refined in
China.
"The expected exponential growth in demand for minerals that are linked
to clean energy is putting more pressure on US and
Europe to take a closer look
at where the vulnerabilities are and the concrete steps these governments can
take," said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center
for Strategic and International Studies.
In 2019, the United States imported 80 percent of its rare earth minerals
from China, the US Geological Survey says.
The European Union gets 98 percent of its supply from China, the European
Commission said last year.
Amid the transition to green energy in which rare earth minerals are sure to
play a role, China's market dominance is enough to sound an alarm in western
capitals.
Cars and turbines
Rare earth minerals with names like neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium
are crucial to the manufacture of magnets used in industries of the future like
wind turbines and electric cars. And they are already present in consumer goods
such as smartphones, computer screens, and telescopic lenses.
Others have more traditional uses, like cerium for glass polishing and
lanthanum for car catalysts or optical lenses.
This week the US Senate passed a law aimed at improving American
competitiveness that includes provisions to improve critical minerals supply
chains, following a similar executive order issued by President Joe Biden in
February.
Washington aims to boost production and processing of rare earths and
lithium, another key mineral component, while "working with allies and
partners to increase sustainable global supply and reduce reliance on
geopolitical competitors," Deputy Director of the National Economic
Council Sameera Fazili said Tuesday.
Boosting US
production
The best hope for boosting American production can be found at the Mountain
Pass mine in California.
Once one of the major players in the sector, the mine suffered as China rose
and ate up its market share, aided by Beijing's heavy government subsidies.
MP Materials relaunched the mine in 2017 and aims to make it a symbol of
America's industrial rebirth, saying the concentration of rare earths at its
site is one of the world's largest and highest-grade rare earth deposits, with
soil concentrations of 7 percent versus 0.1 to 4 percent elsewhere.
The company's aim is to separate rare earth minerals from each other via a
chemical process, and then by 2025 manufacture the magnets that industry uses —
as market-leading Chinese firms currently do.
The project was supported by the US government, while a Chinese firm is a
minority shareholder.
Elsewhere, Australian company Lynas has won several contracts in the United
States, including an ore refinery in Texas for the military that was supported
by the US Defense Department.
Complications for
Europe
In Europe, Bernd Schafer, CEO and managing director of rare earth mineral
consortium Eit Raw Materials, said this month that an "action plan"
will soon be presented to the European Commission on how to boost production.
Europe, however, faces a more complicated path to achieving this goal, said
David Merriman, a specialist in batteries and electric cars for London-based
consultancy Roskill.
"Europe is expected to rely on importing raw materials or
semi-processed materials and become more a processing base or recycling
base," he said.
China is expected to remain dominant for some time to come, but Schafer said
that if recycling is scaled up, "20 to 30 percent of Europe's rare earth
magnet needs by 2030 could be sourced domestically in the EU from literally
zero today."
The desire to accelerate rare earth production comes amid a shortage of
semiconductors, which are essential for the computing and automotive industries
and mostly manufactured in Asia.
The scarcity "has caused global manufacturers to think about their
supply chain in a new way, and think about vulnerabilities," a spokesman
for MP Materials said, adding that several European automotive and wind power
firms are already in contact with the company.
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