https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/
Ryan Sistad of Duluth is executive director of Better In Our Back Yard (betterinourbackyard.com), which promotes responsible industrial development.
In her Jan. 25 column in the News Tribune, Lynn Anderson of the Tamarack Water Alliance attempted to convince Minnesotans that the high-grade nickel deposit discovered in the deep bedrock of Aitkin County by Talon Metals is actually not needed in the energy transition.
She even asserted that Tesla made a mistake by partnering with Talon Metals to source nickel because the company is moving to batteries that don’t use nickel and that any day now President Joe Biden will reverse course and remove nickel from the U.S. critical-minerals list. None of this is true.
The most obvious error in the column was that Tesla is pivoting to batteries made with lithium iron and phosphate (LFP) and abandoning batteries that rely on nickel to store electricity. The claim’s timing was even worse than its mistruth.
Just a day before the column’s publication, Tesla announced a major new expansion of its gigafactory in Nevada, reinforcing its investment in that state. The announcement indicated that Tesla would invest “$3.6 billion more to continue growing Gigafactory Nevada, adding 3,000 new team members and two new factories (including) a 100 GWh 4680 cell factory .”
For the rest of this column: https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/columns/in-response-mining-opponents-refuse-to-accept-we-need-more-mining