Despite the apparent benefits, there are significant legal gaps and technological limitations that must be addressed before this mineral wealth on the seafloor can be brought to market.
In late June, Japanese researchers found around 230 million metric tons of critical minerals on the seabed within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The resources include enough cobalt to meet the country’s consumption needs for 75 years and over a decade’s supply of nickel. These minerals are crucial components of electric vehicle car batteries central to the low-carbon energy transition.
This discovery is also good news to critics in the West anxious to strip China of its monopolistic control over supply chains for components crucial to high-tech goods and defense technologies.
Despite the apparent benefits, there are significant legal gaps and technological limitations that must be addressed before this mineral wealth on the seafloor can be brought to market.
Deep Sea Mining and Critical Mineral Supply Chains
Chinese companies control 70 percent of the global supply of critical minerals and 90 percent of the processed supply. China’s dominance of the global market has proven to be a national and economic security risk for Japan, whose high-tech industry makes it the world’s second-largest consumer of rare earth metals, following China itself.
For the rest of this article: https://thediplomat.com/2024/09/will-japan-turn-to-deep-seabed-mining-to-secure-critical-mineral-supply-chains/