China has been urged to create a multi-agency mechanism to secure supplies of critical minerals as a geopolitical leverage against the United States and its allies amid a global drive towards green energy.
Experts studying the White House’s strategy on rare earths say the proposed body could be similar to the system in the US where the commerce, energy, foreign policy and federal authorities are all involved in devising and implementing critical minerals strategies.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to make Canada a global leader in the production of batteries for electric cars, and has asked for a review of investment legislation to protect industry from hostile foreign investors.
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne will be working to unlock the country’s large rare-earth mineral deposits to put Canada at the forefront of supplying the world with these elements, vital to electric vehicles, smartphones, high-tech equipment and military hardware.
OTTAWA — Getting the world to net-zero emissions by 2050 will require the production of critical minerals and metals to grow sixfold over the next 30 years, the International Energy Agency declared in a report earlier this year — and it found the current pace of growth isn’t even close.
As electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels explode in popularity, so too does demand for the minerals that make them go. Some are familiar, like nickel, lithium and cobalt, and others are known only to those who memorized the periodic table in high school, like tellurium, bismuth and molybdenum.
Dear Minister Wilkinson:
Thank you for agreeing to serve Canadians as Minister of Natural Resources.
From the beginning of this pandemic, Canadians have faced a once-in-a-century challenge. And through it all, from coast to coast to coast, people have met the moment. When it mattered most, Canadians adapted, helped one another, and stayed true to our values of compassion, courage and determination. That is what has defined our path through this pandemic so far. And that is what will pave our way forward.
During a difficult time, Canadians made a democratic choice. They entrusted us to finish the fight against COVID-19 and support the recovery of a strong middle class. At the same time, they also gave us clear direction: to take bold, concrete action to build a healthier, more resilient future. That is what Canadians have asked us to do and it is exactly what our Government is ready to deliver.
China’s northern Inner Mongolia region is aiming for a fivefold increase in rare earth production value by 2025. This comes as the country’s near-total dominance of global supply raises concerns about its possible use as a bargaining chip.
“Inner Mongolia’s rare earth industry is in the unique position of having three elements – resources, manufacturing, and research and development – in one place,” deputy chief of industry and information technology Wu Suhai said as he called for a consolidation of industry chains.
KASULO, Democratic Republic of Congo — A man in a pinstripe suit with a red pocket square walked around the edge of a giant pit one April afternoon where hundreds of workers often toil in flip-flops, burrowing deep into the ground with shovels and pickaxes.
His polished leather shoes crunched on dust the miners had spilled from nylon bags stuffed with cobalt-laden rocks. The man, Albert Yuma Mulimbi, is a longtime power broker in the Democratic Republic of Congo and chairman of a government agency that works with international mining companies to tap the nation’s copper and cobalt reserves, used in the fight against global warming.
South Korea will drastically increase its strategic stockpiles of nickel, cobalt and other critical metals, in a bid to ensure a stable supply of raw materials vital to key industries including electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy, the government said Thursday.
National stockpiles of 35 rare metals — designated by the government — will increase to cover 100 days from the current 57 days, it said. New facilities will be built while some existing ones will be expanded and the state-run Korea Resources Corp. will oversee the overall management.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/
When discussing Canadian clout over critical minerals we’re talking potential, not reality
There’s this emerging notion of Canada as an impending superpower in mining the critical minerals that will run defining technologies of this century, from electric vehicles to smartphones and solar panels.
It was a recurring theme of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent Washington visit. It’s sometimes raised as a potential source of geopolitical power for Canada, say, against the United States in a trade spat.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Two mining projects in the Northwest Territories looking to cash in on the growing demand for batteries that are key in the battle against climate change are inching forward.
Robin Goad, the president and CEO of Fortune Minerals, the company that owns the NICO project, a cobalt, bismuth, gold and copper deposit about 50 kilometres northeast of Whatì, provided an update on the project during a virtual appearance at a geoscience conference held in Yellowknife Thursday.
In a report launched at the DRC-Africa Business Forum 2021 taking place this week in Kinshasa, BloombergNEF (BNEF) states that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) could leverage its abundant cobalt resources and hydroelectric power to become a low-cost and low-emissions producer of lithium-ion battery cathode precursor materials.
The research paper estimates that it would cost $39 million to build a 10,000 metric-tonne cathode precursor plant in the DRC. This is three times cheaper than what a similar plant in the US would cost, whereas if it were to be built in China or Poland, it would cost $112 million and $65 million, respectively.
Americans failed to safeguard decades of diplomatic and financial investments in Congo, where the world’s largest supply of cobalt is controlled by Chinese companies backed by Beijing.
WASHINGTON — Tom Perriello saw it coming but could do nothing to stop it. André Kapanga too. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched helplessly as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines.
It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which now figures prominently in China’s grip on the global cobalt supply. The metal has been among several essential raw materials needed for the production of electric car batteries — and is now critical to retiring the combustion engine and weaning the world off climate-changing fossil fuels.
In early 2018, Trent Mell, chief executive of Toronto-based First Cobalt Corp., was riding high on hopes that his company would discover a motherlode of cobalt in North America — a key component in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries.
Nearly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, much of which comes from small-scale and artisanal mines, where the use of child labour, dangerous working conditions and other human rights abuses have been well-documented.
A new study published in Nature Communications describes a proof of principle for engineering a bacterium, Gluconobacter oxydans, that takes a first step towards meeting skyrocketing rare earth element demand in a way that matches the cost and efficiency of traditional thermochemical extraction and refinement methods and is clean enough to meet US environmental standards.
“We’re trying to come up with an environmentally friendly, low-temperature, low-pressure method for getting rare earth elements out of a rock,” Buz Barstow, the paper’s senior author and an assistant professor at Cornell University, said in a media statement.
The quest for Congo’s cobalt, which is vital for electric vehicles and the worldwide push against climate change, is caught in an international cycle of exploitation, greed and gamesmanship.
KISANFU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Just up a red dirt road, across an expanse of tall, dew-soaked weeds, bulldozers are hollowing out a yawning new canyon that is central to the world’s urgent race against global warming.
For more than a decade, the vast expanse of untouched land was controlled by an American company. Now a Chinese mining conglomerate has bought it, and is racing to retrieve its buried treasure: millions of tons of cobalt.
Northern Ontario has become an integral part of the auto supply chain, says Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli. The industry, mostly centralized in southern Ontario, is moving north thanks to the increase in production of electric cars.
The provincial government released the next phase of its auto strategy Wednesday that is expected to secure production mandates for hybrid and electric vehicles, to create a domestic battery ecosystem, and position Ontario as a North American automotive innovation hub.
