The scientific race is on to eventually develop batteries that use less cobalt or, one day, none at all. ![]() Other policy approaches include mining collaboration with mineral-rich allies such as Australia and Canada, and recycling of scarce materials. “The Trump administration is dedicated to ensuring that we are never held hostage to foreign powers for the natural resources critical to our national security and economic growth,” said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in announcing the strategy.ĭomestic mining is not the only way to secure supply chains, however. The policy called for faster permitting of mining on federal lands and launched a new mapping initiative to locate deposits of certain minerals and metals, including cobalt, in the U.S. Last year, in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump, the USGS published America’s first formal critical minerals strategy. I mean, Washington is genuinely paying attention,” Bryce said. “Those of us in the industry have been talking to regulators and politicians for a long time, but the level of traction now, it’s different. The mine is permitted and under construction, projected to open in mid-2022. “There’s simply not enough raw materials for all the vehicle makers to roll out their development plans over the next 10 to 15 years based on the availability of cobalt, given the supply constraints we see today.”Ĭrocker is developing the only mine in the United States set up to primarily produce cobalt, in Idaho’s Lemhi County. “The constraining factor on electric vehicle adoption is ultimately going to be raw materials,” Bryce Crocker, CEO of Jervois Mining, an Australian mining firm. And so they had a very strategic approach to this, whereas ours was dominated by a private sector that was operating on different principles.”ĭemand for cobalt is expected to grow as the world moves to a greater reliance on renewable energy and electric vehicles. They wanted to own the raw resource, but also be fabricating the batteries and all of that. “They wanted to have a vertical production. “The Chinese deserve a great deal of credit for being farsighted,” Sharon Burke, a former Pentagon official now leading the resource security group at the New America think tank, told a recent episode of the podcast. As part of a $6 billion deal in 2007 dubbed “minerals for infrastructure,” China secured mining rights in a major cobalt mine in the DRC in exchange for building projects such as roads, highways and hospitals.Īnalysts contrast China’s government-led approach to securing direct control over the supply chain with America’s reliance on outside producers in the marketplace, accepting greater risk of disruption or shortages in exchange for lower short-term costs. Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative in 2013 then started pumping an estimated trillion dollars into building trade corridors between China and Africa and Europe. Beginning in 2000, Beijing encouraged overseas foreign investment in developing countries, especially in natural resources such as minerals. For the last two decades, China has invested heavily in cobalt mining operations in Africa. ![]() ![]() “A lot of it leaves the DRC and gets shipped to China for further processing,” said Nassar, adding that about two-thirds of the entire world’s cobalt refining takes place in China.Ĭhina’s drive to secure its own access to cobalt has been driven by an approach that put long-term goals over short-term profits. Nedal estimates that somewhere between 40 percent and 50 percent of the DRC’s cobalt production is owned by Chinese companies. Most of the world’s cobalt is currently produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In a USGS review of 50 commodities, Nassar identified cobalt as one of the of materials at highest risk of supply disruptions. “This is a strategic thinking on their part - that ‘these are materials that are strategic for our needs and we’re going to make sure that we have access to them,’” Nedal Nassar, chief of the Materials Flow Analysis Section at the National Minerals Information Center at the U.S. Operational mines are demarcated by bold typeface, future mines are demarcated in italics.Yet today’s global cobalt supply chains are dominated by China - the result of two decades of Beijing’s relentless efforts to dominate what it assesses as likely to be key industries of the future, according to interviews for a new episode of POLITICO’s Global Translations podcast being released Wednesday. For practical purposes stone, marble and other quarries may be included in this list. This list contains working, defunct and future mines in the country and is organised by the primary mineral output(s) and province. The following list of mines in Ukraine is subsidiary to the lists of mines in Europe article and Lists of mines articles. This list is incomplete you can help by adding missing items.
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