"The Biden administration’s feckless "Build Back Better" plan to throttle back U.S. fossil energy needed to reliably power our industry, air condition our homes and fuel our transportation in exchange for literally charging forward with a transition to intermittent and unreliable "green energy" reliance upon China for vital rare earth material-dependent electronics will not end well for America.
Rare earths are 17 indispensable metals used in an endless variety of 21st Century technologies, including, the manufacturing of domestic and strategic military airplanes, computers and smart phones, electricity generation and transmission systems, advanced weapon guidance systems, and yes, "Green New Deal" priorities like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries for utility-scale energy storage and electric vehicles (EVs).
U.S. automakers are racing to China as an opportunity to cash in on the Democrat plan to transform America’s transportation to 100% EVs.
... In addition to providing a large automotive sales market, China will maintain a choke hold over batteries needed for U.S. EV and hybrid production everywhere.
A report from Securing America’s Future Energy indicates that China currently controls nearly 70% of electric vehicle battery manufacturing capacity, compared to just 10% by the U.S.
The report projects that 107 of the 142 EV battery manufacturing projects scheduled by 2021 will be in China… only nine in the U.S.
... Beijing controls about 80 percent of the global supply of rare earth minerals and compounds to leverage in a trade war against the West.
Whereas China only actually possesses about an estimated one-third of global rare earth reserves, in 2017 it supplied 78% of the 17,000 tons of those materials imported to the U.S.
... many of the rare earths mined in the USA are processed in the People’s Republic of China because
it’s cheaper to have them do it than to pay for American regulatory environmental and workplace safety costs.
Although America has an abundance of rare earths, environmental opposition to mining them has resulted in a regulatory minefield of local, state, and federal rules that has turned permitting into a costly decades-long process.
Lawmakers have all but banned rare earth mineral exploration and development on materials-rich federal lands, and the few once-active mines have been shuttered largely due to compliance costs.
Mountain Pass in California is the sole U.S. remaining operating rare earth mine that lost two years of production due to a 2016 bankruptcy, continues to sends its mined ore to China for processing.
China is reportedly known to be looking into strategies to leverage its control of rare earths against competitive Western interests.
... Chinese industry executives were also reportedly asked to comment on how quickly the United States could secure rare earths from alternative suppliers or increase its production capacity.
In September 2020, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) 13953 -- the order charged the Interior Department with increasing domestic production of rare-earth materials, to reduce America’s dependence on China for these building blocks for 21st Century technologies.
The order states: "In the 1980s, the United States produced more of these elements than any other country in the world, but China used aggressive economic practices to strategically flood the global market for rare earth elements and displace its competitors."
EO 13953 built on Trump’s December 2017 EO 13817 that required the Interior Secretary to identify critical materials and reduce "the nation’s vulnerability to disruptions in the supply of critical minerals," especially those from China and Russia.
Many of the EO 13953 recommendations were later incorporated into the Energy Act of 2021, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act that also funded Covid pandemic relief.
... During Trump’s final days in office, the Bureau of Land Management announced new decisions that took effect January 15 to expand and fast-track permitting of potential mining – including rare earths - on federal lands.
BLM (the government one) also approved a new lithium mine in Nevada, along with a land swap to ease final approval of an Arizona Twin Metals copper mine.
... Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, will anti-mining factions undermine Trump’s progress?
... Vice President Kamala Harris has previously gone on record as opposing almost any new mining operations.
This presumably includes mining of rare earths that will be vital to implement the Green New Deal she originally co-sponsored ... "
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Tuesday, February 23, 2021
"Will America Trade Energy Independence for China Rare Earth Extortion?"
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