'Clean' energy requires mineral independence -- Stibnite Mine could become the nation’s only antimony mine, reducing our reliance on China

 Source:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/there-can-be-no-clean-energy-or-security-without-mineral-independence

"The horror in Ukraine is stark proof that relying on foreign adversaries for energy threatens world peace.

Europe’s dependency on Russian oil and gas has dangerously weakened many European countries, limiting their collective ability to impose harsh economic sanctions that might help deter Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

Relying on imported minerals creates similar jeopardy.

At a recent U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Chairman Joe Manchin said Russia has weaponized oil and gas

and warned Russia and China could use critical minerals to threaten U.S. national security and hamper our climate goals.

Other senators share Manchin’s concerns.

Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jim Risch of Idaho, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana joined Manchin in asking President Joe Biden to use the Defense Production Act to accelerate domestic production of the minerals used to manufacture the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles.

The growing concern that Russia and China might use minerals as a geopolitical weapon is not theoretical.

It happened in World War II when Japan invaded China and cut off antimony supplies to the U.S.

Prior to the invasion, the U.S. had been using Chinese antimony to build war munitions.

To solve the antimony supply crisis, the federal government started producing antimony and tungsten from an emergency mining operation at the Stibnite Mine in Idaho.

This wartime mining supplied the U.S. with the raw materials needed to fight the war and was credited with saving one million American soldiers’ lives and shortening the war by at least one year.

But this accomplishment came with a serious environmental cost.

At that time, the urgent need for these minerals eclipsed any concerns about the environment, creating problems that continue to affect the area to this day because no taxpayer dollars are available for environmental cleanup.

Fortunately, an Idaho company, Perpetua Resources, is proposing to spend $1 billion of private-sector capital to redevelop this gold and antimony reserve into a modern, environmentally sound mining operation that will remediate the World War II-vintage environmental problems.

The new mine will use modern technology and numerous safeguards to protect the environment, and it will have substantial financial assurance to guarantee environmental restoration and reclamation when mining is done.

State and federal regulators, the environmental community, local residents, and Native American tribes are closely scrutinizing this mining and environmental restoration proposal.

The U.S. Forest Service is expected to publish a second Draft Environmental Impact Statement later this year and invite additional public comments on the proposed mine.

The scrutiny and public involvement are good, but this permitting process creates lengthy and costly delays.

The U.S. has the most stringent and comprehensive environmental protection laws and regulations on the planet, which prohibit modern mines from polluting.

But these regulations come with an expensive, glacially-paced permitting process that delays projects and creates risks and uncertainties for project developers.

Consequently, importing oil, gas, and minerals from countries with weaker standards — or no standards at all — is often faster and cheaper than persevering through the U.S. permitting process.

This permitting process could be accelerated without sacrificing any measure of environmental protection.

In addition to its military applications, antimony is also an important clean energy mineral used in liquid-metal, power-grid storage batteries.

The U.S. imports 84% of our antimony — much of it from China.

The Stibnite Mine could become the nation’s only antimony mine, reducing our reliance on Chinese antimony.

The world’s alarming reliance on China for other clean energy minerals besides antimony creates global vulnerability to price controls, trade sanctions, and embargoes.

China processes 59% of the world’s lithium,

smelts 50% of the world’s copper, and

dominates rare earth mineral supplies.

China refines 65% of the world’s nickel, some of which comes from oligarch-owned Russian mines that operate with utter disregard for the environment and

processes a whopping 82% of the world’s cobalt,
much of it from mines in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo that use child labor.

Our natural resource dependency sets the stage for worldwide conflicts

and makes the U.S. complicit in the environmental degradation and exploitative labor practices in poorly regulated foreign mines, oil and gas fields, and refineries.

There are urgent moral and national security imperatives for the U.S. to become energy- and minerals-independent, to prevent Russia and China from weaponizing energy and minerals."

Author Debra Struhsacker is an environmental permitting and government relations consultant and co-founder of the Women’s Mining Coalition.