Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
The United States is beholden to Russia and China for many of the minerals and metals needed in the shift to green energy. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there should be no doubt that our nation’s reliance on Russia and China is fraught with danger. China dominates global mining and processing of battery metals for electric vehicles and the electric grid. Russia is a key supplier of nickel for stainless steel, aluminum for automobiles, and uranium for nuclear power plants.
Skyrocketing world demand has pushed up the cost of many minerals and metals. A textbook case is what’s been happening with lithium, one of the components of electric-vehicle batteries. Lithium prices have jumped almost 500% in the past year. Yet we as a nation have not addressed the implications of this alarming price rise at a time when the environmental shock of climate change has been all but overshadowed by growing concerns over inflation and the gut-wrenching war in Ukraine.
The quandary would be simpler were it not exacerbated by a contentious debate over mining in the U.S. Those opposed to new mines have had a field day arguing that material recycling is a silver bullet to alarming supply shortfalls and concern over mineral security. But as one analysis after another has made clear, you can’t recycle what hasn’t yet been mined. Global demand for minerals and metals -- and the cost of key materials -- has soared, threatening the production of electric vehicles and other clean-energy technologies. In fact, it’s already added about $1,000 to the cost of an electric car. There is well-founded concern that higher prices for materials is the tip of the iceberg. Soon, battery makers and auto manufacturers – regardless of what they’re willing to pay – will be chasing supplies that don’t exist.
Although the window to decarbonize is fast closing, nothing of real substance has been done to deal with the supply problem. Dependence on imports continues to mount, while U.S. production of key metals has atrophied. Warnings about the minerals problem will fail to command front-page attention until they do. The latest data on imports -- imports account for 100% of 17 crucial raw materials and at least 50% of dozens of others -- show the crisis is well under way. Learning to live with foreign mineral addiction breeds vulnerability. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and China’s threat to take over Taiwan remind us that the U.S. faces a daunting series of challenges -- and that the risk to mineral supply chains can’t be ignored.
Yet the problem is hardly intractable. America has enormous resources beneath the ground. We are a mineral-rich nation, and we should be using these riches. For example, at least five states have significant lithium deposits. We need to ignore the anti-mining naysayers and embark now on a program to expand domestic mining.
But increased production of domestic resources is not guaranteed. A labyrinth of regulations deters investment in new mines. It regularly takes more than 10 years for government agencies to complete the mine permitting process, whereas other mining countries, with similarly high environmental and labor standards, do it in a third of the time.
We’ve got to open new mines faster than we’ve ever done before. Effective climate action is largely about building, and we’ve got to start building the mineral and metal supply chains that will underpin the energy industrial base we should have been building a decade ago. There’s not a moment to lose.
Jim Constantopoulos is a geology professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Contact him at:
