Rare earth elements are not rare. Economically exploiting them for commercial purposes is difficult.
And some of the 17 rare earth minerals are increasingly important in a world that is increasingly electro-centric. Windmills, electric vehicles, lighting, smart phones, televisions, advanced computing, advanced nuclear power plants, and many other end uses depend on rare earths. Science News recently commented, “Demand for these crucial components in nearly all modern electronics is skyrocketing.
“Rare earths fulfill thousands of different needs — cerium, for instance, is used as a catalyst to refine petroleum, and gadolinium captures neutrons in nuclear reactors. But these elements’ most outstanding capabilities lie in their luminescence and magnetism.”
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) describes the rare earths as “a relatively abundant group of 17 elements composed of scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides. The elements range in crustal abundance from cerium, the 25th most abundant element of the 78 common elements in the Earth’s crust at 60 parts per million, to thulium and lutetium, the least abundant rare-earth elements at about 0.5 part per million.”
Of note, lithium – a key element in batteries for electric vehicles – is not among the rare earths, but faces some of the same supply issues.
For history geeks, Britannica says, “The name rare earths itself is a misnomer. At the time of their discovery in the 18th century, they were found to be a component of complex oxides, which were called ‘earths’ at that time. Furthermore, these minerals seemed to be scarce, and thus these newly discovered elements were named ‘rare earths.’ Actually, these elements are quite abundant and exist in many workable deposits throughout the world. The 16 naturally occurring rare earths fall into the 50th percentile of elemental abundances.”
A recent article in the science journal Joule, looking at the coming demand for a wide variety of materials driven by the economic transition to a lower greenhouse gas world, including rare earths, found:
- Material production must expand to meet future power generation needs
- Geologic reserves of materials are sufficient to meet all projected future demand
- The magnitude of material needs scales directly with wind and solar deployment
- Emissions impacts of material production are non-negligible, but limited in magnitude.”
In an interview with the Associated Press, co-author Zeke Hausfather said, “Decarbonization is going to be big and messy, but at the same time we can do it, I’m not worried we’re going to run out of these materials.”
What is worrisome is where the rare earth minerals will originate. Currently, China dominates world production of the needed supplies, both in conventional government-controlled markets and through a large black market of smuggled material. In 2017, China produced some 80% of the world’s production of rare earth elements. It has been able to manipulate prices, and China’s government briefly embargoed rare earth exports in 2010 in a show of market strength.
The U.S. is a modest producer, although production is rapidly increasing. According to USGS, U.S. production of rare earths increased from 14,000 tons in 2018 to 43,000 tons in 2021. But the value of U.S. imports rose from $109 million in 2020 to $160 million in 2021.
In a self-interested Fox News opinion piece, which did not directly identify the author, Mark Smith, CEO of Colorado-based minerals mining firm NioCorp Developments raised the specter of a war with China over rare earths. The piece was headlined, “China could shut down our military in a minute if we don’t fix the looming rare earths supply crisis.”
Smith wrote, “I rate the odds of another rare earth crisis in the next five years as 9.5 out of 10. As was the case then, neither the U.S. nor our allies are adequately prepared for the economic and military catastrophe that will result.”
A less hyperbolic article in Forbes said, “With the West decoupling itself from Russian energy, its overwhelming reliance on China for REEs has been rightfully identified as a cause of concern. Many of the same red flags which should have prompted European disentanglement from Russia in the 2010s, especially after 2014’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas, apply to contemporary China.”
Economics, not war, is more likely to unlock China’s hold on needed rare earths, as high prices lead to increased exploration and production. One case of the pull of economics is Sweden, where state-owned LAKB, the country’s primary iron ore miner, in mid-January announced it had discovered a deposit of more than 1 million tons of rare earth oxides in northern Sweden, Politico reported. Energy, Business and Industry Minister Ebba Busch said, “The EU’s self-sufficiency and independence from Russia and China will begin in the mine….Sweden is literally a gold mine.”
The Financial Times was cool about the Swedish announcement, citing “grounds to be skeptical about just how important the Swedish find really is. There are questions over how long it will take to develop, how big it is, the impact on the local environment and how realistic it will be for Europe to wean itself off Chinese supplies.”
In the U.S., there may be an opportunity to combine new production of rare earths with cleanup of a long-standing environmental problem, acid drainage from abandoned underground coal mines, a common problem in eastern coal states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. According to Science News, West Virginia University’s West Virginia Water Research Institute has been working for several years on recycling the often orange-colored effluent to recover valuable rare earths and cobalt.
The institute has a pilot project underway, under a 2019 $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, extracting and concentrating the rare earths recovered material from an acid mine drainage treatment site. “This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the economics and environmental benefits of combining [acid mine drainage] treatment, watershed restoration, and critical mineral recovery,” said institute director Paul Ziemkiewicz.
–Kennedy Maize