The Biden administration’s 100-day supply chain review shines a spotlight on the urgent need to produce more critical minerals from U.S. mines.
This review includes useful directives to expand geologic studies to identify new critical mineral deposits, evaluate existing mine wastes as valuable sources of critical minerals, and increase the nation’s mineral processing capacity. However, it fails to focus on the main reason why we are so reliant on China and other adversaries for key minerals — the glacially paced and litigious federal permitting process.
Lengthy permit appeals and costly litigation have effectively hollowed out the U.S. mining industry by substantially chilling investment in U.S. mineral exploration and development. Despite the well-documented need for domestic lithium, copper, cobalt, nickel, antimony, silver, and other minerals to support clean energy, anti-mining activists are challenging proposed projects for these minerals in Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota, and Nevada. Apparently, ideological opposition to mining trumps the administration’s decarbonization goals and subordinates the country’s need for electric vehicles and clean energy minerals.
For mining opponents, the International Energy Agency’s recent findings that mineral production needs to quadruple by 2040 to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate stabilization goals presents an inconvenient truth about climate change — minerals and reducing carbon emissions go hand in hand. Real environmentalists, who focus on what is best for the environment, should embrace domestic critical minerals mining because U.S. mines are the cleanest and safest mines in the world, operating with the highest environmental protection and worker health and safety standards.
American mines and miners could provide the copper needed for electric vehicles, EV charging station infrastructure, and the thousands of miles of new transmission lines that will be needed for nationwide electrification. U.S. mines could supply the lithium, cobalt, nickel, and antimony needed to manufacture the batteries that power electric vehicles and electronic devices and store energy. Domestic mines could produce the rare earth metals required for wind turbine magnets.
Commonsense environmental goals and the president’s net-zero carbon aspirations dictate that whenever possible, the United States must develop the minerals we need from domestic mines to minimize their carbon footprint. Shipping critical minerals from across the globe substantially increases their carbon footprint, which makes no sense when we have domestic sources of many critical minerals that can be developed using the highest environmental and safety standards.
Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent blockage of the Suez Canal, and delays in docking and unloading container ships demonstrate our supply chains are vulnerable to disruption. Securing domestic sources for minerals, materials, and products would significantly reduce this vulnerability and our reliance on foreign countries.
Unfortunately, the administration’s review includes a reinvent-the-wheel interdepartmental task force to evaluate existing laws and regulations for mining to identify gaps in what is already a comprehensive and effective statutory and regulatory framework that protects the environment and requires financial assurances to guarantee that mines will be reclaimed. Instead of this unnecessary exercise, the Biden administration should declare a critical minerals emergency and direct this interdepartmental task force to find meaningful ways to streamline, if not fast-track, environmental reviews for critical minerals projects.
Setting timelines for regulatory agencies’ reviews and permitting decisions and limiting mining opponents’ use of administrative appeals and litigation to challenge permits would shave years off of the permitting process. These permit streamlining measures can be achieved without relaxing the stringent environmental protection and worker health and safety standards with which U.S. mines must comply.
The administration’s recommendation to evaluate the critical minerals potential of mine wastes could create significant opportunities to clean up old mines and produce critical minerals from previously mined materials. Capitalizing on this opportunity will require the administration and Congress to exempt redevelopment of these sites from Superfund liability exposure, which currently thwarts reprocessing these materials to recover their remaining minerals.
The 100-day review is a step in the right direction to strengthen our domestic supply chains by producing the minerals essential to achieving the nation’s clean energy objectives from domestic mines that protect the environment, are safe places to work, and pay an average annual wage of $81,000. The win-win solution for the environment and the economy is to use mined-in-America minerals and made-in-America products to build our clean energy future.
Debra W. Struhsacker is an independent environmental permitting and government relations consultant based in Reno, Nevada, and one of the founders of the Women’s Mining Coalition.
