The Institute for Human Sciences’ (IWM) rector interviewed the writer of Uncommon Earth Frontiers: From terrestrial subsoils to lunar landscapes in the course of the Vienna Humanities Competition 2024.
Misha Glenny: We’re going to be speaking about uncommon earths, uncommon earth minerals, the extraction of crucial uncooked minerals and their place inside the environmental and geopolitical scenario. In order that all of us begin on the identical web page: there are 17 uncommon earth components, and these are included in what the US geographical survey has deemed to be 51 crucial uncooked minerals or CRMs. So let’s begin with the uncommon earths, Julie. What are they and why are they vital?
Julie Klinger: The time period ‘rare earth elements’ is a little bit of an anachronism, as a result of these components are neither ‘rare’ nor essentially ‘earths’. They confer with the island to the south of the periodic desk known as the lanthanide sequence, numbers 57 to 71, plus scandium and yttrium.
They’re grouped collectively as a household, as a result of they’ve these actually unbelievable magnetic and conductive properties, which have enabled the miniaturization of applied sciences and transoceanic web communications, the event of area applied sciences, and so forth.
Why are they known as uncommon? The identify sticks round, as a result of it’s thrilling. It’s extra thrilling than saying ‘lanthanum’ or ‘praseodymium’. However in my analysis, looking for out why they had been known as ‘rare’, got here all the way down to this: after they had been first characterised in Sweden within the late 1700s, nobody had ever seen them earlier than, in order that they had been merely assumed to be uncommon. The primary time I discovered a chemist lamenting this in print was in 1907, and since then, the scientific group has been fairly cranky about this characterization. However it sticks round. In the event you name one thing uncommon, we get excited and other people may be prepared to conform to issues that they may in any other case fairly sensibly refuse.
Misha Glenny: To get a sense of the vast types of usages of uncommon earths, may you give us a few examples?
Julie Klinger: You may actually choose any aspect. However we’ll go along with cerium. In a metropolis like Vienna, there’s in all probability pretty vintage glassware that’s a beautiful rosy pink, proper? It’s cerium that imparts that color onto the glassware. It’s that very same pigmenting property that’s used to make lasers which might be utilized in every part from surgical procedure to precision guided missiles. It’s additionally cerium that may act as a sign amplifier when it’s added to fibre optic cables. In the event you can image the worldwide mesh of transoceanic fibre optic cables: about each 30 kilometres or so, there’s slightly little bit of cerium that amplifies the sign.
Misha Glenny: And with out cerium, we couldn’t try this?
Julie Klinger: Nicely, we may, however it might be slower and who desires to go slower?
Cerium has been actually vital over the 20 th century and into the twenty-first century as a result of it’s utilized in petroleum refining. And, actually, till very lately, the first utility for uncommon earth components within the US was within the petrochemical business. That’s solely very lately been edged out by magnets.
Misha Glenny: I needed to ask you about a component generally utilized in magnets, praseodymium: why is it vital and what position does it play within the inexperienced transition?
Julie Klinger: Praseodymium and neodymium are vital as a result of they’re utilized in renewable vitality applied sciences amongst many others, in addition to in digital applied sciences. Image a wind turbine: magnets are actually vital within the precise mechanics of the wind turbine that assist translate its movement into vitality era. Relying on the dimensions of the wind turbine, you may need a couple of kilos to a few tons of magnets in there.
Relating to digital applied sciences, it’s that conductive and magnetic energy that permits them to be smaller, extra modular, extra moveable and, due to this fact, finally extra accessible. In any situation that we’re right here, whether or not we’re speaking about vitality growth – renewable or not – or elevated entry to expertise, they require these uncommon earth components. The identical may be stated for nearly every part else that’s on a crucial uncooked supplies listing.
Misha Glenny: So we’ve established that uncommon earth supplies aren’t uncommon, they are often present in numerous locations, however you must extract an excessive amount of rock in an effort to get them.
Julie Klinger: Sure, they don’t exist within the type of gold nuggets. After we’re speaking about 17 chemically related components, we’re confronting a really specific extraction problem.
The primary problem is discovering a deposit that comprises any of them at a focus that may be economically possible. To present you a way of the proportions that we’re speaking about: when you have a giant space or a geological deposit that has many, many, many thousands and thousands of tons of fabric, if 2% of that comprises uncommon earth components, that’s thought-about a extremely whole lot. However that additionally provides you a way of the amount of vitality and earth shifting that’s concerned in getting on the materials needed by the extracting firms.
When dug up, every part else, no matter it might be, whether or not it’s gold or silver or phosphate or uranium or thorium or arsenic, is left above floor as waste. Take into consideration that: in an excellent situation, 98% of the stuff that’s dug up is left behind as waste.
Due to the chemical similarities amongst uncommon earth components, separating them could be very difficult. A big a part of twentieth century science was dedicated to determining tips on how to crack these items aside. The upshot is that separating them and refining them could be very vitality intensive and infrequently very chemically intensive as properly.
Misha Glenny: Shifting on to crucial uncooked supplies – lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper – all supplies crucial for varied features of the inexperienced transition. How a lot of these items are we going to have to really dig up in an effort to energy the inexperienced transition?
Julie Klinger: Between 2017 and 2022, the Worldwide Vitality Company estimated that there was a threefold enhance in world demand for lithium, a 70% enhance in world demand for cobalt, and a 40% enhance in world demand for nickel – the latter two being utilized in batteries. These are massive numbers, however they’re not stunning. On one hand, that is excellent news. It implies that we’re shifting ahead when it comes to fast deployment for renewable vitality applied sciences.
However there’s so much that’s hidden in these numbers. Though a battery in and of itself is a renewable vitality expertise, it might not truly be used for climate-critical functions. I believe essentially the most vivid instance of that is lithium batteries. A number of months in the past, a big-revelation-turned-social-media-phenomenon confirmed {that a} massive driver for the elevated demand of small-scale lithium batteries was the proliferation of vaping pens – not a climate-critical utility.
Much less frivolously, three of the PhD researchers that I’m working with has been wanting on the army seize of renewable vitality applied sciences. There’s a giant push within the US army to develop assault rifles which might be powered by lithium batteries. So, there we’ve a big enhance that’s, partly, pushed by renewable vitality functions, however not local weather crucial.
Misha Glenny: And we’ve nonetheless acquired an extended strategy to go earlier than we attain the height of any of this.
Julie Klinger: Completely. I believe copper is an effective instance. Copper is what allows electrical energy to maneuver from right here to there. It’s important for electrification generally, and vitality expertise and digitization are on the coronary heart of the worldwide group’s present local weather and growth objectives. The expectation is that copper consumption, in an effort to meet COP28 targets, should exceed all world copper manufacturing in human historical past that was produced up till 2009.
Misha Glenny: China dominates a lot of the market in uncommon earths and significant uncooked minerals, specifically within the processing of those components and minerals. A lot of the analysis you probably did to your e-book was carried out within the Bayan Obo mine, and to some extent processing facility, in China’s Internal Mongolia. As a consequence of present political circumstances, that chance is unlikely to happen right now. What was it like within the heartland of China’s uncommon earth business and what had been your impressions of their operation?
Julie Klinger: It might be very troublesome to do this analysis right now. For context: I lived and labored in China for a complete of about 5 years between 2003 and 2013. After that I devoted my analysis to uncommon earth components and it turned a e-book. I had skilled contacts in academia and within the authorities. On the time, questions requested by a world scholar with a number of years of expertise in China had been acquired as a possibility to advance mutual understanding. I believe we want slightly bit extra of that right now.
In an effort to do analysis inside the world’s uncommon earth capital – a army restricted space – required numerous endurance and lead-up time, speaking with a number of folks, informing them about my questions and my intentions, after which finally visiting the identical place in a number of methods, escorted by a number of completely different events, however at all times with permission.
In my e-book I write about how the power and robustness of China’s industrial heartland round uncommon earth mining and processing co-evolved with their nuclear weapons business. I didn’t go in figuring out this. And actually, it was happenstance that I even came upon.
My first formally organized go to to Baotou and Bayan Obo, was facilitated by my host establishment, the China Academy of Sciences. Two weeks earlier than I used to be scheduled to reach in Baotou, there had been some fairly main unrest: a member of the ethnic Mongolian pastoralists group had been hit and killed by a truck transporting mineral ore, and the group protested. I don’t know what the logic was, however the officers that had agreed to my go to reasoned that it might be too problematic to cancel it. Nevertheless, nobody was to speak to me about mining. I believe in a second of desperation the guides tried to refill the area throughout a drive across the metropolis and identified all types of issues to me. And one of many issues was: ‘Ah, this is our nuclear weapons development facility.’
That generated a complete bunch of follow-up questions, which beneath every other circumstances I’d have felt had been too taboo to ask. However on this scenario, we had fairly a dialog. And that then in fact generated leads for me to take a look at the overlap and the co-development of the nuclear and uncommon earth industries from the mid-twentieth century onwards. That led me to wanting on the position of worldwide scientific cooperation round nuclear vitality and rockets growth centred in locations just like the College of Chicago and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, all of which overlapped in some methods with uncommon earths analysis that ultimately discovered a house in Baotou.
Misha Glenny: Air pollution stays a extremely massive challenge in Bayon Obo and China, doesn’t it??
Julie Klinger: Sure, it definitely does. Industrial foundations had been part of early post-revolutionary China’s industrial planning collaboration with the Soviet Union. The thought was that these locations could be industrial heartlands, serving to energy the event and self-sufficiency of China supported by the Soviet Union. Collectively, China and the Soviet Union would supply the onerous industrial items and know-how to the remainder of the world, in an effort to obtain a form of world communist revolution.
Uncommon earth mine, Bayan Obo, Baotou, Internal Mongolia. A mix of satellite tv for pc photographs captured by ASTER, NASA Earth Observatory, by way of Wikimedia Commons
Within the mid-twentieth century various these locations had been arrange across the nation. Baotou is the precedence space primary, which holds the uncommon earth components, heavy business and weapons growth. The precedence there, because the Fifties, had been to construct as a lot business as shortly as attainable, broaden the scope of mining operations as shortly as attainable, and waste administration actually was not a precedence. Nevertheless, due to issues about agricultural and aquacultural productiveness and ingesting water, there was a long time of very cautious documentation and monitoring of soil and water air pollution.
However it wasn’t till of crucial interval within the early 2000s that scientific information mixed with the work of native activists and devoted environmental journalists to allow a shift in China’s priorities from industrial growth to precise environmental remediation.
Misha Glenny: Uncommon earth mining creates a form of sludge, may you describe it?
Julie Klinger: I discussed that in the very best case situation, you may need a 2% focus of uncommon earths in what you dig up. Some pockets of the deposit may need as much as 20%, however if you happen to’re mining over a big space, 2% is taken into account an excellent common.
It simply so occurs that a few the opposite components plentiful on this specific deposit are arsenic, thorium, fluoride and uranium. Though there’s in fact secondary processing to seize a few of these supplies from the waste, for 40 or 50 years you had plentiful portions of arsenic and fluoride simply being introduced up out of the earth. As a part of the separation course of, it turns into pulverized in addition to extra cell. They proliferate in windblown mud. They get into the waterways.
The uptake of those contaminants by crops and animals has made its method all the best way up the meals chain. In depth public well being research present a long-term well being impression on toddler and baby cognitive growth, superior forms of bone illnesses and particular illnesses that consequence from continual publicity.
Misha Glenny: Proper, so to proceed to dig for these components in an effort to understand the inexperienced transition, laws are going to be actually vital.
Shifting on to the geopolitics of this: the US was the primary producer of uncommon earths after which, strategizing to make China into the manufacturing heartland of the US, uncommon earth extraction and processing went over to China. Now the Chinese language have had 35 years of processing these supplies and might do it so much cheaper than anybody else. So, given the centrality to army, local weather crucial and civilian use, what does that imply when it comes to geopolitics relationships between the US, China and the EU?
Julie Klinger: It is a actually vital query. I’ll say one thing that could be very unpopular within the US proper now: China is a dependable commerce accomplice with the US. The extreme investments that China’s authorities and industries made in build up their present industrial and manufacturing capability match completely inside the Washington-driven, free-trade business relocation doctrines of the previous 40 years or so. For some time – I don’t wish to say everybody was joyful – but it surely was a relationship that didn’t garner the form of concern that we’ve seen previously decade.
A whole lot of crucial technological parts – whether or not it’s for well being care or scientific instrumentation, army applied sciences – the uncooked supplies refining, parts manufacture and product meeting, all has been concentrated in China. The US Division of Protection woke as much as this about 15 years in the past and determined that it was an actual drawback and has since then been purchasing for alternate options, whereas additionally persevering with to obtain many of those parts from counterparts and producers in China on a dependable foundation.
Misha Glenny: One of many issues this has resulted in is, what I known as in a BBC documentary, ‘the scramble for rare earths’. We’ve a world scramble primarily between the US and China, latterly the EU as properly, attempting to safe provide chains. Inform us a bit in regards to the provide chains and their complexity.
Julie Klinger: The criticality of those supplies doesn’t generally need to do with their absolute shortage. It has to do with the geography of the availability chains and the way these provide chains are organized. In the event you think about a much less rosy geopolitical situation, the truth that numerous the central processing and excessive expertise manufacturing and meeting steps are concentrated in China does represent a really actual vulnerability. And that vulnerability, within the US context, is commonly described when it comes to army vulnerability.
Actually – very ‘gallows’ humour right here – however one of many conclusions within the current DOD report, which projected out the fabric wants for a hypothetical warfare with China by 2027, was that it wouldn’t be possible, as a result of a lot of the vital parts for defence applied sciences come from China.
One vital factor that has occurred over the previous 15 years is that the geography of extraction has modified. Locations just like the US, Myanmar, Vietnam, Brazil, Madagascar are supplying uncooked materials. However most of that crucial, early middle-step of refining and separating these supplies, continues to be routed via China. And so, what the US and the EU have been engaged on is constructing out value-added processing in an effort to have extra impartial capabilities on this space.
There are three eventualities beneath which we, quote-unquote, ‘don’t have sufficient uncooked supplies to fulfill our vitality transition objectives’. One in all them is, beneath this world scramble for uncommon earth components and different energy-critical uncooked supplies, we’ve the worldwide duplication of provide chains and efforts. Any framework that considers ‘how much of these things are actually needed in a given territory or context in order to achieve energy transition goals’ is absent. Beneath this scramble, all events are going for as a lot capability as attainable, regardless of how a lot would possibly truly be wanted for crucial functions such because the vitality transition.
Misha Glenny: So, because the Chilly Battle, the West has periodically launched expertise export controls, normally on dual-use applied sciences. This was a fairly properly codified system in the course of the Chilly Battle via CoCom. Nevertheless, within the final 10-15 years, because the Individuals began to panic about China’s growth and rivalry and competitiveness, they’ve began, along with the EU began proscribing Chinese language entry to manufactured supplies, significantly microchips. However, for the primary time, the West is having to take a few of its personal drugs: China has began to impose export controls, not solely on processing expertise of uncommon earths, which they do roughly higher than anybody else now, but in addition on the uncommon earths themselves. How highly effective a lever is that this for the Chinese language to make use of?
Julie Klinger: There’s a few methods by which that’s a extremely highly effective diplomatic and geopolitical instrument. After which there’s a bunch of different methods by which proscribing these two issues particularly permits numerous enterprise as typical to proceed. I believe it’s vital to maintain this advanced provide chain image in thoughts – partly as a result of China is just not solely a supply marketplace for these applied sciences but in addition a serious consuming marketplace for applied sciences that may be completed within the West after which exported again to China.
With these specific export controls that you simply’ve talked about, markets will definitely react. However the export controls on essentially the most superior processing and separations applied sciences is a fairly direct blow for the US and EU, who plan to construct out their industrial capability, and are in search of state-of-the-art expertise and gear. And the place is that this state-of-the-art expertise and gear? In China, in fact, which is smart as a result of they’ve had 40 years of engaged on this and supplying a lot of the world. Over that very same 40-year interval, the US and the EU not solely drew down industrial capability but in addition analysis and growth capability.
Misha Glenny: So, either side have leverage right here. And if it’s not correctly managed, then it may flip nasty sooner or later. There are some voices within the US saying, fairly loudly now, ‘be careful about how far you go on restrictions to Chinese companies because it might come back and bite us in the end’.
There are two ‘more out-there’ methods of getting maintain of uncommon earths and significant uncooked minerals. The primary one is deep sea mining: what are the risks there? And the second, which you’ve written about in your e-book Uncommon Earth Frontiers, is the moon. You’ve additionally explored the thought of moon mining as a possible future. Is this concept nuts or ought to we take it severely?
Julie Klinger: The best way that deep sea mining is commonly represented is that there’s these lumpy nodules of numerous completely different metals simply sitting on the ocean flooring ready to be vacuumed up. This concept makes it a lot simpler and fewer controversial than terrestrial mining as a result of: one, no person lives there; and, two, you don’t need to dig any holes to get the metals.
At that degree, deep sea mining looks like a really compelling various to terrestrial floor mining – significantly when you think about the human rights violations and the environmental impacts that plague the business. Nevertheless, we’ve explored extra of the moon than we’ve explored of the deep seabed. So, in a method, we’re tinkering with the unknown. This issue has been one of many the reason why there have been world campaigns to get main potential customers of battery metals to vow that they won’t use supplies acquired via deep sea mining.
One of many issues that we do learn about this deep-sea ecosystem is that there are theses methane-gobbling microorganisms which might be performing a crucial local weather service for us. Methane seeps up via the ocean flooring, they usually eat it up, holding it from escaping into the ambiance. That’s important as a result of different earlier non-anthropogenic climate-warming occasions have been brought about partly by huge ‘belches’ of methane from the deep ocean. Probably, what we’re right here is destabilizing a largely unknown ecosystem that’s performing a extremely crucial local weather perform for us, within the identify of combating local weather change, within the type of the vitality transition.
And the moon. Once I was researching for this e-book, I had a second of serendipity. I used to be again within the San Francisco Bay space in between analysis journeys to China, and I went to a really nerdy form of social gathering the place all of us introduced our favorite board video games. I ended up enjoying with somebody who, after listening to me say that I used to be researching uncommon earth components, famous to me that his firm had simply signed a US$10 million contract with NASA to develop a robotic to mine uncommon components on the moon.
This was half of a giant XPRIZE grant co-sponsored by Google that was going to award US$20 million to an organization that would deploy a robotic on the moon for no matter function. Numerous them had seized on the geopolitical disaster of the 2010s that swirled round uncommon earth components and stated ‘we’re going to get these items from outer area and never from China’.
None of these tasks panned out. However the very first thing I got here to know via researching the area mining business was, that for a good variety of them, the target was by no means to really meet their said goal however to develop fascinating applied sciences and perhaps be purchased up by a bigger entity so they might money out and transfer on to the subsequent factor.
The second realization was that if you happen to speak to people critical about creating area mining capabilities, they’re eager about it strictly when it comes to long-term area journey, long-term area missions. So, you don’t need to take every part you want from Earth to do fascinating stuff in outer area. From a sustainability standpoint, that is smart. However it’s not in regards to the vitality transition.
After which there are the area cowboys – and I believe we’re all aware of a few outstanding area cowboys. Their goal is probably extra to arrange libertarian colonies or luxurious resorts on the moon or on Mars. And these tasks are one more manifestation of this long-standing escapist fantasy, I’d say, considerably empowered by the rise of the billionaire capitalist as a determine.
However to come back all the best way again round to the query of criticality and provisioning the vitality transition, there’s actually no believable situation beneath which mining in area to provision actions on earth makes financial sense.
Misha Glenny: One remaining, a bit difficult query. You might be creating some concepts about tips on how to keep away from the problems across the provide chain scramble. May you briefly define what that’s?
Julie Klinger: Earlier this yr, the UN Secretary Basic put collectively a panel on crucial minerals and supplies for the vitality transition. And earlier this month, they revealed their seven rules and motion objects. They emphasize cooperation, justice, transparency and the profit for communities in provisioning the renewable vitality transition. The world financial institution tasks that CRM wants to extend 4 to six-fold in an effort to meet the renewable vitality targets by 2030 and the web zero targets by 2040 and 2050.
The query is then, how can this be accomplished in a method that doesn’t proceed to trigger the large social and environmental violence related to extractive industries to metastasize within the identify of combating local weather change, undermining local weather resilient landscapes and livelihoods.
It’s an actual conundrum. However within the new UN Secretary Basic’s rules, precept quantity seven states that multilateral cooperation should underpin efforts to provision the vitality transition. My crew has developed some concepts. We’ve a bit in Nature Vitality journal that outlines a framework for nationally decided contributions to vitality transition supplies.
This works inside the ‘National determined contribution framework’ that basically distinguished the 2015 Paris Accords, aiming to find out what number of items are literally wanted of any given vitality transition materials. There’s all types of information about capability but it surely tends to be expressed in watts and never when it comes to the precise onerous supplies that it’s essential construct this infrastructure.
Our proposal additionally requires events to do a list of their reserves, prioritizing above floor reserves. The important thing factor right here is that that is the stuff that has already been dug up, languishing as waste, which may be discovered a landfill within the type of a decommissioned or discarded expertise. The important thing factor that I believe we have to bear in mind right here is that these crucial uncooked supplies are essentially completely different from fossil fuels. Whenever you use a fossil gas, you combust it to carry out its perform. However with most of the CRM and uncommon earths, we don’t destroy them via use. They’re sitting above floor.
The opposite purpose is to do a list of home local weather belongings like biodiversity, resilient landscapes and freshwater assets. These are codified beneath any variety of environmental safety measures. They carry out crucial social and ecological companies, and improve native and regional resilience. The thought there’s that if you happen to take a look at your map of your reserves, and also you take a look at your map of your local weather belongings, potential areas for business growth are what’s left.
This, in fact, may be determined in a context-appropriate referendum, a vote, a plebiscite. And it must be decided by a given nation. However we’re excited that there’s been a optimistic response to this concept’s incorporation into the convention of events going ahead.
This dialog passed off on 8 October 2024 on the Vienna Humanities Competition 2024, which was organized by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) and Time To Discuss (TTT) in cooperation with FALTER, the Open Society Foundations, the Metropolis of Vienna, ERSTE Basis, the Academy of Tremendous Arts Vienna, the Wien Museum and the Volkstheater.
