Like most people who drive an electric vehicle powered by rooftop solar, I thought I was doing the right thing, and maybe I am. But when you’re buying an EV or putting solar panels on your roof that could store power in an onsite battery one day, the sales people don’t tell you the mining process to extract the rare-earth metals needed for those products degrades the environment, or that they play a key role in global trade relations.
Why would they?
It was enough to get a discount on the cost of power and ditch the high gas prices with the bonus of keeping the planet safe.
Or so I assumed.
Today, rare-earth metals are a bone of contention in trade disputes between China and the United States — who knew?
What’s behind that whacky idea of President Donald Trump’s to buy Greenland?
According to a report in the National Post, it could be rare-earth metals: “Some experts have speculated rare-earth elements may be one reason behind Trump’s sudden and fierce desire to buy Greenland, an Arctic island nation that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The U.S. recently signed a memorandum with Greenland to support the country’s development of rare-earth mining. Greenland has reserves of terbium, dysprosium, neodymium and praseodymium, among other rare earths.”
China — the world’s largest producer of rare-earth metals by an order of magnitude of six — meanwhile, has been threatening to cut the trade of rare-earth metals to the United States.
Some might appreciate the irony of a race to lay claim to rare earth metals under the world’s frozen wastelands — the faster the ice melts, the faster we can get our hands on rare-earth deposits that we can use to save the planet from a warming climate that’s melting the polar ice caps.
Well, at least we live in interesting times.
But for institutional investors that increasingly are mandated to invest responsibly to meet ESG goals, the dilemmas posed by rare-earth metal mining, as well as disposing of the radioactive byproducts, create a real challenge.
As reported in the Verge, “Though ore demand for materials usually means more mining (and with it, increased environmental impacts), experts agree that the benefits of renewable energy far outweigh the costs.
“There is no such thing as a free lunch,” says Charles Barnhart, a professor of energy studies at Western Washington University. “But I want to be clear that when we talk about environmental impacts, we’re not trying to decide between ‘lesser evils.’” For Barnhart, deciding between more mining for renewables and continuing to rely on fossil fuels is deciding between “completely different sides of the spectrum” because the cost of a business-as-usual future with fossil fuels will cause so much harm.
