The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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In 2023 alone, the federal geological survey invested $51M into Earth MRI scans of 35 states as part of a nationwide critical minerals search. From rare earths in Northern Maine to lithium in Southern California and titanium in Florida to 29 critical minerals in Alaska, the United States Geological Survey is investing heavily in strengthening domestic supply chains for the 50 minerals and metals critical to every sector of the American economy. This nationwide search for...
The start of ExxonMobil's new lithium production unit in southwestern Arkansas in mid-November highlights rapidly growing industry interest in producing the white mineral from the briny aquifers that proliferate in this region of the United States. Lithium is a crucial component in the manufacture of batteries needed for electric vehicles, and demand for the white mineral is projected to quadruple by 2030. ExxonMobil said its new unit is expected to begin producing the white...
The growing list of critical minerals and conflict elements like cobalt are drawing intense focus and demand for alternative sources. Investors and consumers are increasingly focused on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials, provenance, and indirect emissions of these supply chains. If done right, prioritizing urban mining – specifically moving recycled materials upstream in supply chains – could provide cheaper domestic supply with a lower emissions foo...
As the White House continues to dole out hundreds of billions of dollars to position America as the global leader in clean energy and digital technologies, Beijing initiates a strategy to put America in check with the global economy equivalent of pawns. These pawns in the technology chess match between the U.S. and China are gallium and germanium, a pair of semiconductor metals used to make the computer chips essential to every facet of modern life. Before all the major news o... Full story
USA Rare Earth has entered a deal with Australian Strategic Materials to supply magnet rare earths for Oklahoma plant. With its sights set on producing rare earth magnets at its new Oklahoma plant next year, USA Rare Earth LLC has entered into a multi-year supply agreement with Australian Strategic Materials Ltd., a producer of metals for clean energy and high-tech devices. "Having a supply agreement in place with ASM plays a critical role in delivering on our vision of...
What's the secret behind the bright colors lighting up the US night skies on the 4th of July? The answer is minerals! Each color is the result of specific chemicals derived from different minerals. Read further to find out what these minerals are, and get ready to be surprised at the other ways these minerals are used when they're not competing with the stars to illuminate the night sky. The Color: Green The Chemical: Barium Chloride Mineralogy 101: Barium chloride is what's...
US invests heavily into developing domestic rare earth element processing plants Despite what their name suggests, rare earths are not all that scarce. An efficient and environmentally sound technology capable of separating this tightly bonded group into the 15 individual elements of innovation, however, is truly unique and the key to establishing a rare earths supply chain in North America. There are currently no commercial-scale rare earths separation facilities in North... Full story
CO2 scrubbing liquid-metal catalyst is tech metal's latest amazing property From making smartphones smarter to transforming troublesome carbon dioxide into useful oxygen and high-value carbon products for batteries and other advanced products, gallium is an amazing tech metal lending its incredible qualities to high-performance computers, telecommunications, national security, and the environment. A soft silvery metal that will turn to liquid in the palm of your hand due to... Full story
General Motors, Stellantis, and Tesla moving further up battery supply chain With the batteries powering the electric vehicle revolution demanding more lithium than miners can produce, the price of this lightest metal in the universe rocketed more than 1,000% over the span of two years. This has prompted automakers such as Tesla and General Motors to become more directly involved in the mining and refining of the lithium-ion battery namesake. "Price of lithium has gone to... Full story
Coal ash, acid drainage, and tailings for future green economy As the world continues to prime itself for the global energy shift, academia, governments and the private sector are scrambling to extract the valuable minerals and metals necessary to power the low-carbon renewable future – resulting in some truly innovative and unconventional methods. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list often miss... Full story
Rare metalloid key element of CdTe thin-film solar cell tech The rising popularity of thin-film solar cells as a highly effective means of converting sunlight into electricity is creating increased demand for tellurium, amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table. Tellurium is a metalloid, one of seven elements with properties that fall between metals like aluminum and tin and non-metals like carbon and phosphorus. These semimetals, which also include... Full story
The rare earth magnets that help wind turbines transform a breeze into low-carbon electricity and then convert that energy to horsepower in the motors of electric vehicles will soon be made in Oklahoma. On June 9, USA Rare Earth LLC announced it bought a 309,0000-square-foot building in Stillwater, an Oklahoma city that boasts a growing high-tech economy, to house its rare earth elements processing and magnets plant. "Oklahoma has long been on the cutting edge of energy... Full story
In another deal to secure the raw materials it needs to produce enough Ultium batteries to power up to 1 million electric vehicles per year by 2025, General Motors struck a multi-year agreement to purchase cobalt from Glencore's Murrin Murrin operation in Western Australia. A rare and critical metal, cobalt plays an important role in improving the energy density and longevity of the lithium-ion batteries powering EVs. "Future facing commodities like cobalt play a pivotal role...
Adding to a growing list of deals to source the materials and components needed for its vision to get everybody in on its transition to an all-electric future, General Motors is working with POSCO Chemical to develop a roughly $400 million plant in Quebec to produce cathode active material for Ultium batteries that will power GM electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC HUMMER EV, and Cadillac LYRIQ. Planning to have the capacity to build 1 million electric...
The proposed list of 50 critical minerals unveiled by the U.S. Geological Survey in November shined a light on how dependent the United States is on foreign countries for rare earth elements and a broad array of other technology metals vital to electric vehicles, clean energy, high-tech, and other industrial sectors. The enormous Round Top deposit in the West Texas desert hosts nearly half of the minerals and metals deemed critical to America's economic wellbeing and national...
With the recent completion of a $50 million financing, USA Rare Earth LLC has the funds to take major strides toward executing its rare earths mine-to-magnet strategy in the United States. At the front end of this strategy lies the Round Top heavy rare earths and critical minerals project in Texas, which USA Rare Earth recently exercised its option to acquire an 80% joint venture interest in from Texas Mineral Resources Corp. Situated in the Texas desert about 85 miles...
Looking to transform old coal mining regions into new domestic sources for rare earths and critical minerals vital to electric vehicles, renewable energy, and other technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $19 million for 13 projects in traditionally fossil fuel-producing communities from Appalachia to Alaska. "The very same fossil fuel communities that have powered our nation for decades can be at the forefront of the clean energy economy by producing the...
Seeking to bolster America's critical mineral supply chain, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has introduced legislation that tackles the notoriously long permitting process in the United States. "America's reliance on foreign countries for the production and recycling of our critical minerals is a vulnerability to our national security, a disadvantage to our economy, and a hindrance to our global competitiveness. Unfortunately, the current federal permitting and review process...
The American clean energy revolution envisioned by the Biden administration is going to require a massive supply chain upgrade – from the mines feeding rare earths, battery metals and other materials into the front end, to the manufacturers that will utilize these mined materials to build the electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure needed for a low-carbon future. In a move that demonstrates the newly elected administration's hopes that a transition to l...
Roughly 38,000 metric tons of rare earth concentrates were produced from American soil during 2020, yet the United States remains 100% reliant on foreign countries for its supply of these 17 elements critical to our modern high-tech society – an apparent paradox that speaks to the complexities of these enigmatic metals. The irony of rare earth elements (REEs) begins with their name, which is at the same time a misnomer and accurate descriptor. "All the REEs except p... Full story
The lightest of all the metals in the universe, lithium has emerged as the namesake for the batteries powering electric vehicles down global highways and storing renewable energy for those EVs to plug into. This is on top of the countless laptops, tablets, smartphones, wearable electronics, power tools, household appliances, electric bikes, scooters, toys, and the seemingly endless list of electric devices made possible by lithium-ion batteries. "Lithium consumption for... Full story
Overshadowed by headline-grabbing rare earth elements, gallium is an underappreciated critical metal that is a vital ingredient in next-generation smartphones and communication networks, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), thin-film solar cells, and medical devices. "The development of gallium arsenide as a direct band-gap semiconductor in the 1960s led to what are now some of the most well-known uses of gallium – in feature-rich, application-intensive, third- and f... Full story
Amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table and an important ingredient in the emerging thin-film solar panel sector, tellurium embodies what it means to be a critical metalloid – an element that possesses the properties of both a metal and non-metal. "Most rocks contain an average of about 3 parts per billion tellurium, making it rarer than the rare earth elements and eight times less abundant than gold," the United States Geological Survey wrote in a 2... Full story
A heavy reliance on imports for a long list of minerals and metals critical to American supply chains could be a stumbling block for the Biden administration's ambitious "Build Back Better" agenda. "From the largest infrastructure plan since the Eisenhower interstate highway system, to an aggressive plan for a national energy transition, the Biden administration's agenda will require an immense amount of minerals," National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan... Full story
The National Mining Association and a group of 16 companies working to establish a complete rare earths mines-to-magnets supply chain in the United States are urging Congress to approve legislation that would provide tax incentives for the domestic manufacturing of REE magnets. Earlier this month, Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-California) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pennsylvania) introduced HR 5033, a bipartisan bill to help stimulate domestic production of rare earth magnets as part... Full story
