The minerals needed to power the green transition from fossil fuels could become “a version of 21st century oil weapons,” warns an internal study commissioned by Canada’s Department of National Defense.
There is widespread agreement among scientists that drastic reductions in fossil fuel consumption are needed to prevent catastrophic climate change – and the shift to electric cars, wind and solar energy are key pillars of that change.
But as countries race to adopt more electrical technology, investors and governments are struggling to control access to goods such as copper, lithium and rare earths from remote regions. This has led many observers to fear that the green transition may have an echo of the tensions and violence that characterize the global pursuit of oil.
“The explosive growth of electronic devices over the last decade, combined with rapidly advancing advances in green technologies such as wind and electric vehicles, have led to increased demand for REE [rare earth elements]”, Says the study done for DND in 2020 and available under freedom of information legislation.
“REEs are also crucial to national security, as they are key ingredients in the production of various defense-related components and applications,” the study said. “Any disruption to the availability of rare earth elements can have serious consequences for the economy and national security around the world.
Rare earth elements are a group of 17 goods with names such as neodymium, cerium and yttrium. They are key components for advanced technology, including hybrid vehicles, laser guidance systems and flat screen monitors.
Analysts said the general trend of competition for control also applies to other minerals needed for the energy transition, such as copper and lithium.
The newspaper said China “has already shown that it is ready to use its rare earth elements as a political weapon”, citing Beijing’s 2010 move to suspend REE supplies to Japan following the detention of a Chinese fishing crew during of a maritime border dispute.
China controls about 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, according to a study that warns that pure technology minerals could be a “version of oil” used by Arab countries during the 1973 OPEC embargo. . “When oil exports to the United States were halted in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel.
Nearly 100 pages of DND’s internal files were seized, underscoring the sensitivity of information about access to these resources.
The Ministry of National Defense rejected a request for an interview. In an e-mail comment, a spokesman said the study, conducted for DND by Canada’s National Research Council, had not led to any direct military action. However, he “informed the wider departmental discussions that are ongoing.”
DND is in talks with the United States on the countries’ “shared defense industrial base,” the spokesman said.
“Voltage multiplier”
To fuel the green transition, environmentalists fear that the search for new mines, often in remote and environmentally sensitive areas, will lead to pollution as well as violence between communities and investors.
These local conflicts may emerge in tandem with geopolitical conflicts between states and corporations, as power brokers struggle to control increasingly valuable resources everywhere from the South American rainforests to the Far North of Canada and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The global transition to clean energy will require much more copper, which is abundant in this mine in Herriman, Utah. An internal study by Canada’s Department of National Defense found that geopolitical competition for key minerals needed for the low-emission future is already under way. (Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)
“We are already seeing more conflict at the local level,” said Donald Kingsbury, a political science assistant at the University of Toronto who is studying Latin America’s mining, about the renewable energy boom.
For example, he said tensions were rising in the so-called lithium triangle spanning the borders of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, citing protests and divisions between national and local authorities over who should control resource revenues and decisions about new projects.
“It’s a tension multiplier,” Kingsbury said of a new demand for minerals related to the energy transition. “We see that this paves the way for future conflicts in the future.”
Demand for honey is expected to double by 2050, the CEO of commodities giant Glencore predicted last year, meaning the world will have to produce 60 million tonnes a year.
The production of an electric car requires more than twice as much copper as a gas-powered vehicle, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). A clean energy vehicle also needs minerals that are not used in traditional cars, including cobalt, lithium and graphite.
According to the IEA, demand for lithium is expected to increase more than 40 times by 2040, with demand for graphite, cobalt and nickel increasing more than 20 times.
Achieving net zero emissions “requires truly monumental global change, a global renewable energy system with intensive use of copper,” said Daniel Earl, CEO of Solaris Resources, a Canadian-registered mining company. “You’re basically talking about an effort to electrify everything you can.”
Fight for Ecuador’s untapped resources
Earl hopes to take advantage of this new impoverished search in southeastern Ecuador.
Solaris wants to build an open copper mine on a 286-square-kilometer concession, extracting more than a billion tons of material near the Peruvian border. If the Warintza project receives its environmental permits and meets other requirements, the site’s copper production could begin as early as 2026, Earl said.
It is in places like this, a region of biodiversity and an outbreak of illegal extraction, accessible almost exclusively by helicopter, where the struggle for energy transition resources is heating up.
Ecuadorian indigenous communities are gathering in the capital, Quito, in 2020 to oppose new extraction and oil exploration in their traditional Amazon rainforest. (Dolores Ochoa / Associated Press)
Earl said the largest copper projects already in operation, including Chile’s giant Escondida mine, the world’s largest, do not have the capacity to meet new demand. He expects smaller operations in more remote regions, such as the Solaris plan, to spread around the world.
The Ecuadorian government has long been dependent on oil revenues and reluctantly approving new mines, allowing more mineral extraction, said Nathan Monash, president of the country’s Chamber of Mines.
“Ecuador has an almost perfect time to introduce mineral resources when the transition takes place,” Monash said. The sector could be responsible for 500,000 direct and indirect jobs in Ecuador by the end of the decade if planned projects go online, Monash said.
He acknowledged that the increase in mining could repeat some of the “geopolitical problems” plaguing the oil sector. But he urged Ecuador companies to have a “commitment to local communities” after “learning a lot from past mining policies”.
“All neighbors may have disagreements, but mostly it comes down to trust,” Monash said. “Has trust been built between local stakeholders and mining companies?”
A vaorani guard stood before police before the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court in 2020 during a demonstration against mining and oil production in traditional indigenous territories. Canadian mining company Solaris Resources says local communities in Shouar, living near its proposed copper mine, have approved the project. A national organization of Ecuadorian indigenous peoples opposes this. (Dolores Ochoa / Associated Press)
Federico Velázquez, Solaris’s vice president of operations, said local Shouar communities living around his proposed mine support the project because of promises of jobs and infrastructure in one of Ecuador’s poorest regions.
Other indigenous groups in Ecuador, including the Shuar Arutam People’s Governing Council, which represents dozens of communities in the region, have called on the government to halt the project.
“These activities [by Solaris] “they violate our legitimate decision to say ‘no to mining’ on our territory, a decision protected by our right to self-determination and other collective rights,” said Josefina Tunki, the group’s president, in a statement last year.
Local conservationists are also concerned about the new mines, fearing water pollution, deforestation and long-term damage to remote ecosystems, said Natalia Bonilla, president of the Quito-based conservation group Accion Ecologica.
Fears of embargo
The mining industry says these projects are needed to combat climate change, create jobs and move Ecuador beyond its dependence on oil production. If a company like Solaris doesn’t build the copper project, they say, someone else can.
“China is the dominant player in Ecuador’s natural resources,” said Solaris CEO Earl. Chinese companies take “100 percent” of the copper concentrates from the Mirador mine, located near the Warintza project, he said, and almost all of Ecuador’s oil production.
“Chinese mining companies have jumped ahead of Western mining companies.”
The Chinese embassy in Ecuador did not respond to requests for interviews.
In addition to its growing presence in South America, China continues to control the rare earth market “and is a leader in rare earth research and development,” said the DND study, which led some analysts to believe that Beijing could potentially blocks the sale of goods during periods of conflict.
There was a comparable situation on the oil market in the 1970s. During the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the countries of the Middle East by the Organization for the Export of Oil …
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