PERSPECTIVE: Rare Earth elements (REEs)The U.S. Is Trying to Reclaim Its Rare-Earth Mantle
Rare earths elements (REEs) are used in cancer treatment and electric engines, telescope lenses and TVs, cellphones and fighter jets. Many REEs are extracted and refined almost entirely in China. The U.S. was 100% net import reliant on rare-earth elements in 2018, importing an estimated 11,130 metric tons of compounds and metals valued at $160 million. The Department of Energy is funding research to make separating rare earths easier and more efficient, and to promote recycling. “There is a clock ticking in the background of this race for a rare-earth supply chain. There is a danger that the electric vehicle market, which will demand large quantities of critical minerals including rare earths, may move faster than the rare-earth supply chain, which would feed it,” Sabri Ben-Achour writes.
Rare earths elements (REEs) are used in cancer treatment and electric engines, telescope lenses and TVs, cellphones and fighter jets. Many REEs are extracted and refined almost entirely in China.
Sabri Ben-Achour writes in MarketPlace that
The U.S. was 100% net import reliant on rare-earth elements in 2018, importing an estimated 11,130 metric tons of compounds and metals valued at $160 million. Eighty percent of those imports were sourced from China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
REEs are not rare in most cases, but they are difficult and expensive to extract and purify. “We call them rare earth, but we produce a lot of them,” Gauthier Deblonde of the Lawrence Livermore Lab told Ben-Achour. “Global production is about 250,000 tons, so if you compare them to something actually rare, like gold, we produce about a thousand times more rare earths than gold every year. The name is very misleading.”
Ben-Achour notes that China cut off exports of the materials to Japan in 2010 during a diplomatic disagreement. From 2010 to 2014, China restricted global exports, causing prices of rare earths to surge until it lost a case at the World Trade Organization. The U.S. argued at the time that the export controls were to boost Chinese industries and hurt foreign competitors. In February, the Financial Times reported China was assessing whether a rare-earth export ban would hobble U.S. production of fighter jets.
“But ultimately, in the pyramid of reasons for America’s loss of the rare-earth supply chain, one reason sits at the top,” Ben-Achour writers. “China made developing the rare-earth supply chain a strategic national priority. The U.S. did not. Until recently.”
He adds:
The Department of Energy is funding research to make separating rare earths easier and more efficient, and to promote recycling. It’s office of Basic Energy Sciences is adding five new national laboratory-led projects focusing on separation science totaling $6.7 million per year. The DOE is investing $25 million per year in the Critical Materials Institute, focusing on securing supply chains for critical materials, largely focusing on rare earths and lithium. BES is also announcing $10 million per year in grants for basic research beginning this summer.
MP Materials is the owner of the U.S.’s only rare-earth mine, located in Mountain Pass, in California’s Mojave Desert. James Litinsky, CEO of MP Materials, told Ben-Achour that the mine can cover all of the U.S. military’s rare-earth needs, and that the company is developing a processing plant to purify the most important rare earths for electric vehicles — a looming source of demand.
“The military demand is single digit. The bigger demand is gonna be the electrification of the global economy as we focus on climate change,” Litinsky said.
Ben-Achour concludes:
There is a clock ticking in the background of this race for a rare-earth supply chain. There is a danger that the electric vehicle market, which will demand large quantities of critical minerals including rare earths, may move faster than the rare-earth supply chain, which would feed it.
