Construction employees set up devices at a building website of a lithium battery task on April 6, 2023 in Renshou County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province of China.
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U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday stated the nation is “very concerned” about China’s grip on the international supply chain for important minerals.
Her remarks come amidst increasing need for minerals and basic materials essential to the energy shift. The end usage of metals such as nickel, copper, lithium and cobalt are comprehensive and consist of electrical cars, wind turbines and photovoltaic panels.
China is the indisputable leader in the important minerals supply chain, representing approximately 60% of the world’s production of uncommon earth minerals and products. U.S. authorities have actually formerly alerted that this presents a tactical difficulty amidst a pivot to low-carbon energy sources.
“It’s one of the pieces of the supply chain that we’re very concerned about in the United States. We do not want to be over-reliant on countries whose values we may not share,” Granholm informed CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on Wednesday when inquired about China’s supremacy as an important minerals provider.
Speaking on the sidelines of International Energy Agency’s 2024 Ministerial Meeting in Paris, Granholm stated the U.S. remained in the procedure of upgrading its own policies, consisting of a 150- year-old mining law to make sure the “sustainable and efficient” extraction of important minerals.
“But it also means that we will be partnering with friends, like Australia, like Canada, and it’s one of the subjects that we are raising here at the International Energy Agency,” Granholm stated.
“We know all countries want to ensure that we have a critical stockpile of critical minerals and that we are allowed to diversify the supplies of those stockpiles. Both internationally and domestically, this is a focus of ours.”
Jennifer Granholm, U.S. secretary of energy, throughout the EEI 2023 occasion in Austin, Texas, United States, on Monday, June 12, 2023.
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As part of a quick uptick in need for important minerals, the IEA has actually alerted that today’s supply disappoints what is required to change the energy sector. That’s due to the fact that there is a reasonably high geographical concentration of the production of numerous energy shift aspects.
Most uncommon earth reserves lie in China, for instance, while Vietnam, Brazil and Russia are likewise significant uncommon earths nations based upon reserve volume.
Asked how rapidly the U.S. can improve cooperation and production to guarantee it does not lose in the important minerals race, Granholm responded: “Cooperation can be addressed quickly. Production in the United States will take a little bit longer.”
“We feel really highly though that both extraction and processing of those important minerals need to be resolved, either by the United States or our allies. And that’s why we are working really carefully to make sure that we have actually recognized which basic materials [or] important minerals we require to be able to do our shift to a tidy energy economy.”
