Chilean state miner Codelco and the world’s No. 2 lithium producer SQM struck a pivotal deal on Friday over a joint venture that will reshape the Andean country’s lithium sector and give the state a front-line role in developing the key electric vehicle battery metal.
The new entity will let SQM boost output through 2060 in the Salar de Atacama, one of the world’s most prized areas for extracting lithium.
President Joe Biden speaks at Prince William Forest Park on Earth Day, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Triangle, Va. Biden is announcing $7 billion in federal grants to provide residential solar projects serving low- and middle-income communities and expanding his American Climate Corps green jobs training program. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Biden-Harris Administration celebrated Earth Day on Monday. They announced $7 billion in solar grants that could make the upfront cost of installing residential rooftop solar panels low-cost or free for low-income neighborhoods. The money will be distributed to 60 different nonprofit, state, city, and Tribal agencies.
WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is providing a shot of energy into America’s flagging electric-vehicle industry.
The Biden administration is offering a $2.26 billion loan to help Lithium Americas Corp. develop a Nevada lithium deposit that’s the country’s largest.
The conditional loan from the US Department of Energy will provide the vast majority of the capital needed to fund the first phase of development, the Vancouver-based company said in a statement Thursday.
Australia classified nickel as a “critical mineral” on Friday, opening the way for the crisis-hit industry to access billions of dollars in cheap government loans, as its prime minister prepared wider policy support for the green energy industry.
Australia wants to build a battery chemicals industry to reap more value from its mineral wealth, but the nickel sector is facing thousands of job cuts after a jump in Indonesian supply saw prices plunge 40% in a year.
Mining firm Canada Nickel Co. Inc. plans to develop a nickel processing plant in Ontario that would cost US$1 billion and be North America’s largest once completed.
The plans aim to fill a gap in North America’s electric vehicle supply chain, which broadly lacks the infrastructure to process and refine key materials like nickel, copper and lithium. The vast majority of metals that are extracted from mines in the region are shipped to China for processing, before returning to North America for domestic auto manufacturers.
The US Department of Defense plans to develop a program to estimate prices and predict supplies of nickel, cobalt and other critical minerals, a move aimed at boosting market transparency but one that throws a new, uncertain variable into global metals markets.
The program, which received little attention after it was announced on a Pentagon website in October, is part of Washington’s broader efforts to jumpstart US production of critical minerals used in weapons manufacturing and the energy transition.
US output lags market leader China partly because attempts to build new American mines can be heavily influenced by commodity price swings.
The Pentagon’s work is being run by its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) division, which was formed in response to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite and helped develop the Internet and the mRNA vaccine for Covid-19.
DARPA and the US Geological Survey plan to hire one or more private contractors to develop an artificial intelligence-backed model that would construct a metal’s “structural price” based on where and when it is produced, as well as labor, supply and other costs, according to documents seen by Reuters that describe the program, including a slide deck that DARPA presented last November to prospective contractors.
While the US dollar reigns supreme in global finance, especially in commodities markets, China sees an opening to elevate the yuan: the shift to renewable energy.
That’s according to Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a China scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, who pointed to developments in key resources that are critical for green technologies like EV batteries and wind turbines.
“These policymakers and scholars see the ongoing energy transition as an opportunity for the nation to raise the global standing of the renminbi in commodities markets; to them, there’s no guarantee that the US dollar’s dominance in our current fossil fuel-powered global economy will persist in a decarbonized world,” Liu.
Vale Base Metals chairman Mark Cutifani is undertaking a unit-wide asset review that will likely find more potential at the company’s operations in Sudbury, Ontario; Thompson, Manitoba; and Voisey’s Bay and Long Harbour, Newfoundland; Olson said.
Vale also may have an announcement soon on the Bécancour nickel sulphide processing project it’s advancing to supply 25,000 tonnes of nickel a year to General Motors, she said. That deal, announced just over one year ago could be worth about C$762 million per year.
“There’s just a clarity and a certainty in regulation and Canada is a mining country and with that comes a lower risk, and equally you have the wonderful benefit of renewable and clean power,” Olson said. “Canada has a great opportunity to further establish itself as a leader in our industry with community and Indigenous rights leaders.”
Under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law on Jan. 3, US President Joe Biden has directed the House Armed Services Committee to submit a report on the domestic processing of seafloor polymetallic nodules.
The Pentagon will deliver a report assessing deep-sea mining by March 1.
Last month, 31 members of Congress wrote a letter to the Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon urging the Department of Defense to “explore every avenue to strengthen our rare earth and critical mineral supply chains”, emphasizing “the importance of evaluating and planning for seabed mining as a new vector of competition…”
In November 2023, a bipartisan coalition led by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) reintroduced a resolution urging the US Senate to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). They argued that sitting out risks letting the rest of the world dictate maritime agendas, from seabed mining to critical subsea infrastructure.
China, the world’s top processor of rare earths, on Thursday banned the export of technology to extract and separate the strategic metals, in a further step towards protecting its dominance in several strategic metals.
The commerce ministry sought public opinion last December on the potential move to add the technology to its “Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export”.
It also banned the export of production technology for rare earth metals and alloy materials as well as technology to prepare some rare earth magnets.
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