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By ZeroHedge – Jan 01, 2024, 12:00 PM CST
- The U.S. is focused on transitioning to a minerals-based economy, with significant government funding to support domestic manufacturing of critical minerals for green energy and defense.
- Essential minerals like copper, titanium, gallium, and alumina are crucial for applications beyond EV batteries, such as energy transmission, semiconductors, and aerospace.
- The U.S. must ensure supply chain resilience and avoid dependency on unreliable sources for these critical materials to maintain national security and economic competitiveness.
Authored by Tom Albanese via RealClear Wire,
The world is becoming increasingly electric and connected, transitioning towards a future powered by batteries and running on electronics that will require an ever-growing supply of critical minerals and materials. From the Ford F-150 Lightning to the F-35 fighter jet, these minerals and materials already power our most advanced technologies and nearly every facet of our everyday lives. In the race to transition from a fossil-based to a minerals-based economy, the Biden Administration has been focused on semiconductors and battery materials. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Act and CHIPS Act is providing an unprecedented influx of government funding to spur domestic manufacturing. This is especially true for dual-use minerals and materials needed for the green energy transition and defense applications. However, there is much more at stake than just the lithium, cobalt, and nickel we hear about for EV batteries. The U.S. needs more copper for energy transmission and storage, more titanium for defense and aerospace applications, and more gallium to produce critical semiconductors. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is a net importer of copper, Russia is a leading producer of titanium, and China produces 98% of global primary gallium. These are just a handful of materials that are essential to the electrification of economies that have been the subject of supply chain coercion. Just look at alumina, the key input for making aluminum. Aluminum has long been critical to U.S. economic and national security, from electrical infrastructure to the aerospace, auto, and defense sectors. This metal will play a crucial role in decarbonizing the power, transportation, and building sectors. Meeting demand will allow the U.S. to meet its environmental commitments on an accelerated timeline. Before aluminum is utilized as an electric wire, a car door, or a solar panel, it must be transformed through a complicated production process. The first step is mining bauxite, found in plentiful reserves in Africa, Australia, and Brazil to meet world demand for another 100 years. Next is crushing, heating, and refining that bauxite into alumina, which is then smelted, requiring a near-constant flow of energy, to produce aluminum. From there…