Mining green rocks for the climate | Round-up #47
Mining green rocks for the climate | Round-up #47
Mining investment deemed green, tensions in Nevada's lithium, and mine workers demand safety and security.
Climate technologies require enormous amounts of metal. I’m Ian Morse, and this is Green Rocks, a newsletter that doesn’t want dirty mining to ruin clean energy.
Greetings! I’m just returning from a rather long break, when I did some travel and got married. Strictly speaking, this only meant that I didn’t put out one or two features with original reporting — and many of you seem to prefer the round-ups anyway. If you pay for this newsletter, I’ve paused payments for a bit to compensate for the lost time. But speaking of getting hitched, I’ve been thinking for a while about metal mined for jewelry 💍 and I’ll likely write up some thoughts in a coming edition.
News in Mining for the Climate
Workers at a Moroccan mining company, which supplies cobalt to BMW and Renault, have said they received scant safety training and protection against carcinogenic materials.
NASA pushed the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw a portion of the Nevada desert that it uses to calibrate satellites from the BLM’s inventory of lands with the potential for lithium mining.
Judges ruled against activists in deferring to BLM assessments that the Thacker Pass lithium mine would uphold waste management standards that had led to the blocking of a copper project in Arizona.
Seventeen people who were alleged to be illegal miners in abandoned mines died in South Africa.
Indigenous groups are railing against plans to establish a large-scale gold mine in the center of the Brazilian Amazon that would displace thousands.
Evidence from rivers links a Canadian mine to marine health hazards across the border in the US. (Related Green Rocks: US looks to mine in Canada, where pollution may spill over the border)
The EU will include mining for critical raw materials in its rulebook on sustainable investing, adding to other controversial choices like including natural gas and nuclear power.
An Indigenous community in Peru’s copper corridor has accused a colossal copper mine of failing to keep promises to share compensation with villages. (Related Green Rocks: The Road to Copper)
Zimbabwe labor unions are accusing Chinese mining companies of harassing and physically abusing employees.
Environmental organizations in Chile, with the support of local authorities, are threatening to challenge the extension of a copper mine in court, because it was previously rejected on environmental grounds, but the national government nevertheless approved it.
US labor officials asked Mexico to investigate whether a copper, lead and zinc mine broke union rules with striking workers who petitioned the department.
A World Bank court awarded a UK nickel mining company $109.5 million after Tanzania revoked its license, in breach of an international treaty that defends private companies from government action that stops investment.
Canada, where prominent seabed miner The Metals Company is based, announced its support for a moratorium on the practice.
China said it will restrict exports of gallium and germanium, both elements used often in semiconductors, LEDs, and military equipment.
Workers at Brazil’s mining regulator, which has little capacity to manage the almost one thousand tailings dams, went on strike last week.
A fire at a nickel smelter in Indonesia killed one worker and injured six others.
A company in Brazil is claiming, with its first sparks of ignition, that it will be the only mine outside Asia to produce rare earth oxides for permanent magnets.
BHP, which has caught heavy investor flak for weak climate plans, says its updated net-zero plan will entail an initial rise in carbon emissions.
The Yukon government had warned about environmental problems at a copper mine days before the owner abandoned it and laid off all workers.
Environmental groups have asked a US court to block exploration by a potential lithium miner.
Reports
The Energy Transitions Commission, a group of industry and nonprofit organizations, concluded in its report yesterday that $70 billion in annual investment is needed to produce enough material to meet climate goals, according to its models.
The International Energy Agency released their first review of the markets for critical minerals, finding that there will be enough materials for everyone as long as every project goes forward, but mines are not making any progress on environmental and social indicators.
The Northern Confluence Initiative, a nonprofit in British Columbia, questioned and posed alternatives to the province’s and Canada’s approach in granting certain ‘critical minerals’ beneficial treatment in the name of climate.
The International Renewable Energy Agency published a report on the trends shaping the sustainability and trade of ‘critical minerals’.
Nonprofit Transport & Environment found that cutting battery sizes, improving chemistries and reducing private car journeys can cut expected consumption 36-49% by 2050.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre explored Chinese investment in foreign mines, concluding that there are significant concerns among the mines that have been tapped to create the building blocks of renewable energy.
The BHRRC also outlined a path for achieving a just energy transition in Africa, which considers its position in the crosshairs of global mining.
A US agency found that the industry using ‘conflict minerals’ (tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold) showed no improvement in tracking down the origins of minerals, despite 7 years of a law requiring disclosures and investigation into mineral origins.
A Canadian NGO, in a recent report, describes the poverty that drives families to depend on children to sell cobalt ore.
Reads
≠ endorsement
Out of Balance (Propublica)
How to build a circular economy for rare-earth elements (Nature Comment)
Divided by mining: Vale’s new rail track fractures an Amazon Indigenous group (Mongabay)
Biden’s overseas mineral strategy faces early test (E&E News)
Between a mineral and a hard place: Indonesia's export ban on raw minerals (Transnational Institute)
Tribal activists oppose Nevada mine key to Biden’s clean energy agenda as ‘green colonialism’ (AP News)
Inside the race to remake lithium extraction for EV batteries (Reuters)
Red floods near giant Indonesia nickel mine blight farms and fishing grounds (Mongabay)
No more plundering: Can Africa take control in green mineral rush? (Reuters)
What really happened the night the nickel market broke (Bloomberg)
A battery supply chain that excludes China looks impossible (The Economist)
International negotiators just missed a deadline to regulate deep-sea mining. Now what? (Grist)
What’s at stake if we mine the deep sea? (The Guardian podcast)
The biggest gold rush in history is about to start in the deep sea – leaving devastation in its wake (The Guardian)
It’s carmakers against miners in battle over China-funded metals (Bloomberg)
Kicking tires: It’s time to talk about mining’s overlooked ESG problem (Mining.com)
A Good Prospect | Mining Climate Anxiety for Profit (The Drift Magazine)