Tag Archive for: Lithium-Ion Batteries

Why is the U.S. Department of Defense giving $90 million to a private corporation to reopen an old lithium mine in Western North Carolina?

The citizens of Kings Mountain, N.C., do not want the dust, debris, truck traffic and environmental degradation of a lithium mine in their community, but will their local politicians sell them out?


The United States is moving aggressively to bolster its national battery supply chain as globalists seek to force consumers into more expensive and less practical electric cars as part of their so-called Net Zero climate agenda.

In order to produce EVs, you need lithium for the batteries. Lots of lithium.

China is a top-3 global producer of lithium along with Chile and Australia. But U.S.-China relations are coming apart at the seams over Taiwan, Ukraine, and other issues, so the U.S. cannot depend on future lithium imports from China.

Even the World Economic Forum has gone on the record highlighting the need for more lithium heading into the digital age and the globalists’ penchant for electrification of everything. Not just cars and trucks but lawn equipment, stoves, water heaters, you name it, they want it to run on electricity instead of coal, oil or gas.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. government is looking inward for more sources of lithium. That’s where North Carolina enters the scene.

The federal government is pressuring a small town in North Carolina to allow an old lithium mine to be reopened, despite local backlash against the corporation seeking a permit.

In mid-September, just two weeks before Hurricane Helene blasted this area of North Carolina, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Albemarle Corporation a $90 million grant to restart mining operations in Cleveland County.

The money will help purchase mining equipment for the operation, which sits off of Interstate-85 in the city of Kings Mountain.

The city manager of Kings Mountain, Jim Palenick, told WBTV that a total of $240 million from the federal government has been awarded to resuscitate the city’s long-closed mining operation.

You might wonder, why is the U.S. government handing out $240 million of our hard-earned tax dollars to restart an old lithium mine so that auto manufacturers can produce more electric vehicles that nobody wants to buy because they’re inefficient, dangerous, and too expensive.

The Kings Mountain lithium mine, about 50 miles west of Charlotte, N.C., shut down back in 1988. But in recent years, lithium, which is the world’s lightest metal, has been growing in demand.

While EV battery makers in need of this metal are chomping at the bit and foaming at the mouth, Palenick told WBTV that the city wants to make sure it’s the right move for the community.

And the community doesn’t want the mine reopened.

Palenick told the outlet:

“What you have here is one of, if not the only source of hard rock lithium in the United States.”

Palenick added, “There’s a lot of due diligence that still has to go into this from the city’s perspective; we’ll be dealing with truck traffic, with noise, with dust, with water issues, with environmental issues, so all of that must be worked out; there has to be a permit for a special use that hasn’t been granted yet.”

According to Albemarle Corporation, the lithium deposits would initially support the manufacturing of 1.2 million electric vehicles each year.

Albemarle says 70 percent of the lithium it processes goes into electric vehicles. But what about the other 30 percent? Turns out it’s used in triggering devices for nuclear weapons and in aerospace alloys, among other weapons systems. Could this be why the Department of Defense is throwing so much money into getting the lithium out of North Carolina’s foothills?

Some say it might not be a coincidence that a 500-year storm, Hurricane Helene, hit this area of North Carolina three weeks ago. I can’t speak to that.

Unlike lead-asset batteries, used up lithium batteries cannot be recycled and are toxic to the environment.

Palenick said the Kings Mountain City Council is under “tremendous pressure” from state and federal officials to approve the mining operation but will do what’s right for the city.

I’d be shocked if the city council does what is right. If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on this city’s elected representatives voting against the wishes of the people and in favor of the federal/state military-industrial complex.

Below is a PBS mini-documentary, 7 minutes long, on North Carolina’s lithium rush.

©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.


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The secret story behind the Green New Deal: Metals Needed for Carbon Neutrality in Short Supply

Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric car batteries are made from some of the most hard-to-get metals on earth— dysprosium, neodymium, manganese, cobalt, and lithium. According to UK scientists, the current annual global production of cobalt needs to double by 2050 to produce the electric vehicles required to just satisfy British climate targets. Another study found that if countries were to meet the Paris accord and keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, demand for cobalt and lithium would exceed the current supply by 2022 and 2023, respectively.

China leads the world in rare earth metal production (a group of 17 chemical elements), supplying 90 percent of the export market. The United States purchases 80 percent of its rare earth metals from China, despite having the resources to produce its own supply. These metals could be extracted profitably in the United States, but are not because of our restrictive and redundant environmental regulations.

Current Production, Reserves, and Prices for Major Metals

According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, global production of rare earth metals in 2018 totalled 167 thousand metric tons, with China producing 72 percent of the world’s production. China also controls 38 percent of the world’s reserves, which total 117 million metric tons. China’s reserves are the largest at 44 million metric tons, followed by the United States and Brazil, each with 22 million metric tons, and Russia with 17 million metric tons.

Global production of graphite totals 896 thousand metric tons, with China supplying 71 percent. Graphite reserves total 307 million metric tons with China and Brazil each controlling 24 percent.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo produced the most cobalt in 2018 at 112 thousand metric tons—a 71 percent share of the 158 thousand metric tons produced. Cobalt reserves total 6.6 million metric tons, with the DR Congo controlling 52 percent. However, there are ongoing problems with environmental and child labor issues in the DR Congo; labor abuses linked to cobalt mining have been widely documented by human rights groups and by media organizations across the world.

Australia and Chile lead the world in lithium production with 27 million metric tons and 16 million metric tons, respectively, produced in 2018 from a total of 62 million metric tons. World reserves of lithium total almost 14 million metric tons with Chile controlling 58 percent.

Lithium prices set a record high in 2018 at $14,656 per metric ton—21 percent higher than in 2017. Cobalt prices totaled $72,923 per metric ton in 2018—30 percent higher than in 2017.

U.S. Dependence on Foreign Metals

China leads the world in producing and exporting minerals and metals, supplying many that are critical to U.S. manufacturing, technology and energy production, and national defense. Many critical metals are on U.S. federally-owned lands, including manganese, cobalt, nickel, graphite, aluminum, and several of the rare earth metals. The United States is 100 percent import-reliant for 18 minerals—14 of them are considered “critical” by the Department of Defense or the Department of the Interior.

The United States has a duplicative and inefficient system of regulatory permits and oversight that governs domestic mining. Generally, the U.S. mining industry is faced with a regulatory system that forces them to wait seven to 10 years to obtain a mining permit, compared to Canada and Australia where the process takes two to three years, which limits our nation’s ability to capitalize on our mineral wealth. The United States needs to retool our permitting process so that minerals from U.S. public lands can fuel our advanced energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing technologies, which would increase U.S. manufacturing and its position in the global economy and reduce our dependence on foreign imports.

Conclusion

The United States needs to develop its critical metals and remove its reliance on foreign imports, particularly from the Chinese, who are leaders in rare earth metals and graphite production. These metals are used in many technologies and in national defense systems. To become self-reliant the United States needs to modify its regulatory permitting system and oversight. The sooner we can remove our dependence on these critical metals from foreign interests as we did for oil and natural gas, the better our nation with be economically and militarily. Otherwise, we risk dependency on other international actors for minerals at much higher rates than the United States was ever dependent upon OPEC.


Further reading on the global supply of rare earth metals is available here.

Further reading on the environmental impacts of rare earth metal production in China is available here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This IER column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.