Last week, the European Commission unveiled the Critical Raw Materials Act to reduce its dependence on third countries for key raw materials deemed indispensable for the green and digital transitions.
The proposed legislation seems to be a first step in trying to decouple the EU from its dependencies on third countries for critical and strategic raw materials. However, the continent will never be fully autonomous because of its limited reserves.
Missing link in government strategy is the millions needed to build the mines
The head of Canada’s top mining association said Ottawa’s strategy to build an electric vehicle industry could fail if it doesn’t encourage miners through tax credits and other incentives to construct the mines needed to produce critical minerals that power EVs, such as nickel and lithium.
Existing policies have encouraged the hunt for new mineral deposits in Canada, and have brought investment from big automakers and battery companies such as Volkswagen Group and LG Energy Solutions in the past year, said Pierre Gratton, head of the Mining Association of Canada.
(Bloomberg) — A Chinese miner is set to overtake Glencore Plc as the world’s top cobalt producer this year, as the rush for critical green-energy metals intensifies.
The challenger to Glencore’s dominant position is CMOC Group, which first became a major player in the cobalt market when it acquired the Tenke Fungurume mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016. The company aims to double production this year, as it brings another massive Congolese mine online in the second quarter. That will propel it past Glencore, company filings show.
‘It’s all about connecting our critical mineral producers in the North’ with manufacturers in the South – Pirie
ST. THOMAS — Volkswagen’s announced plans to establish a battery cell plant in Southern Ontario is good news for Northern Ontario, says Mines Minister and Timmins MPP George Pirie. “If we’re going to secure our supply chain (for the electric vehicle industry) we have to get the minerals out of the ground in Northern Ontario,” Pirie told The Daily Press.
“Nickel is a critical mineral, copper, niobium, rare earths, lithium – we’ve got them all. There are four huge low-grade deposits in the Timmins vicinity including Canada Nickel … It’s a hugely exciting time.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently visited the Saskatchewan Research Council’s experimental rare earth refining facility in Saskatoon to tout his government’s efforts to promote rare earth discovery, development, and extraction, along with the refining advances SRC has achieved.
He and his ministers have been ‘talking up’ this critical mineral drive for quite a while, but their efforts have shown little success thus far – for reasons they would rather not discuss.
US President Joe Biden and European Commission leader Ursula von der Leyen on Friday vowed “cooperation on diversifying critical mineral and battery supply chains.” Dialing down trade tensions with our allies is a welcome development. There has even been talk of a “Critical Minerals Club,” which could be a first step toward an efficient market for these sought-after minerals, while unwinding dependencies on authoritarian regimes.
Transitioning from hydrocarbons toward renewable energy sources like wind and solar, as well as lithium-ion batteries to run electric vehicles, is going to take a lot of critical minerals that we don’t have.
There is still a role for Western Canada to supply Asia with liquefied natural gas (LNG) and longer-term opportunities for Canadian producers to supply Europe with hydrogen. But it’s critical minerals where Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson thinks Canada’s biggest opportunities lie in a world transitioning to cleaner energy sources.
“This really, if we get this right, is kind of a generational economic opportunity for this country,” Wilkinson said. “Not just extracting minerals, but processing and refining them here. Building the batteries, building the electric vehicles and other products. This is an opportunity for Canada to really have a very strong core of its industrial base underpinned by the work we’re doing in critical minerals.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Blaise Ndala is the author of the new novel, In the Belly of the Congo. This essay was translated from the French by Pablo Strauss.
One day in August, 1908, not long before the colony known as the “Congo Free State” was ceded to Belgium, a young aide-de-camp of King Leopold II named Gustave Stinglhamber made his way toward the wing in the Palace of Laeken where a friend of his worked.
Nearly a quarter-century earlier, the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 had granted the Belgian monarch control, in a personal capacity, of a newly formed colony 80 times the size of Belgium. As the two friends approached a window, Stinglhamber sat down on a radiator – only to leap back up. It was boiling hot. A custodian was summoned to explain.
The increasing demand for critical minerals such as copper, zinc and cobalt factored prominently during the first day of the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s 2023 conference in Toronto. But a new report, released in time for the convention, forecast that junior and intermediate miners will face exploration budget challenges in 2023 that could slow the project pipeline for those metals.
During the conference’s commodities session on March 5, Randy Smallwood, chief executive officer of Wheaton Precious Metals, highlighted the drivers behind five commodities and potential headwinds facing each metal.
To boost EU autonomy, the European Commission is seeking to introduce targets of 10%-40% of the mining, recycling, and processing of critical raw materials used in the bloc to be done in the EU by 2030.
A draft version of the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, seen by EURACTIV and set to be presented by the European Commission next Tuesday (14 March), will introduce targets for Europe’s self-sufficiency along the entire value chain.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The federal government is considering taking equity stakes and advancing loans to Canadian critical minerals companies, as it mulls following Quebec’s lead in moving to a much more active role in Canada’s industrial policy.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in an interview earlier this week at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) mining conference in Toronto that the equity stakes could come through the soon-to-be-launched Canada Growth Fund, and loans could be arranged through the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
A new partnership between the University of Toronto and Vale Energy Transition Metals will strengthen Canada’s position in the critical minerals sector by developing sustainable mining solutions, as well as fostering Canadian skills and talent.
The framework agreement was signed March 7, 2023, at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) 2023 Convention, held in Toronto. The partnership launches with an initial $1.6 million investment over the next three years and will include several multidisciplinary projects led by experts from both institutions.
A new book on the Congo recycles stereotypes of Africa as a wasteland in need of saving in all its promo. It’s been rapturously received in the West.
Last month, award-winning author and academic Siddharth Kara published Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives. The book draws attention to labour conditions and living standards in areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that mine cobalt, a metal that will be critical in the hoped-for global energy transition.
Across 250 pages, it argues that by consuming products that contain Congolese cobalt, Western consumers are complicit in a human rights and environmental catastrophe.
Some experts say Canada and other western nations moving in the right direction on critical minerals
Like clockwork every year, mining executives, bankers, investors and politicians gather in Toronto at the largest mining conference in the world, and bemoan China’s head start in the race to build a critical mineral supply chain years before western countries caught on.
As the Prosperctors & Developers Association of Canada’s conference this week that sentiment remains with one key difference: new-found optimisim.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Vale and Queen’s Park offer up $1.6 million to tackle mining waste and advance bio-mining innovation
A new and environmentally benign form of Sudbury’s mining industry just took a great leap forward with a more than $1.6 million contribution from international nickel miner Vale and the Ontario government.
Mining Innovation, Rehabilitation, and Applied Research Corporation (MIRARCO) at Laurentian University and its research leader Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk are the recipients of this largess that will be earmarked for the organization’s bio-mining and remediation efforts in tackling mine waste.
