More mining is needed for the energy transition. It’s also a threat.
More mining is needed for the energy transition. It’s also a threat.
“The War Below” is the title of a new book by veteran Reuters reporter Ernest Scheyder, and it’s also a reference to the conflict over the metals in the ground below us. They are critical to the transition to green energy. One electric car can contain 176 pounds of copper. These metals are also important to national security.
But mining them poses enormous challenges for the U.S. Deposits often lie under sacred ground or some of the few pristine natural environments the U.S. has left. Scheyder spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour about this and the following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Sabri Ben-Achour: So the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy is going to require a massive expansion of global mining. How much of an expansion are we talking about here?
Scheyder: We’re talking about radical shift in how we really think about energy in our country and in our world. Globally, the amount of copper we’re going to need to produce, in the next 25 years, will be as much as the entire world has produced in history. So that’s just sort of one data point that just shows the sheer need for all these materials.
Ben-Achour: What difference does it make whether these metals are mined here in the U.S., by American companies, or somewhere else, by somebody else?
Scheyder: Part of what I explore in the book is that some countries right now are willing to use their control of these critical minerals as economic weapons. And countries like China have been very open about saying that they are going to focus on basically exerting their control over mines across the world and within their borders, as well as processing technology. And so that’s one reason to be thinking about doing it more domestically or regionally.
Another is the climate. We want to have the energy transition for many reasons — one of which, a big one, is fighting climate change. If we’re going to focus on that, then we need to be producing it more locally in order to not basically increase carbon emissions by taking a metal from one part of the world, moving it across an ocean and then back across an ocean for our consumption.
Ben-Achour: What are the sides or the values that are at war with each other here?
Scheyder: One of the things that I was at pains to chronicle in the book is the varied and legitimate opposition to many projects across the country. There’s no free lunch, so to speak. And many of these projects face opposition from Indigenous groups, or from conservationists, or from people that just don’t want a mine in their land that’s been passed down through generations across their family. And I want to chronicle the opposition as well as the support on these specific projects, so that the reader gets to determine for herself or himself where they come down on these sticky issues. Are there some places too special to mine? And if we decide to have mining, what are the standards by which we would allow mining in those places?
Ben-Achour: It’s not just so simple as saying, “Well, big companies want to come in and pillage local communities who don’t want them there.” There are these divisions that you described that cut across all of that. Could you maybe give us an example?
Scheyder: Sure, the main story that I use, as the narrative spine of the book involves a rare flower, actually. There’s a deposit of lithium about 200 miles north of Las Vegas. And this is a massive deposit, one of the largest in the United States. And, unfortunately for the company that would like to develop this project, this flower lives nowhere else on the planet but right above this lithium deposit. And so, right from the beginning of the book, you get this tension: What matters more? The lithium or the flower that lives at the site? And if we did nothing and let the flower just sort of live there, would the flower not go extinct due to climate change? Or would the lithium help in the fight against climate change? And so, should the habitat of this rare flower be dug up? And you get to meet the folks on both sides of this issue in the book and really see what makes them tick and go through it.
Ben-Achour: Yeah, I mean, even at the level of a local community, you have communities divided over what to do.
Scheyder: Yes. Some people are very supportive of extractive projects because they would be great for the energy transition. Others are supportive for economic reasons, you know, they would love to have jobs that come in. And then you have opposition on the other side, that’s just as earnest and just as passionate about blocking a project. One of the key learnings or themes that I explore in the book is that these issues are not necessarily black and white or binary. There’s often multiple angles and people have multiple different perspectives for why they support or oppose a project.
Ben-Achour: The opposing values, the conflicting views that you cover in your book, tellingly, saturate even the highest levels of government — to the point that even within one administration, the government is divided and working against itself in certain ways when it comes to deciding what to do with proposed mining projects. Can you give us an example?
Scheyder: The example of this deposit in Nevada that has this rare flower, the company that would like to develop it had been trying for many years to get financial backing — a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. And so as that process was moving forward, another part of the U.S. federal government was deciding whether that flower should be declared endangered. And if the flower is declared endangered, that would bring a whole host of protections with it. And at the same time, the company was also trying to get federal approval for a mining permit. And so all of these things were happening at once. And I’ll let the reader discover what happens at the end. But it was sort of fascinating and frustrating to sort of say, “OK, if the U.S. government is going to lend this company hundreds of millions of dollars, and at the same time this flower could be declared endangered, like how do those things happen at the same time?”
Ben-Achour: Is there any sense of which way momentum is swinging in the war below?
Scheyder: Well, I think right now, we’re not having the collective conversation about the tough choices that we need to be making if we want an energy transition. It is well past the time where we can just expect to show up to a store and have things there without us thinking through where those things come from. And I hope that when people think through this energy transition, which is about so much more than just electric cars, they think through, “OK, where does the nickel come from? Where does the lithium come from?” Everyday consumers are not just thinking through these supply chains right now. And I really hope they do, because I argue in the book that that is a key, necessary conversation for us to be having collectively if we want to go green.
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