The world currently relies on China for 90 percent of the rare-earth elements used for clean tech.
If Western powers want to maintain their ability to hold China accountable while still pursuing their climate agenda, they will have to turn to innovation.
C lean energy has a foreign-policy problem. At last week’s G20 summit, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed to further cooperation on climate issues, but their handshake belied the complexity of any U.S.–China partnership in this area. As Western powers attempt to balance their climate goals and human-rights priorities, China’s supply-chain dominance has thrown a wrench in the works.
The world currently relies on China for 90 percent of the rare-earth elements used for clean tech. If the U.S. expects to make advances in clean energy without compromising its foreign-relations priorities, it needs to focus on solutions that don’t rely on Chinese-controlled materials. While the White House has sought to increase U.S. production, a more innovative approach could change the nature of the problem altogether: A number of new frontiers for battery production could turn to innovation as a way of prying control out of the Chinese Communist Party’s hands.
Unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar power require greater infrastructure for energy storage. The technology required for this is not yet up to scale, but the batteries we do have are powered by materials such as lithium and cobalt to store energy for use in power grids when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Electric vehicles also rely on lithium-ion batteries.
While experience has shown that it is unwise to exaggerate the extent to which we will run out of minerals, supplies of the minerals powering these batteries are likely to be constrained for quite some time. Currently, most batteries are made with lithium, nickel, and cobalt, and China leads the world in refining all three, at 59 percent, 68 percent, and 73 percent respectively. These raw minerals may be mined in Africa, but that is no particular reassurance: China’s control of supply chains for these minerals extends beyond its own borders. Rapidly expanding CCP influence and investment throughout Africa means that although 70 percent of cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, those raw materials belong to China in all but name. The Congolese army, trained and assisted by CCP military efforts and private support, has already been deployed several times to protect CCP access to the raw-mineral supply.
The White House’s critical-mineral strategy almost exclusively focuses on expanding domestic mining and refining efforts. While domestic production and processing is necessary, the U.S. supply of minerals will always be limited, and that’s without taking environmentalist objections to mining into account. Compared to the Congo’s 3.6 million tons of cobalt, North America is estimated to have fewer than 300,000 tons, 230,000 of which is in Canada. Domestic mining alone cannot be the solution.
Innovation may provide the key to these resources’ longevity and efficient use, if we’ll only embrace it. Lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, for example, are safer and more durable than cobalt and lithium-ion. China now dominates these too, with 95 percent of LFP production and many of the raw materials required. Still, a wide array of potential sources for batteries are gaining traction with support from private-sector innovation. U.S. start-ups have begun working on more efficient use of lithium or use other, more widely available resources such as salt and sulfur. Batteries made from iron, salt, and water are a nontoxic, cleaner way to store grid-wide energy. They’re also cheaper in terms of both materials and operating costs, making them more economically viable for grid-sized power. With almost half the world’s iron supply in Brazil and Australia, the supply-chain implications are less concerning.
In recent years, the U.S. and EU have begun taking bolder stances against China’s human-rights abuses, espionage, and territorial aggression but now find themselves unhealthily reliant on the Chinese for the materials and components required in a lower-carbon economy. If Western powers want to maintain their ability to hold China accountable while still pursuing their climate agenda, they will have to turn to innovation.