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As clean energy booms, US lawmakers struggle to craft minerals policy

The recent attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure was a stark reminder to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, of the risks lurking in another corner of the energy market: mineral supplies for clean energy technology.

"We're heavily or entirely dependent on foreign suppliers for dozens of these commodities," Murkowski said Sept. 17 at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "We don't have guaranteed supplies — much less stockpiles or even strategic reserves — to cover ourselves in the event of a shortage."

"Right now, the United States is falling further behind in the global race to control supply chains for new technologies," added Murkowski, the committee's chairman. "Allowing this to happen is a massive strategic mistake impacting everything from our ability to create high-paying jobs to our national security and influence on the global stage."

It is not the first time the senator has voiced such concerns. In July 2018, Murkowski said she worried that a trade fight with China could lead the country to restrict U.S. imports of minerals. "Our mineral security doesn't have to be at rock bottom," she said at the time. "Many parts of our country … are rich in mineral resources; what we lack is a sense of urgency to ensure that our policies promote their responsible production."

China is the top producer and processor of at least 10 minerals and metals that are "essential to clean energy and high-tech industries," Allison Carlson, acting managing director of FP Analytics, told lawmakers Sept. 17. Through equity investments by state-owned and private firms, the country has come to control more than half of the cobalt produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is the site of about half of the world's known reserves of the metal, and more than 59% of lithium resources globally, Carlson said. Cobalt and lithium are key ingredients in batteries.

Still, China's dominance is not a "foregone conclusion," Carlson said. "It will, however, require us to fundamentally rethink how we understand strategic industries and the long-term investments that are needed to support U.S. clean-energy manufacturing."

Acknowledging the risks posed by the United States' reliance on foreign suppliers, Daniel Simmons, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Energy, said the Trump administration wants to "do more to secure a reliable supply of critical minerals," including working to "expedite and enable" more exploration and mining in the U.S.

Mineral-intensive energy technologies such as renewables and batteries create a "tremendous opportunity for the mining industry," said Morgan Bazilian, executive director of the Payne Institute for Earth Resources at the Colorado School of Mines. However, the U.S. should focus on "diversity of supply and demand" rather than on achieving the sort of "dominance" the Trump administration talks about in the fossil fuel sector.

Minerals tend to be concentrated in certain countries, and some may not be "economically extractable" in the U.S., so the country should work on forging partnerships and making overseas investments to secure supplies, Carlson said.

In addition to those challenges, there is the fact that "China is China Inc.," said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.

"We talk about mining companies and whether they can get investments and whether it pays back and what the rate of return is. China has decided, apparently as a matter of national governmental policy, that this is important, and so the normal rules of the road of capitalism aren't necessarily applying here if it's a government-owned entity, and that's something we really need to think about," King said.

Murkowski still thinks that the U.S. could be a "leader" in mineral supplies for clean-energy technologies. "But it takes a focus. I think it takes a vision. And it takes a political willingness" to push policies that bolster the country's supply chain, which "is where we're lacking right now."