Metals and Minerals
Sweden Says It Has Uncovered a Rare Earth Bonanza
A Swedish mining company said this week that it had found Europe’s largest known deposit of coveted rare earth metals, critical to many green technologies including electric vehicles, in a far northern part of the country within the Arctic Circle. The world’s production of rare earths is dominated by China. The discovery by LKAB, a […]
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Battle Over Deep-Sea Mining Takes on New Urgency as Trial Run Winds Down
“The seafloor plume is hugging the seafloor,” he said. Still, the company’s own consultants acknowledged it was too early to draw any conclusions. “There is really a lot of data to analyze before you can make an assessment of environmental impacts,” Thomas L. Johnson of DHI Group, hired by the Metals Company to study the […]
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How the War in Ukraine Could Slow the Sales of Electric Cars
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the global market for nickel just as the metal gains importance as an ingredient in electric car batteries, raising fears that high prices could slow the transition away from fossil fuels. The price of nickel doubled in one day last week, prompting the London Metal Exchange to freeze trading […]
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What to Know About the Frantic Quest for Cobalt
The clean energy revolution is replacing oil and gas with a new global force: the minerals and metals needed in electric car batteries, solar panels and other forms of renewable energy. Places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produces two-thirds of the world’s supply of cobalt, for example, are stepping into the kinds of […]
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A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution
KISANFU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Just up a red dirt road, across an expanse of tall, dew-soaked weeds, bulldozers are hollowing out a yawning new canyon that is central to the world’s urgent race against global warming. For more than a decade, the vast expanse of untouched land was controlled by an American company. […]
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