mining

Critical Insights on the Mineral Boom: Part III

On the rise of resource nationalism and building an equitable supply chain: Insights from the Emmett Institute’s “Powering the Future” symposium.

The topic of critical minerals and the energy transition is one of choices and priorities, at least according to author and journalist Ernest Scheyder, who spoke at the second panel in our recent “Powering the Future” symposium. This panel, Critical Minerals and Global Supply Chains, discussed some of the fundamental choices that governments, industry, and …

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Critical Insights on the Mineral Boom: Part II

A vision to ensure enforceable community benefits from mineral extraction: Insights from the Emmett Institute’s “Powering the Future” symposium.

“Voice, agency, and meaningful compensation.” Those are the things that California Tribal Affairs Secretary Christina Snider-Ashtari said must be granted in exchange to some communities bearing the brunt of the energy transition and the new mineral boom, as recounted in Part One of this series. All week, my colleagues and I are sharing summaries, outcomes, …

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Critical Insights on the Mineral Boom

In the race for critical minerals, the challenges, tradeoffs, and potential winners are becoming clear. Insights from the Emmett Institute’s “Powering the Future” symposium.

A couple hundred miles north of the Las Vegas strip at Rhyolite Ridge you’ll find a dusty yellow wildflower called Tiehm’s buckwheat that grows nowhere else in the world. But this flower sits atop a massive, untapped lithium reserve that would help the U.S. transition to cleaner energy. Now, what if you had to choose …

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Emmett Institute Symposium: Powering the Future

This is a critical moment in the energy transition for plotting the course of mineral extraction, with communities and the environment in mind.

  If you ever find yourself passing through southwest Montana, go visit the Berkeley Pit and contemplate resource extraction. You pay a couple bucks to a guy in a trailer; walk under some razor wire and through a long, disorienting white tunnel; then stand and stare out at the most beautiful turquoise sea of toxic …

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Addressing Corruption In Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chains

New CLEE/NRGI issue brief offers solutions

In the race to scale up a global supply chain for electric vehicle batteries, mining justice advocates have sought to ensure that the ongoing clean technology minerals boom does not exacerbate longstanding negative impacts from the global mining industry. Chief among these are corruption risks. To provide guidance to electric vehicle purchasers (particularly fleets), advocates, …

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How Major Corporate Fleets Can Drive Responsible and Sustainable EV Battery Supply Chains

New CLEE/Ceres report released today with recommendations for corporate EV fleet managers

The electric vehicle (EV) market is growing rapidly, but with this growth comes public pressure to ensure supply chains for EV batteries are sustainable. The soaring demand for batteries relies heavily on the extraction and refinement of critical minerals, processes that have far-reaching environmental and social impacts. Moreover, the global distribution of these operations leaves …

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Not Just About the Climate

The benefits of the energy transition transcend climate.

The main reason to control carbon is to protect the climate. But cleaning up the energy system has plenty of other benefits. Those benefits will flow to people in rural areas as well as urban ones, to national security and international development, and to nature itself. To begin with, there are the health benefits of …

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A Climate Trial in Montana Sets the Scene for More

Held v. Montana is the first of many climate lawsuits by youth plaintiffs to go to trial. Big Sky Country is a fitting forum for this phase of climate change litigation.

Young people who have the most to lose from climate change have filed lawsuits in all 50 states, but the first of these cases to go to trial will be in Montana—unofficially nicknamed “the Last Best Place”—which may be the perfect venue for a landmark trial about government culpability for the global climate crisis. Starting …

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The Latin American Lithium Industry is at a Crossroads

Policies set now by Argentina, Bolivia and Chile could determine the course of lithium mining—and the fight against climate change.

  It may be one of the most overused clichés favored by headline writers, but nonetheless, it is true that the Latin American lithium industry is at a crossroads. The regulatory decisions made by the Governments of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile in the following months and years will set the course for the lithium industry, …

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Achieving EV Battery Sustainability

Image shows tiers of earth and a water pool in a lithium mine

CLEE issue brief looks back on 2022 EV battery supply chain milestones and forecasts 2023 decisions

Countries in key markets are accelerating their transportation decarbonization goals, which in turn is driving up demand for electric vehicles (EVs). Here in California, for example, the Air Resources Board approved the Advanced Clean Cars II rule in 2022, which establishes that all new passenger vehicles sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles by …

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