Companies and governments everywhere are scrambling to secure supplies of critical minerals and nurture industries such as electric vehicles and wind power. Industry figures worry that Britain’s progress is slow
s and wind power. The British government’s critical-minerals strategy, published last July and updated in March, listed 18 substances, including lithium, cobalt and rare earths, key to the permanent magnets that driveGeology dictates where minerals can be dug. The government’s Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre has identified where in Britain exploitable deposits may lie; these include tin and tungsten as well as lithium . Whatever happens, Britain will have to rely on imports.
Dependence on an unfriendly China is troubling—especially when China also dominates the “midstream” refining of critical minerals into metals and alloys. It processes the lion’s share of lithium and cobalt. It is the leading maker ofbatteries, too. The covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have further exposed the precariousness of supply.
Projects are in hand to bolster Britain’s midstream. Two lithium refineries are being developed in north-east England. The founder and chairman of the firm behind one, Paul Atherley, also heads Pensana, a mining-and-processing company, which is building Europe’s first rare-earths separation plant on the Humber estuary. It will be fed mainly by ores from its mine in Angola. It is backed by the government’s Automotive Transformation Fund .
The government is also pursuing international co-operation. It has joined nine other countries and the European Commission in the Minerals Security Partnership, an American-led initiative to secure supply chains. It has signed bilateral agreements—for example with Saudi Arabia, which is keen to develop critical-mineral deposits it values at $1.3trn, and South Africa, a source of platinum, palladium, manganese and more. But how all this might translate into secure supplies is unclear.
Collaborators double as competitors. America is offering subsidies of $369bn to firms exploiting and processing critical minerals and making batteries, turbines and so forth on American soil, and is luring manufacturers from Europe. In Brussels the commission has proposed extending an easing of the’s state-aid rules to nurture critical-mineral-hungry industries. In March it proposed targets for domestic extraction and processing of critical minerals and diversifying supply .
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