New U.S. Mining Projects Required To Support Electric Vehicle Push
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The U.S. is ramping up efforts to increase the adoption of electric vehicles, with several major U.S. automakers, including General Motors, rushing to develop and debut a wide variety of EV products. However, in order to support all those new EVs, new U.S. mining projects may be necessary to source the metals required for electric vehicle production, which could run afoul of environmentalists and other groups.
Per a recent post from Reuters, which cites a study by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, the proposed U.S. mining projects currently on the table could provide enough metal to build legions of new electric vehicles, including enough copper to build more than 6 million EVs, enough lithium to build more than 2 million EVs, and enough nickel to build more than 60,000 EVs.
However, opposition to the new mining projects could hamper progress, with environmentalist groups, ranchers, and indigenous groups resisting mining efforts. For example, in North Carolina, Piedmont Lithium Inc. may lose its local zoning permits after failing to keep local landowners appraised of its development plans, while early next year, federal judges will rule on two mine approvals to Lithium Americas Corp and Rio Tinto Plc, granted by former President Trump.
“If we don’t start getting some mining projects under construction this coming year, then we will not have the raw materials domestically to support EV manufacturing,” said James Calaway, executive chairman of lithium-boron supplier ioneer Ltd.
President Biden has also signaled a desire to rely on foreign sources for new metals to support electric vehicle production. Although the move is intended to appease environmentalists, it could also offset some of the environmental benefits touted by EV proponents, given raw materials would need to be shipped from overseas, thus boosting the greenhouse gas impact of EV production.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration has highlighted a selection of domestic mining projects to support EVs, including a geothermal lithium mining operation in California supported by General Motors.
On GM’s side, the automaker is ramping up electric vehicle efforts with the construction of several new Ultium battery factories, including facilities in Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee. GM has previously indicated that it will launch 30 new EVs globally by 2025.
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This is why the EV push is smoke and mirrors. They want to limit CO2 but they don’t want the US to use its own resources to do it. So then we have to ship the materials from other countries and ruin their land. So the US has to rely on other countries again. This is idiotic, I think we should have balance of gas and EV. We are never going to get to full EV until we don’t need to mine the entire world for precious metals that probably 50 percent will never be recycled. Why aren’t the enviromentalist pushing Nuclear? Its the cleanest form of energy but seems there are other motives behind this EV push.
It’s the same motive as everything else in this world…. Money.
Climate change will never go away. First it was global cooling, then global warming, now it is climate change. They will just change the name and the reasons and push for those changes so money gets directed to them.
But will those money moguls and investment firms want to fund mining in states that want it shut off, in a turbulent political climate were the money faucet could be turned off???? Who here fully believes their claimed of no more ICE vehicles by 2030???? If there’s doubt here with the layman, you can bet investment firms are going to really doubt. Currently GM, Ford and FCA have mostly “invested” their gov grants… and little of their own money……. so it’s obvious they don’t believe either.
This mining argument is strategic and environmental. We need to have local sources for the materials and its a waste to ship resources across the world. Can’t rely on other countries and long supply chains anymore. Interesting conundrum Biden is in here…
Yeah this is ridiculous. Outside of places like Australia, mining overseas is going to be far worse for the environment than mining in the US due to the lack of regulations. Plus as others have said the impact of shipping everything over the ocean.
Go out to Wyoming and visit the powder river basin. All open pit coal mining, everyone’s favorite mines to hate. Check out the land after they are done though. Before they start mining, all the top soil is scraped off and stored. Topographic maps are taken of the existing terrain. Then they mine it. Then they fill it in, grade the land exactly the way it was before, replace the top soil, plant native vegetation and add rock formations, and then they have to prove to the state the land is sustaining wildlife. It’s very hard to see the difference between the mined land and the virgin areas. If you mine this stuff in Africa or Asia, that simply does not happen.
It’s gotta be mined, if you want it done in an environmentally friendly way, do it here
Ha! Mining regulations in North Carolina are lax. Only a “notice of violation” will go to Piedmont Lithium if they contaminate well water or dry up wells. PL has dewatering maps – but, oops, they forgot to include most homeowners wells in the proposed mining area. All will be affected with the water table lowered and a plan to dry up wells in a populous (Charlotte metro) area. The lithium ore is of poor quality and only about 1% usable product will come out of the 500 foot deep pits. The strong-arming of residents to get them to sell their property for a pittance is reason enough to deny the re-zoning.
Yes good destroy the mountains we don’t need them anyways.
This ev craze is, pardon the expression, ‘putting cart before the horse’. Most people don’t want them and resources and infrastructure are nowhere ready. Whatever happened to the hole in the ozone layer that was going to kill us all?
In November the voters in Maine, on a ballot question, killed the project to bring hydro transmission lines from Canada through their state to Massachusetts. I also wonder how many trees have been permanently destroyed in the name of solar farms.
Lithium mining is well under way in Nevada check it out, a good investment Cypress Development (CYDVF).
They just started production and I’ll bet some big Company will buy them out at a high price sometime in the near future, if they don’t hold and sell the lithium themselves.
Well I’m sure the current administration do not like to hear of this. As far as they are concentered they want their cake and eat it too, which means importing vital strategic minerals from outside of the country while not investing in US mines. In the US they can actually enforce safe mining procedures and positively impact the economy, while reducing vulnerabilities and dependence on foreign minerals.
Per the article, “the proposed U.S. mining projects currently on the table could provide enough metal to build legions of new electric vehicles, including enough copper to build more than 6 million EVs, enough lithium to build more than 2 million EVs, and enough nickel to build more than 60,000 EVs.”
Annual U.S. auto sales typically run over 15M ANNUAL units (before the microchip shortage). If the U.S. is to get to even 50% EV production all these proposed U.S. mining projects would not provide enough of these metals meet the requirements for to build 50% EVs (7.5M units) for ONE year. Based this this projection the U.S. will have to follow Biden’s plan to import from other countries, however, the U.S. will be competing with the increasing EV build requirements in these countries which will of course drive up the metal prices world-wide as well as incurring shipping costs to the U.S. While the technology to lower EV production cost is advancing just the basic cost of materials will be driven up by this huge demand. If EVs are to succeed in volume production new technologies need to be developed that do not require 1500 lbs of expensive metals per vehicle to travel 300 miles. Hybrids are an interim solution but GM in particular seems to have rejected that route and bet the company on pure BEVs. Thankfully the U.S. government will be there to bail them out (again).
Many of you remember the first cell phones back in the day… The same here except these are 1000 times larger. The environmentalists shut down mining operations back then and US manufacturers went overseas to get the precious metals. That decision created a powerful selling market for mobile phones companies that made billions for them and their stockholders. One company decided to open their factories right there to save on shipping. All is good right… until it’s time to dispose of the used metals. Collect the batteries and phones and ship them to a third world country and let them deal with the chemical issues.
I see it happening all over again, Americans need high tech but destroy other countries except on a 100 times larger scale with EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines.
Is it really for environmental or billions of dollars…
Suprise, Surprise, Surprise. People want electric vehicles, but they are starting to see they are not really clean energy after all
While Mary Barra wants only to produce electric vehicles in all forms of transportation in the near future, Where in the hell does she expect all this electricity to come from? Our current power grid is already beyond capacity, and building new plants is going to be limited to “green” technologies because the libs don’t want nuclear or coal, not even natural gas or any other practical power source. It simply is not going to happen! The Greenies want their cake, and eat it too! How stupid can you get! GM’s aggressive drive into electric vehicles only could put them out of business once and for all. Meanwhile, they are simply not addressing the current market place with their line-up. The Cadillac CT5 for example, has fallen to only 1% of the market sectors taking very big hits on falling sales, but they want to blame it all on chip shortages which they created by outsourcing everything to China and other Communist and third-world countries. They are driving forward with unrealistic plans and denying reality! Meanwhile, they build only truck-type vehicles.