Never heard of REM? You will. Rare earth minerals are 17 different metals, usually found together, that are needed to make clean energy products as diverse as electric car batteries, wind turbines and condensed fluorescent lightbulbs.
China has half the world’s reserves but is steadily slowing exports to meet it’s own increasing needs. We have been importing 90% of what we use from them. But by 2013 China may be using all its REM itself.
A Congressional subcommittee heard last week that we need to come up with a solution to that problem in the next two years or we won’t be able to compete.
The Department of Energy announced last Wednesday it will devise a strategy to diversify the supply line, finds substitutes and recycle the metals.
Only one U.S. company, Molycorp, is mining the metals right now. (BTW, China tried unsuccessfully to buy Molycorp’s parent company, Unocal.) Molycorp was denied a DOE loan guarantee to expand and asked Congress last week for help.
Reserves also exist in Canada, Australia, India and Russia. But these metals are expensive and difficult to mine.
(Sources: E&E Daily, E&ENewsPM)
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