Rare earth minerals new reason to worry about China: It's hording supply needed for clean energy

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)

No new coal plants in 2009; reason to celebrate!

(Photo of defunct Seaholm power plant in Austin, Texas, being turned into civic center, from Flickr and photographer Craig Allen.)

The year 2009 was a “coal-free” year. No new coal-fired power plants started construction in the U.S. Thanks go to the Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign and other environmentalists who have gone to court and protested new plants every step of the way.

Last year 26 U.S. new coal plants were defeated or abandoned, following on the heels of 2 dozen stopped in 2007 and 2008.

In addition to hard work by enviro groups, the cause was helped by the economic slump (which reduced need), a lower price for natural gas (a cleaner alternative), uncertainty about pending climate legislation (to put a price on carbon) and EPA regulation of greenhouse gases, as well as increased interest in clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.

Coal provides power for nearly half the electricity in the U.S., though in the past year its share declined from 49% to 45%.

Grassroots antipathy against coal has grown, not only because it emits the most global warming gases (twice as much as natural gas), but also because of its mining procedures (mountain top removal is becoming more common) and disposal problems (toxic coal ash), as well as health concerns about sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide.

A recent Washington Post poll showed about two-thirds of the public support federal regulations to reduce power plant emissions.

In 2001, 150 new plants were on the drawing board. But since then, 111 have been stopped or dropped. Today, there are 90 proposals. Some companies are saying they are looking at other sources of power. Duke Energy, for example, may steer clear of coal after it completes plants underway in Indiana and North Carolina. And Progress Energy is closing several coal-powered plants in N.C.

Coal use in general is down about 10% over the past year, according to the Energy Information Administration, which forecasts it will bounce back 4% in 2010.

One new plant was given a permit in Michigan the last week of the year, though it still needs certification of necessity. In exchange, the company, Consumers Energy, will close three old plants – with the stipulation it can keep two of them running if the need is there when the plant is finished in about 7 years. The new plant will cut sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury 80-90%, the company maintains. Environmental groups will continue to fight the plant.

EIA sees U.S. electricity demand increasing 26% by 2030, and says coal’s share will remain about the same – at 45.7%. On the other hand, the Electric Power Research Institute forecasts coal’s share in 2030 at 38%, with natural gas and alternative sources growing.

You can view the Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign map and actions being taken in each state.

(Sources: ClimateWire, Reuters PlanetArk, Sierra Club, EIA,
Detroit Free Press.)