Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the oil crisis of the 1970s, the US has relentlessly pursued the utopia of becoming energy dependent. But with persistent oil crises and severe oil price shocks, it has become abundantly clear that Washington will never achieve true energy independence by relying solely on fossil fuels, even as the United States finally becomes a net exporter for oil. The majority of American citizens feel that way too the government should ” …concentrate on developing alternative sources of energy over expanding fossil fuel sources” in a bid to reduce climate change.
Whether it is in the pursuit of energy dependence or in an effort to improve climate change, there is an unmistakable shift to sustainable continue in the U.S., with renewable energy accounting for 11.4% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2019 compared to just 4% two decades ago.
But as the shift to clean and renewable energy begins to gain serious momentum, the United States now faces another conundrum: Being too dependent on China for the minerals used for clean energy systems.
China supplies ~ 80% of the rare earth elements (REE) used by the United States for the production of windmills, solar panels, electric car batteries, cell phones, computers, medical equipment, national defense systems, and even in oil and gas technologies.
Source: EIA
Depending on China
Back in 2018, the Department of Interior published a list of 35 minerals that it classified as ‘critical’ to the U.S. economy. The alarming part: The US relies entirely on imports from China for 14 of these minerals, and imports 75% of at least ten more.
These figures are not exaggerations: According to the US Geological Survey, China 80% of the US ‘REE in 2019. Yet another worrying statistic: While the U.S. mined 18,000 metric tons of its own rare earths in 2018 and 26,000 metric tons in 2019, the U.S. Geological Survey has revealed that all domestic production of mineral concentrate was exported. Just three decades ago, the US was the number one producer of the world’s minerals, but has dropped to seventh place.
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China’s vice-presidential grip on the US REE supply chain would become as clear as daylight when Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden steps up to the Oval Office and begins implementing it $ 5 trillion climate plan.
Biden has proposed a very ambitious $ 5 trillion-plus climate proposal, which he says would be necessary if the US agreed to join the EU by becoming a non-zero carbon emissions country by 2050. Biden has proposed a shaky $ 1.7 trillion in federal spending over the next decade to achieve this goal, with expected the private sector to chip in balance. Biden says the taxpayer’s costs can be recovered by repeating the generous tax bonanza that Trump gave American corporations and also by eliminating subsidies for the fossil fuel sector.
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With China being home to almost half of the world’s known REE deposits, the US will have little choice but to increase its imports of these minerals from the Middle Kingdom as they transition to renewable, something that is not made easy by the fact that the whole world is in the same race to change from fossil fuels to cleaner energy. Furthermore, the spectacle of China uses its strategic control of REEs a trade war remains very real.
Various energy experts have recognized this reality, and have insisted that the US will only achieve true energy independence by inventing affordable clean energy technologies and ensuring that they are manufactured locally and sold worldwide.
As U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, has explained: We must reverse our devastating dependence on China and other peoples and rebuild domestic supply chains for everything from personal protective equipment to clean energy technologies. ”
But this is not just about lowering our dependence on China out of an abundance of caution. Dr Arun Majumdar of Sanford University and co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy has indicated that we import more than 50% of our oil at a cost of about $ 300 billion a year – money that could be used to create jobs if we were self-sufficient in our energy needs.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
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