Rare Earth Extraction

Lindsey Hilsum is a reporter for Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom.  Her reports on China’s rare earth mining industry show that wind turbines and hybrid cars are not green at all.  Rare earth extraction is extremely dirty.  Here is her article on the Channel 4 blog “The non-green processes behind green technologies”:

Two weeks in China have shown me the environmental cost of saving the planet.

It’s all about rare earths, elements with magnetic properties and high conductivity, which are the key to new green technologies such as wind turbines and hybrid cars. I’ve just seen how they’re extracted and processed, and it’s not pretty.

In Jiangxi, in south-eastern China, mafia bosses collude with local Communist Party officials to extract the valuable elements from the hillsides by pumping acid into the earth. The villager who took us around wore a motorcycle helmet in case anyone saw her – she was terrified.

The central government ordered the plants to close, because of the environmental damage they were doing, but she said they operate under cover of darkness, protected by armed guards.

Her husband has been in prison since September because he and other villagers blocked the roads to stop truckloads of acid and toxic chemicals.

They used to live off rice and ducks, she said, but now the rice withers and the ducks grow to only half their normal size. The land has been poisoned.

It was a similar story in Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, where the majority of rare earths are mined and processed.

Rarely have I been somewhere so polluted and miserable. (The fact that it was below freezing didn’t help).

But the story’s bigger than that. The demand for rare earth is rocketing, as the world tries to move to a low carbon economy. Suddenly people are waking up to the fact that we’re dependent on China for these essential elements.

They exist elsewhere, including the USA, Canada and Australia, but for the past 10 years no one has been able to compete with China on price.

So rare earths are hot, I learnt, when I went to the 5th International Metal Events rare earths conference in Hong Kong. China is restricting export and investors who last year wouldn’t part with their cash for a rare earth project in Australia are now more than keen.

The price is going up, western governments are beginning to understand that they need to guarantee supply, and many say a shortage is inevitable.

So much for the low carbon future.

According to her report, a Toyota Prius uses 1 kg of neodymium and each battery use about 10 kg of lanthanum.  Compact fluorescent light bulbs use europium, terbium and yttrium.  The permanent magnets used in a wind turbine need about two tonnes of neodymium and other rare earths.

And of course, it takes diesel fuel to mine and extract the rare earth elements, to manufacture the hybrid vehicles and wind turbines, to transport the hybrid vehicles and wind turbines around the world, and to operate the cranes used to install the wind turbines.

The only way to be “green” is to reduce the amount of resources that we use.  That means taking public transportation is better than driving a Prius.  Buying a small home instead of a gigantic McMansion to reduce heating/cooling cost.  And there is no dancing around the issue:  reduce human population.  Not just slow the growth but reduce the overall numbers.

Below is her must see video on the rare earth extraction process in China.

Shortage of Rare Earth Elements Could Thwart Innovation

Another story on rare earth elements.   I wrote a previous post on the same topic back in September 2009.  This time it is from Live Science by Jeremy Hsu.  Full article is quoted below.  One should be aware that a lot of the “clean” and “green” technology is anything but clean or green.  Wind turbines appears to be clean, but when you look inside you will find powerful magnets that are made from rare earth elements.  The extraction of of rare earth elements in China is anything but clean or green.  I will write more in future posts about the mining of these elements and the environmental pollution that it causes.

Shortage of Rare Earth Elements Could Thwart Innovation

By Jeremy Hsu, TechNewsDaily Contributor

posted: 15 February 2010 10:29 am ET

Silicon may represent one of Earth’s more common elements, but it transformed Silicon Valley into a high-tech corridor and helped usher the world into the Information Age.

Now rare earth elements with exotic names such as europium and tantalum hold the key to hybrid cars, wind turbines and crystal-clear TV displays — that is, if a looming supply shortage doesn’t stop innovation in its tracks.

Rare earth elements, called “rare earths” by those who use and study them, often prove irreplaceable in green technologies and high-tech consumer products. Yet the world’s production of rare minerals relies mainly upon China, and the Chinese government warned last year that its own rising demand will soon force it to stop exporting the precious elements.

“Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China’s growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China’s exports of rare earths,” said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

China has also encouraged companies that use rare earths to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, Menzie told TechNewsDaily. But some companies fear moving because of concerns about intellectual property protection, he added.

Deposits of rare earth elements exist in the United States, Canada and other countries. But only China’s government supports the mining and refining industries capable of processing the resources from start to finish.

Jack Lifton, an independent consultant for U.S. rare earths, thinks it’s time for the U.S. government to subsidize the creation of such industries to ensure a future supply, lest a shortage of rare earth elements cripple production of high-tech products.

Examples of rare earth elements used by the technology industry include:

Europium: This extremely rare but critical chemical makes the red color for television monitors and energy-efficient LED light bulbs. China is the only country today that produces europium, dysprosium and terbium, which are necessary for either boosting the efficient operating temperature of magnets or for producing red in color displays. In December, USGS scientists discovered Alaskan deposits of europium, but even the few U.S. companies that mine rare earth elements must send the resources to China for processing.

Lanthanum: A primary component of the nickel-metal hydride battery in Toyota’s popular hybrid car, Prius. The Prius also incorporates neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Lifton estimates that Toyota may use as much as 7,500 tons of lanthanum and 1,000 tons of neodymium per year to build its Prius cars. That dependence on rare earth elements has prompted the company to search for alternative sources outside China.

Neodymium: This represents a main component of the permanent magnets at the heart of the most efficient wind turbines. China’s own wind production efforts could consume all the available neodymium production and leave nothing for the rest of the world’s booming wind industry, Lifton notes in a recent report titled “The Rare Earth Crisis of 2009.” Neodymium is also used in the glass of incandescent light bulbs produced by General Electric, which has unsurprisingly invested in both Chinese and alternative sources of rare earth elements.

While the rare earth elements are crucial to the future of high-tech industries, some of these more basic elements – such as iron and aluminum – remain invaluable to basic infrastructure such as roads and communications needed to build a modern economy.

“If you are a developing country trying to build a manufacturing industry, the traditional ferrous (iron) and base metals can be very important as can construction materials such as cement and crushed stone,” said Menzie of the USGS. “Countries such as China have been developing their manufacturing industries and require large amounts of iron ore, nickel, zinc and other alloying metals, as well as copper and fuels.”

Oil and the End of Globalization

Jeff Rubin

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin.  I decided to read Jeff Rubin’s book after watching his presentation at the Business of Climate Change conference in Toronto.  My previous entry has a link to the video on YouTube. I have read many peak oil books already so I was a little skeptical about “yet another peak oil book”.  But this one is a little different.  Rubin does not spent a lot of time trying to explain oil field depletion or the Hubbert curve.  This is not a heavily technical book like Matthew Simmons’ “Twilight In The Desert” or Kenneth Deffeyes’ “Beyond Oil”.   This book is more about the social changes that will occur in a world of  PERMANENT  high oil prices.  It is about simple things like getting coffee in the morning or having Chinese food for dinner. Coffee beans are grown all over the world and transported by diesel powered ships and diesel powered trucks to coffee houses all over the world.  How much will that coffee cost when diesel fuel cost $10 a gallon?  And will you still be having Chinese food when the ingredients have to be transported 5000 miles and the people preparing the food cannot afford to immigrate to your country?

Thomas Friedman thinks that the world is flat.  Jeff Rubin does not.  Globalization is a brief experiment made possible only with cheap oil.  It is an experiment that is coming to an end.  Rubin goes into detail explaining the social aspects of high oil prices, from food production to immigration.  The latter is an interesting new concept that I have not thought of in the context of peak oil.  A society’s tolerance of immigrants is directly related to the health of the economy.  If the economy is under a permanent strain of high energy prices, immigration will likely not be embraced.

There will be big macroeconomic shifts in the economy. A whole lot of people currently working in the service economy like serving coffee or processing insurance claims will have to adjust to new lives in the manufacturing or farm economy.  We will need toaster repairmen because we simply cannot afford to throw the old one away and buy a new one.  We will need more farm hands instead of baristas because there will not be a lot of people drinking expensive coffee.  There will be a lot more food produced locally and local farmers need all the help they can get when they cannot afford to operate diesel powered farm equipment.

The world of high energy prices is a much smaller world.  It is a world focused on the local community.  It is a much better world in my opinion.  This is a very good book.  I highly recommend it.