Inside every wind turbine, inside computers, phones and other high-tech equipment — from medical scanners to electric cars — there are materials known as rare earths. This small group of 17 elements are in extraordinary demand — but their supply is limited and most existing sources have been snapped up by China.
Last month Beijing — which controls more than 90 percent of the reserves of these essential elements — warned that its supplies were diminishing, despite quotas to limit exports. Chinese officials said in a memo: “After more than 50 years of excessive mining, China’s rare earth reserves have kept declining and the years of guaranteed rare earth supply have been reducing.”
This could spell disaster for the future of green technologies such as renewable energy equipment and low-carbon vehicles.
That is why Europe has been engaging in a strenuous bout of diplomacy with Greenland to allow access to the island’s natural resources. According to geological estimates, below Greenland’s vast ice sheet there could lie enough rare earths to satisfy at least a quarter of future global demand.
European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani has led the push, forging an agreement with Greenland to look at joint development of some of the deposits. The agreement will extend beyond rare earths to metals such as gold and iron and potentially to oil and gas, which are abundant in the waters around the island.
“We need innovative partnerships with other countries over raw materials. Companies are pushing the commission for this — they need this to survive. Europe is not so wealthy in raw materials and needs to do better [at forming partnerships with other countries],” Tajani said, adding that rising commodity prices had created “an intrinsic incentive [to governments] to be more responsive, because companies have to pay more for their raw materials.”
Greenland, in return, is keen to press ahead with exploring for its mineral resources, which in many cases lie trapped under 150m of ice. Henrik Stendal, head of the geology department at Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, a Dane who has worked in Greenland since 1970, said: “We have shown that we have huge potential — it has been an eye-opener for the mining industry. The EU has shown a lot of interest and that’s been very good — we believe this could be very valuable for Greenland. There could be benefits for everyone — at present most of our income is from fishing and a little bit of tourism, so the government really wants another income.”
However, the key question is whether these activities can be carried out without damaging Greenland’s pristine Arctic environment. Stendal says the government is determined to ensure miners adhere to the highest international standards, though he admits officials have little experience of regulating extraction. Jon Burgwald of environmental pressure group Greenpeace fears not: “I’m definitely nervous about the current mining projects. The information we need on these operations has not been made public.”
Burgwald says waste water from the mines is a major issue, because if it is not disposed of properly it could have “very serious impacts.” The use of toxic chemicals in some mining processes is another problem and the transport of the products to and from the mine sites could also raise issues. Equally problematic is the fact that some of the rare earths are likely to be found in deposits that contain uranium, which could lead to the dispersal of uranium dust in a pristine environment.
Mikkel Myrup, of the local environmental organization Avataq, believes the Greenland government lacks the capabilities to ensure the environmental safety of mines at present.
“We do not have the institutions ready, or the competencies and we are facing a huge invasion from many big multinational companies,” Myrup said.
The scramble for the Arctic is part of a bigger pattern, a looming resource crunch that connects commuters across Europe delayed by stolen power lines or vanishing manhole covers — a crunch fueled by pressure on crucial commodities across the world. Rapid economic growth in large developing nations — China, India, Brazil and others — along with growing urbanization and a swelling global population set to top 9 billion within three decades have made unprecedented demands on natural resources. In the past few years there have been food crises, soaring fossil fuel prices and hikes in the cost of traditional raw materials such as iron, steel and copper, as well as rare earths.
Countries in control of such resources can take a commanding position in the world economy. China realized this years ago and has not only cornered the market in rare earths, but embarked on a land grab to secure its food supplies. Other countries have been slower off the mark, but are trying to catch up.
This race for resources is threatening some of the world’s most fragile environments, from the Arctic to the Amazon, from Madagascar to Papua New Guinea.
Recognizing this, Europe’s prospective partnerships extend well beyond Greenland.
“We are working with Africa — and in particular South Africa, where there is an abundance of many important raw materials,” Tajani said. “The EU is signing an agreement with the African Union and we have also signed an agreement on raw materials with Chile, Argentina, Uruguay. We now even have a dialogue with China and Russia for the first time.”
In return, according to Tajani, Europe can offer its expertise.
“Technological assistance is something we can contribute overseas,” he said. “This will be valuable to other economies.”
Tajani also said Europe must seek to use resources better, wasting less and recycling more: “We want better resource efficiency. One of the uses of the economic crisis is that it has become more important for companies to show competitiveness by being more efficient with resources and of course for a green economy this is also a top priority.”
The reuse of resources would also be key, he said.
“Recycling is very important; we need to do more recycling in Europe. At present, we ship a lot of waste to China, but why not do more of it in Europe? If we send abroad, we have all the side costs associated, but if we do it here we develop another industry that is very important for raw materials for industry,” he said.
A recycling industry could also be a source of exports.
“If we do this efficiently, we can export technology to other countries that need to be regulated properly,” he said.
Tajani also urged a new focus on finding resources within the continent that have been overlooked, abandoned, or deemed uneconomic to extract until now.
“Many mines were left unexploited, but now we can extract more cost-efficiently and so we are looking at areas where we can do that,” he said.
He pointed to Greece as one area where more resource extraction could take place and boost the economy. Some of Greece’s potential mining areas remain underexploited, in part because of increasing pressure on the land and because the focus of the economy shifted to tourism.
As part of this push, Tajani is keen to explore mining activities on Europe’s densely populated landmass — including “urban mining.”
At present, this is rarely practised because of the difficulty of putting mining operations into inhabited areas, but with the advance of greener techniques it could become more viable.
This would mean people being closer to mines, with all the environmental and development difficulties that entails. Such operations could also include mining old landfill sites for materials — in China, companies have been excavating rubbish tips for silicon and other components for use in solar panels.
Eastern Europe may also offer some potential for increasing the production of existing mines, according to Tajani. Beyond that, however, and a few areas of the Arctic and Barents Sea, the scope for extracting new resources from Europe is limited, making Greenland an attractive proposition.
Greenland’s resources could include nearly 50 billion barrels of oil, a massive potential resource for the EU as most of Europe’s currently exploited oil and gas fields belong to Norway, a non-EU member, but if new oil and gas could be found within less explored waters, that would also be a prize. Tajani pointed to the Barents Sea — within the Arctic Circle — as another possibility.
Greenpeace has mounted a strong campaign to protect Arctic waters from oil and gas drilling. The group argues that recovering these fossil fuels is dangerous not only for the climate, but also for the pristine environment because oil spills or blowouts of the type that blighted the Gulf of Mexico would have catastrophic consequences.
By contrast, Greenpeace is not opposing mining on the ice sheet if it is tightly regulated. For Greenpeace, the urgent demand for renewable energy technology means mining for rare earths can be environmentally beneficial — if it is done in the right way.
“Mining can be controllable, in a way that is not possible with deep sea drilling,” says Jon Burgwald, an Arctic expert at Greenpeace. “We are keeping a close eye on this and we could oppose [developments] if we saw they were not being done right, but there is no doubt that opening up for mining in Greenland still could have a very positive impact.”
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