Without lithium, copper and rare earths, our mobile phones, electric cars and wind turbines wouldn't function. Currently we are almost exclusively dependent on China for these critical raw materials. But there might be a way out.
Foto: Roger Kisby / DER SPIEGEL
Reliable supplies of the raw materials necessary for the economy of the future is currently one of the most important challenges facing the global economy. Whether at the industry’s premier trade fare Hannover Messe, in European Parliament, at company headquarters or in lobbying discussion in Berlin, everyone sees the accelerating exploitation of metals, ores and minerals as inescapable for the salvation of the planet – for clean energy and the transportation revolution.
Buchholz describes the current situation as a"systemic competition,” and says it is long past time for German companies to finally invest significant amounts of money into guaranteeing future supplies of raw materials. Instead of simply buying what they need on global markets, Buchholz says they must invest in exploitation and refinement, including buying ownership stakes in mines.
Concerns have become so great that raw material supplies were a major focus of the recent G-7 summit in Japan. Though the heads of state and government were unable to agree on the establishment of a"Critical Raw Materials Club,” as the European Commission had recently proposed, a five-point plan was devised for the identification and exploitation of sources for critical metals and minerals.
There is a second approach to the mine as well, requiring a detour of several hours through the scraggy landscape. Shortly before sundown, the second roadblock comes into view. Again, an official state security vehicle is present. And again, all cars are sent away.There are many reasons for why China is making its best-known export into a state secret. The raw materials business is rather filthy.
The cancer rate in towns located along the lakeshore is high. Almost every family here, say residents, has lost at least one member to cancer. The tap water that comes out of the faucet in a restaurant next to the lake shimmers, with metal residuals visible to the naked eye.
And the country’s goal of dominating the world market has long since expanded far beyond national borders. Since 2018, the AMG mine has been producing 90,000 tons of spodumene per year, a total that will be boosted to 130,000 tons starting this summer. The trucks rumble some 20 kilometers across dusty, unpaved roads, bouncing through potholes to a highway. From there, they travel a bit more than 500 kilometers to an industrial port in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where the sacks are loaded onto ships and sent to Shanghai. Once in China, the spodumene is processed into a lithium compound.
The border between California and Nevada is home to an austere landscape of red rock that makes up the Mojave National Preserve. Deep inside the park is Mountain Pass Mine. Aside from a few desert tortoises and stray campers, though, nobody is particularly disturbed by the din coming from the mine’s outsized machinery. Once or twice a week is"blast day” at Mountain Pass, when explosives are detonated in the red rock inside the crater.
MP Minerals is particularly proud of its"environmentally conscious” processes. The water used in processing, says Sloustcher, is recycled and reused. There are no polluted lakes of the kind seen in Baotou. The mine, says Ryan Corbett, the chief financial officer of MP Minerals, is proof that the valuable raw materials can be produced in the West as well.
There is an incredible race currently underway for the best deposits around the world, says the CEO of Lithium Americas, Jonathan Evans, who used to work for Bayer in Düsseldorf. Every carmaker currently needs lithium, he says, since they are all jumping into the electric vehicle production. The market, he says, is unbelievably"tight,” and prices are rising.
Mathematically, the potential is huge. By 2020, around 25,000 tons of old fluorescent powder had been collected in the European Union. Because it contains toxic mercury, it is stored as sulfide in old tunnels underground. It could be"easily procured in large quantities and exploited using biofishing," Lederer says. According to her calculations, just under 4,800 tons of rare earths could be recovered in this way – theoretically enough to supply Germany for years to come.
In fact, this is only partly true. There are also reserves of lithium, rare earths and tin under Europe's soils. Sweden's state-owned mining company LKAB, for example, announced at the beginning of the year that it had discovered Europe's largest deposit of rare earths north of the Arctic Circle. In the Upper Rhine Plain, an Australian-German consortium has plans to filter lithium from underground thermal springs.
Instead of promoting greater acceptance, the industry simply ignored the problem. German carmakers long refused to accept that the era of the internal combustion engine was coming to an end and that in the era of e-mobility, completely different primary products and raw materials would suddenly determine success or failure.
The German government isn't interested in shouldering the blame. Franziska Brantner, the parliamentary state secretary in the Economics Ministry responsible for raw materials, is astonished by the chutzpah of the corporations. Of course, China is the world's largest supplier of processed critical raw materials and rare earths, she says."But that has nothing to do with the fact that these substances don't exist elsewhere.
But it is first and foremost the business community that must step up. The European Commission has proposed that large corporations be subject to a kind of audit for particularly critical and strategic raw materials in order to identify their own vulnerability. Brantner also wants to encourage companies to stockpile more critical raw materials. So far, this hasn't been worthwhile for companies for tax reasons, because it requires space and also ties up capital.
In the past, there had been little talk in Germany's raw materials strategy of the country truly being on level-footing with the countries doing the mining. But that's now set to change. With a focus on local value creation, increased sustainability and human rights, you would have a unique selling point, argues Viktoria Reisch of Germanwatch, an NGO promoting sustainability, climate action and global equity in Berlin.
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