Smart and Serious - A glimpse of US strategy on Rare Earth

Why rare earth elements are desirable?
1. The ability to form unusually strong, lightweight magnetic materials when alloyed with other metals.
2. Optical propertie including fluorescence and emission of coherent light
These properties made rare earth metals valuable for clean energy technologies.

Why rare earth is monopolied?
Rare earths are difficult to extract in profitable quantities without substantial time and cost. This led to geographically concentrated production.


History of geographic concentration in the production of rare earths

Prior to 1948: placer sand deposits (砂矿) in Brazil and India.
1948 – 1970s: monazite deposits (独居石) in South Africa and elsewhere.
1970s-1980s: Mountain Pass mine in California （译作派斯山，帕斯山，加州山口矿）
Today: China.

Why is it so important today?

Worldwide investment in Clean Energy.

US: $80 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Electric vehicles; batteries and advanced energy storage: a smarter and more reliable electric grid; wind and solar technologies. Goal: double renewable energy generation and manufacturing capacities by 2012. Deploy hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure to power them: weatherize at least half a million homes; expand grid.

China: plans to deploy electric cars in 13 major cities. Connecting urban centers with high-speed rail. Building wind farms. Ultra-supercritical advanced coal plants and ultra-high-voltage long-distance transmission lines with low line loss.

India: National Solar Mission, aiming to reach 20 gigawatts of installed solar capacity by 2020.

Denmark: the world’s leading producer of wind turbines(风力发电机), earning more than $4 billion a year from that industry

Germany and Spain: world’s top installers of solar photovoltaic panels (太阳能光伏板), accounting for nearly three-quarters of a global market.

What can we do?

Three Strategies: 1. Diversified sources of supply 2. Substitutes 3. Recycling


Source: Keynote Address, David Sandalow, Assistant Secretary for Policy & Interntional Affairs, US Department of Energy. March 2010.