mining

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 A single electric-car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds & requires 500,000 lbs of raw materials to be moved.

Ever see "Gold Rush" on Discovery? All the land moved to get some grams of gold? 

Now imagine that process for Rare Earth Metals (RREs).

That's "clean energy." 

Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete & 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic.

Solar power requires even more cement, steel, glass, & RREs.

Global silver and indium mining will jump 250% and 1,200% respectively over the next couple of decades to provide the materials necessary to meet expected solar "demand."

Lithium, cobalt, manganese, are heavily used in batteries. 

These mines are located in child labor driven countries like Africa, Chile, Peru, & China.

It's estimated that there are 600,000 kids in Africa mining the metals & minerals.

China uses concentration camps to mine 70% of the worlds "Rare Earth Metals."

Here are the RREs (the "iums") & use cases:

Lanthanum - super conductive

Cerium - metal alloys

Praseodymium - magnets

Neodymium - magnets, lasers

Samarium - electric motors

Europium - lasers, magnets, electric motors

Gadolinium - cathode ray tubes

Terbium - magnets

Dysprosuim - magnets

Holmium - super conductive

Erbium - fiber optics, nuclear medicine

Thulium - radiography, high temperture super conductives

Ytterbium - stainless steel, crystal lasers

Lutetium - radiation

Scandium - Lighting, aluminum alloy 

Yttrium - fuel cells, magnets

Beryllium - nuclear power, telecom 

Gallium - semiconductors 

Germanium - solar cells, optics

Indium - chips, LCD screens

Niobium - satellites, electric vehicles, nuclear, jewelry 

Scandium - defense aircraft

Tantalum - gaming systems

Vanadium - oxidation 

China's control on RREs & Other Metals:

Antimony - 87%

Baryte - 44%

Bismuth - 82%

Flourspar - 64%

Gallum - 73%

Germanium - 67%

Indium - 57%

Magnesium - 87%

Natural graphite - 69%

Phosphorus Rock - 44%

Phosphorus - 58%

Scandium- 66%

Silicon Metal - 61%

Tungsten - 84%

Vanadium - 53%

Light RREs - 95%

Heavy RREs - 95%

Electric vehicles (EVs) contain 20 lbs -25 lbs of RREs.

Africa (where China has a massive presence) 64% of all Cobalt is mined in the DRC (Congo) 

Russia has near half of Palladium 

France 43% of Hafnium

Brazil is near 90% of all Niobium 

Indonesia is all about Rubber to nearly 33% of all supply

So what does the USA have?

Beryllium (90%) 

Helium (73%)

What does it take to "refine" the essential metals?

200:1 is the ration of ore need to be dug up, moved, crushed, and refined to produce Copper.

20 to 160 tons of ore to obtain 1 ton of neodymium 

Cobalt ratio from ore is 1500 tons to 1 ton. 

An EV will require 6x the materials to make it than today ICEV.

9x more is needed by a windmill than a natural gas power plant.