Rare Earth FutureRare Earths: Key to Securing Clean Enery Future in United States
By Damon van der Linde – Exclusive to Rare Earth Investing News
TheUS Department of Energy (DOE) is planning for the future availabilityof rare earth elements, focusing only on their growing role in cleanenergy technologies such as magnets used in wind turbines and hybridelectric vehicles. As with other critical materials, governments are nowstarting to look forward, trying to predict how much of these materialsare going to be needed and whether there will be an adequate supplyavailable.
“Clean energy’s share of REE use is a very small part of the pieright now; but, when you go out to 2025, it is the majority of the pie,so that’s what’s really driving this issue and that’s our concern,” saidDavid Diamond, speaking at the PDAC Critical Metals Emergency Forum inToronto. Diamond is a member of the US Department of Energy CriticalMetals Taskforce, and co-author of the 2010 US DOE Critical Materials Strategy.“Based on the projections, by 2015 there would have to be some kind ofnew delta in terms of supply or advances in material efficiency likerecycling to reduce the demand.”
Diamond says that there is much speculation involved in determiningwhat the supplies and demands will be for REEs in the future because itis largely based on emerging technologies. The DOE’s forecasts rangefrom a “business as usual” scenario where the demand for clean energytechnology does not increase, to projections made by the InternationalEnergy Agency, which show much more aggressive growth scenarios. Diamondsays that this is a more likely scenario as clean energy technologydeployment increases in order to meet different climate change targets.
“A relatively small percentage of wind turbines deployed on themarket now use REEs for their magnets, but looking into the medium termthat percentage is likely to go up if the market share goes up, and it’sgoing to drive overall market penetration,” said Diamond.
Topping the list of critical REEs for clean energy technologies isdysprosium, which in the short term has both the highest supply risk andis judged to be the most important to clean energy. Dysprosium is usedin magnets in applications such as drive motors for hybrid electricvehicles, which can require up to 100 grams of dysprosium per hybrid carproduced. Based on Toyota’s projected two million units per year, theuse of dysprosium in applications such as this would quickly exhaust theavailable supply of the metal. Other REEs critical to clean energytechnologies include yttrium, europium, terbium and neodymium.
Diamond emphasized the need for addressing this issue early, if theUnited States was going to continue its move towards cleaner energy andtransportation. He says this will have to be done not only throughsecuring future REE supplies, recycling and sourcing possiblealternatives, but by investing in research, education other “humancapital.”
“They say that China has thousands of people working on this, the UShas dozens; so, there is really a need to train the next generation ofscientists for a broader commission of science and technology outreach,”said Diamond.