During National Clean Energy Week, Ashley McManus, vice president at Lot Sixteen, led a Smart Brevity session focused on the challenges and policies affecting the mining, processing, and recycling of domestic critical minerals. Leaders from Albemarle Corporation, the Aluminium Association of Canada, Old Harbor Native Corporation, Panasonic North America, and South32 contributed to the conversation.
Multiple participants weighed in on the challenges associated with the permitting process for critical mineral projects. Judy Brown, head of external affairs for the Americas at diversified mining company South32, emphasized the difficulties involved in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process: “When the lead agency and another agency do not agree, the issue is that strategic decisions just don’t get made,” and projects end up just sitting on the shelf in limbo. Kristina Woolston, CEO of the Old Harbor Native Corporation, a native village corporation based on Kodiak Island, Alaska, showed just how long a project can take. She previously worked on the Donlin Gold project, which she said took decades for design, exploration, engineering, and permitting, nearly seven years for the joint record of decision, and six years of litigation.
That experience is why Woolston is excited about the bipartisan Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, which would limit litigation standing to those who participated in the comment period and shorten the time to file suit to 150 days, rather than six years. “I think that’s so important for Native communities, because we are talking about extremely limited resources. We have partners that come to the table with us to help us develop these resources. But if we can’t bring in partners to help us develop, there’s no way we’d be able to afford it… So by utilizing the SPEED Act, we feel that it will encourage investors, because there will again be more liability and accountability.”
Alex Stroman, vice president of government relations and regulatory affairs at Albemarle Corporation, the world’s largest lithium company, the only one to be fully integrated “from mine to brine to market,” and the operator of the only active lithium mine in the U.S., in Silver Peak, Nevada, emphasized that the topic is bipartisan issue, adding that “the Trump administration has been excellent at prioritizing critical minerals.” He pointed to an executive order from March, which directed the National Energy Dominance Council to submit lists of priority projects to the Permitting Council for inclusion in the FAST-41 program, providing improved transparency and interagency coordination for streamlined environmental reviews and permitting support. Essentially, the executive order said, “We want to make it the policy of the United States to be the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals.”
Albemarle’s expansion of its lithium mine in Silver Peak, Nevada, and its construction of a lithium material processing plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, are both FAST-41 Transparency Projects involved in this process. Other leaders in the conversation noted that their projects had also been included in the FAST-41 program. Brown said that South32’s Hermosa project in Arizona, the country’s sole advanced mine development project capable of producing two critical minerals — zinc and manganese — was facing a five-year permitting schedule before it became a FAST-41 Covered Project. One of the benefits, she described, is that the program “relieved a lot of risks that people see around investing in the U.S.” Additionally, Woolston noted that Alaska recently became the first state to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Permitting Council for assistance through the FAST-41 program. She reflected, “It’s going to provide the accountability, the predictability, the reliability that projects need in Alaska… This will allow for investors to have some sense of reliability, that when they invest in a project, things are going to move forward.”
Photo Courtesy Albemarle Corporation
Tina Jeffress, group manager of sustainability and energy at Panasonic North America, emphasized the challenges of supply chain constraints and the importance of mineral processing. The company’s lithium-battery production facilities in Reno, Nevada, and De Soto, Kansas face difficulties as a midstream operation: “We can get the minerals we need, but we’re always trying to triangulate a really complicated formula between cost, location, carbon intensity, and some of those other responsibility factors, and so finding what we need, where we need to source from, at an appropriate price, is challenging.”
In terms of policy, Jeffress explained that longer-term incentives are essential for miners and refiners. For example, if the Section 45X credit is “a short-lived credit rather than a permanent one, I think it’s really hard for financing the mines and refineries that we want to see and that we need to see come online.” Albemarle’s Stroman added, “As we look for solutions and bringing processing back to the United States, it really takes a whole of government approach,” including public-private partnerships and trade agreements with other nations, because “if something isn’t done soon, it may be completely lost forever.”
Many of the companies are pushing forward with processing projects. Albemarle announced plans for a processing facility in Richburg, South Carolina, although it had to put the project on hold as prices continued to fall. Stroman expressed optimism for a “light at the end of the tunnel” due to the administration’s support for the sector, though. Panasonic, meanwhile, is working to secure sourcing and minimize supply chain risk, preferring the use of ‘carrots’ over ‘sticks.’ When it comes to recycling, for example, “I think there’s enough consumer attention there that if you put appropriate incentives in place, things would be moving a lot quicker,” Jeffress said.
Photo Courtesy Panasonic North America
Jean Simard, president and CEO of the Aluminium Association of Canada (AAC), also discussed recycling in depth. He explained that with every ton of aluminium, “we enable future generations to think, to design, to craft and to build the cities of tomorrow hundreds of years down the road.” He highlighted that approximately 1.5 billion tons of aluminium have been processed since the beginning of the industrial process in the 1880s, with 75% of that still standing in forms like televisions and washing machines in people’s homes. “Every time you remelt this aluminium, you only need 5% of the energy that was required to begin with,” he described. “So recycling is extremely important to us.” However, he acknowledged the need to influence consumer behavior at the end of product lifecycles to make sure the valuable material does not end up in landfills: “So you use taxes, you use mandates. It’s all stuff that requires very strong and well-coordinated policy making, and that’s the big challenge.”
Simard added that because the AAC represents Canada’s primary smelters and producers – including Rio Tinto, Alcoa, and Aluminerie Alouette – which are responsible for 80% of all primary aluminium produced in North America, trade between countries is essential for national security reasons. Canada ships 2.7 million tons of aluminium annually, equivalent to “four to six Hoover Dams, and it’s what is required to feed about 460 data centers to power AI.” The U.S., on the other hand, lost a significant portion of its capacity due to competition from China, which entered the market with lower prices. “Today, more than ever, we have to work together because the U.S. is in great demand for aluminium. For electrification, mostly because you need to build those transmission lines, which are using 100% primary aluminium for the lines. To have electric vehicles, you need to light-weight them with aluminium,” he explained.
Within the U.S., there also needs to be a focus on building out a workforce to advance these minerals and materials into substantial projects. South32’s Brown noted, “I think there’s a lot of ambition for critical minerals in the U.S., but I think we don’t have the right pipeline of people… So I think workforce development is critically important.” She pointed out that only about 100 mining engineers graduate in the country every year. South32 has already committed to an 80% local workforce for its Hermosa mine in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, where the company is teaming up with a local provisional college. Such efforts need to be escalated to meet the country’s energy demand.
Photo Courtesy South32
