{"id":222579,"date":"2023-01-14T20:26:26","date_gmt":"2023-01-14T14:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=222579"},"modified":"2023-01-14T20:26:26","modified_gmt":"2023-01-14T14:56:26","slug":"of-metals-and-rare-earths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/of-metals-and-rare-earths\/","title":{"rendered":"Of metals and rare earths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/strong>– The post is based on the article \u201cOf metals and rare earths\u201d <\/strong>published in Business Standard <\/strong>on 14th January 2023<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Syllabus: <\/strong>GS1-Geography,GS2-International Relations<\/p>\n

Relevance: <\/strong>Minerals related Distribution of resources across the world<\/p>\n

News- <\/strong>The article explains the need to diversify sources of rare earth minerals.<\/p>\n

The news that\u00a0Sweden\u00a0has just discovered a large deposit of rare earth\u00a0minerals\u00a0sparked off thoughts about \u201catmanirbhar\u201d in this vital area.<\/p>\n

What are the rare earth metals?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Rare earths are a class of\u00a0<\/strong>metals. <\/strong>Their oxides need to be used in small but significant quantities to make electric vehicles, mobile phones and sundry other consumer electronics, besides wind turbines and solar energy units.<\/p>\n

Renewable energy,<\/strong> therefore, depends on these\u00a0metals.<\/p>\n

What is the distribution of metals and rare earth metals across the world?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

China\u00a0has a hammerlock on global mining and production of rare earth oxides. It has 44 million tonnes of proven reserves (2021), estimated at one-third of known global reserves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

China\u00a0has a 60% of the world\u2019s market share<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The US has a 15-16 per cent market share<\/strong> and Myanmar (with the help of China) holds around 9.5 per cent. India has around 1 per cent market share.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By all accounts, Chinese mining and refining methods of these are fairly carbon-intensive and there have been reports of severe environmental degradation<\/strong> caused by Chinese mining practices.<\/p>\n

What are the barriers in diversifying supply chains?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The barrier is really the cost.<\/strong> Given the scale of the opportunity and enabling policies, supply chains can be diversified if it\u2019s made in sufficient quantities with policy support, it may become globally competitive.<\/p>\n

However, if you don\u2019t have domestic rare earths in sufficient quantities, you need to import from China. <\/strong>This has hard-to-model implications for geopolitics.<\/p>\n

China\u00a0is also the dominant player in many other elements <\/strong>of global energy and electronics supply chains, including solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, electric vehicle drive trains, dynamos, alternators, and semiconductors.<\/p>\n

What is the way forward?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

For other elements, US <\/strong>has looked for additional local reserves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Japan<\/strong> has examined the possibility of undersea mining<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed, many nations have domestic capacity<\/strong> and India aspires to join that club<\/strong> with its multitude of production-linked incentive schemes.<\/p>\n

This means nations can switch suppliers <\/strong>at need.<\/p>\n

In contrast, rare earths have a single-supplier<\/strong>, and China will remain the go-to supplier<\/strong> for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source– The post is based on the article \u201cOf metals and rare earths\u201d published in Business Standard on 14th January 2023. Syllabus: GS1-Geography,GS2-International Relations Relevance: Minerals related Distribution of resources across the world News- The article explains the need to diversify sources of rare earth minerals. The news that\u00a0Sweden\u00a0has just discovered a large deposit of… Continue reading Of metals and rare earths<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[10503,263],"class_list":["post-222579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-business-standard","tag-gs-paper-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":1700811914,"cached_date":1704955868},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}