Rare earth metals
GS PAPER III: Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development and Employment.
Context: Rare earth metals at the heart of China-U.S. rivalry. Beijing’s dominance in these minerals, key to the future of manufacturing, is a cause for concern for the West.
What if China were to cut off the U.S. and Europe from access to rare minerals?
- At a time of frequent geopolitical friction among those three powers, Washington and Brussels want to avoid this scenario by investing in the market for 17 minerals with unique properties that today are largely extracted and refined in China.
- These minerals are essential for running electric vehicles, wind turbines and drones.
- The expected exponential growth in demand for minerals that are linked to clean energy is putting more pressure on U.S. and Europe to take a closer look at where the vulnerabilities are and the concrete steps.
Heavy dependence
- In 2019, the U.S. imported 80% of its rare earth minerals from China.
- The EU gets 98% of its supply from China.
- Amid the transition to green energy, in which rare earth minerals are sure to play a role, China’s market dominance is enough to sound an alarm in western capitals.
What are Rare Earths?
- Rare Earth Elements or Rare Earth Metals are a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table — the 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium, which tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides, and have similar chemical properties.
- The 17 Rare Earths are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y).
- Despite their classification, most of these elements are not really “rare”. One of the Rare Earths, promethium, is radioactive.
What are Rare Earths used for?
- These elements are important in technologies of consumer electronics, computers and networks, communications, clean energy, advanced transportation, healthcare, environmental mitigation, and national defence, among others.
- Scandium is used in televisions and fluorescent lamps, and yttrium is used in drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.
- Rare Earth elements are used in space shuttle components, jet engine turbines, and drones. Cerium, the most abundant Rare Earth element, is essential to NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme.
- According to the Rare Earth Technology Alliance (RETA), the estimated size of the Rare Earth sector is between $10 billion and $15 billion.
- About 100,000-110,000 tonnes of Rare Earth elements are produced annually around the world.
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