Critical Minerals
topic on 5 shows · 20 statements across 14 episodes
American Optimist 
No Priors 
Catalyst 
the Green Blueprint 
All-In
20 statements about Critical Minerals, every show
AI compute revolution is vastly more infrastructure-intensive than prior tech cycles
“We have this technological compute revolution that is infinitely more infrastructure intensive than compute was in the last generations, and this is creating this really wild demand shock for infrastructural critical minerals, commodities, at the same time whe…”
US will need 10 to 20 years to catch China in critical minerals
“China has an absolute grip, it's absolute, on all of these critical minerals. And it's gonna take at least 10 years, probably 20 to catch up”
Helberg: Mineral refining facilities are extremely limited outside China
“What's actually really rare is the refining process, because the number of refining, or the number of processing facilities for these minerals is very, very limited outside of China. They exist, but in very limited, you know, quantities.”
Emil Michael: DARPA is using synthetic biology to extract critical minerals
“One of the things that they're working on that's public is they're trying to use biology to synthesize critical minerals.”
Roberts predicts recycled minerals will become cheaper than mined within 20 years
“I would just say that my, I guess my prediction would be that in 10 years, maybe or in 20, that just a unit of critical minerals drawn from recycling will be cheaper than a unit of
Mind.
I think.
I think.
Eventually.
Like, I think it will end up being our prim…”
Schroepfer: US Produces None of Six Critical Minerals Banned by China
“China just, you know, banned the export of six major critical minerals. We make none of these in the United States so that seems like a real big problem.”
Chaset: Policy Uncertainty Makes Capital-Intensive Climate Tech Uninvestable Near-Term
“So I would say none of them because they all require Large capital investments that require certainty and we are in a period of massive uncertainty across the board. So I would actually say I'm fairly bearish on all of those in the near term because I actually…”
Kann: China's rare earth dominance exceeds other critical mineral sectors
“China dominates rare earths more than basically any other area of critical minerals, which is saying something because China is pretty dominant in a bunch of areas.”
Scheyder: Republicans view critical minerals as national security, Democrats as climate
“I think Republicans and Democrats look at the critical minerals issue with the same end goal in mind, but they sort of take two different paths to get there. Republicans tend to look at this issue from a national security lens. Democrats tend to try to look at…”
Lacey: Net Zero Will Require 6x More Critical Minerals, Per IEA
“The IEA estimates that hitting net zero globally will require six times more critical minerals that are in use today, and we have a massive upcoming shortage of geologists.”
Bordoff: 2040 mineral revenue will pale in comparison to oil and gas
“The IA's one of the IA's scenarios that gets you sort of close to 1.5 degrees, if not all the way, has critical mineral revenue growing from forty one billion in 2019 to two hundred and sixty three billion by 2040. Again, that's not all the way to 1.5, maybe 1…”
Bordoff: 2040 mineral volume will be a fraction of fossil fuel production
“Even on a net zero pathway, critical minerals demand does not top thirty million metric tons in 2040, according to the IEA, and by comparison to thirty million metric tons, oil production last year was 4.4 billion. Metric tons. Coal was seven and a half billio…”
Bordoff: Critical mineral supply shocks do not disrupt daily energy use like oil
“So critical minerals are an input to a manufactured good that can produce energy or store energy. It is not energy. We don't burn critical minerals for energy, and so if we had a disruption in some types of critical minerals, you might see delays and much high…”
Bordoff: China's critical mineral dominance is mostly refining and processing
“With critical mineral dominance that China has, most of that is about refining and processing. Those are manufacturing plants, and you can build those in lots and lots of places.”
Gallagher: US regulations effectively ban domestic critical mineral mining and processing
“When it comes to critical minerals, rare earths, like if we just fix our Byzantine bureaucratic regulatory environment, like we could have a renaissance in this country, but we've effectively made it illegal to mine and process here, and thus we're dependent o…”
Roberts: Substitution and market supply will solve critical mineral shortages long-term
“I just think substitution plus new sources. Over the midterm, mid to longterm, is going to solve this. I agree that there will be years, couple of years, choke points here and there, as we've all, as we've already seen a couple of materials get tight. But I ju…”
Kann: Mineral shortages could cause 5-to-10-year stalls in EV adoption
“It's that we'll have like periods of more like five years or 10 years where we do have a shortage and the shortage doesn't translate to we can't sell any more electric vehicles. To higher costs for electric vehicles. And that translates to lower demand. And th…”
Bullard: Mineral processing, not extraction, is the clean tech bottleneck
“You know, the determining step for so many of these things is not fundamentally, you know, acts, access or availability within the earth's crust, but where it is that it gets processed.”
Kann: Battery recycling cannot meet the majority of critical mineral demand today
“I mean, I think the short answer is that you, there is not enough supply of recyclable batteries today to make up for the majority or even close to the majority of the need for critical minerals.”