In the news today…
Minerals:
- E&E Greenwire reports President Joe Biden’s recent move to invoke a Cold War-era law to boost mineral development will provide federal money to help jump-start new mines or expand existing ones.
- Mining.com reports the supply chain for batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, electric motors, transmission lines, 5G — everything regarding electrification and decarbonization that is needed for a green economy — starts with metals and mining.
- Mining.com reports mining companies and analysts have described U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to authorize the Defense Production Act to increase battery metals production and reduce the country’s reliance on China and Russia as an “urgent” move that provides “further proof” of the minerals’ growing importance in the geopolitical arena.
- Washington Examiner reports in a new Washington Examiner op-ed, Sen. John Barrasso argued that Biden’s recent energy decisions have made it “even more difficult for U.S. companies to mine key minerals,” making his climate goals “even more unrealistic than they are already.”
- RealClearEnergy carries an op-ed which argues President Biden should use the Defense Production Act to jump-start safe, domestic mining of critical minerals and rare earth metals.
Coal:
- Argus reports coal-fired generation in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) climbed in March from the year prior for the third month in a row, while natural gas-fired power fell amid higher prices.
- Yahoo reports from Bloomberg that U.S. coal prices topped $100 a ton for the first time in 13 years as Russia’s war in Ukraine upends international energy markets and an economic rebound from the pandemic drives up demand for fossil fuels.
Climate:
- The Manhattan Contrarian reports that the Western obsession with “green energy” and “renewables” since about 2000 has gone along with a 50% increase in annual world CO2 emissions, due mainly to acceleration of China’s development of its fossil fuel resources, particularly electric power plants fired by coal. The post concludes:
Every day I struggle to understand what places like California or New York or Germany or the UK — or even the entire U.S. — think they are accomplishing by restricting use of fossil fuels, while China, with population double that of the U.S. and Europe combined and a third of world emissions all by itself continues at full throttle to build more and more coal power plants.