 Welcome to the spring meeting of the National Academy's Committee on Earth Resources. My name is Jim Slutes and I'm the chair of the committee. I'd like to say just a few words about our program, cover a few housekeeping items, and introduce our committee before I turn things over to Deborah Peacock, a member of our committee who will be serving as moderator for today's webinar. The Committee on Earth Resources is a standing committee of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources and serves the community by monitoring and engaging on issues relevant to energy and non-fuel mineral resources. The committee examines issues related to the availability, supply, delivery and impacts of energy and mineral resources, the health and safety of the workforce engaged in resource exploration and production, and the management and stewardship of the lands on which they are located. The committee serves stakeholders with objective, evidence-based scientific and engineering information to help support decision and policymaking. Our committee has been working on issues related to minerals, critical minerals and energy resources for many years. As we began discussing our virtual spring meeting plans earlier this year, we thought it was timely to draw two themes together. The need for mineral resources to support the energy transition as we look toward ways to address climate change. And today's webinar is the third of a three-part series. Today we will discuss the regulatory, legal, economic and policy challenges associated with diversifying and building a new critical mineral supply chain from within the United States. We will look at the barriers and opportunities to bringing these critical minerals to market. We will be covering a broad range of issues today, many of which people will have strong opinions. The committee seeks an engaging and open dialogue. As we look at different options to address a changing energy system, it is important to consider all tradeoffs, both benefits as well as challenges. The objective is to make better decisions, as well as seek solutions to address the challenges. We will strive for a thoughtful and insightful dialogue today. Our goal as a committee will be to take these insight and use them to further science and technology so that that can help mitigate challenges and maximize the potential benefits. With that in mind, audience participation is an important and critical part of National Academy's meetings. And we look forward to your questions. Let me say just a few words about how you can share your questions and ideas today. For our committee, you'll be able to raise your virtual hands on the Zoom, and Deborah will call on you when we move into the Q&A part of the meeting. For those of you in the made audience of the webinar, you may share your questions or comments by using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screens. You can simply type your question into that box at any time and the staff team will keep track of the questions and share them back to Deborah as she moderates the conversation with the panelists and the committee. Please participate. Our sessions are that much better because of the questions we receive from our audience. We will also be posting the webinar recording on the committee's website and what you let you know when that's available probably in a week or so after this meeting. If you missed the first two webinars, the recordings can be found on the committee's website. With that, let me briefly introduce the committee. The member bios are available on the committee website, so I will just introduce them by name so we can get get on with today's program. Bridget Ailing. Dan Connell. Doug Holland. John Leftwich. John Marsden. Deborah Peacock. Ann Robertson Tate. Tamika Searcy and David Spears are all our committee members. Deborah will be our moderator today, as I mentioned. Deborah Peacock is a metallurgical engineer and registered professional engineer and a registered patent attorney. She is a manager of her law firm Peacock Law PC. In addition, she is chair of the Board of Regents of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and she is on the New Mexico Mining Safety Board. The whole bio is again available on the committee's website. Deborah, let me turn the program over to you and we'll get underway. Jim, thanks for your kind words. And how we could go to my slide three please. So the next, yeah, thank you. So the, this is the final of the series of our webinar. On the screen, you'll see the overview of webinars one and two, and those are on the website or will be posted soon. And again, as Jim said, webinar three will be posted shortly. For webinar one, I'll just give you a brief summary. The critical minerals we're talking about are not just the critical minerals list in US and Europe. There's also copper, which is a critical mineral for the energy transition. So you'll have copper, lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, rare earth, just to name a few. And by energy transition, we mean the transition away from fossil fuels, which includes solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and nuclear. You know, even satellite arrays are being contemplated. So energy transition is happening very quickly and in many, many different ways. These materials are needed for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, energy storage and batteries. There's a great summary of all the things all the materials we need and for what in that webinar number one. For webinar number two, the summary there was there's a massive disconnect between the demand for these minerals, what we need and will need and how there's going to be a shortage in the near future. And an ESG, which is an environmental, social and corporate governance. These are issues that all mineral companies and investors are looking at right now to make sure that minerals are being produced in a responsible way. And there's not just one solution. We need, we need many solutions. And that leads to our webinar today. Next slide please. So we're going to touch on regulatory, legal, environmental, economic and policy changes, the barriers to bringing these critical minerals to market and possible solutions to building this critical mineral supply chain, not only within the US but globally. So our speakers today and they all have these nice smiling faces. Welcome speakers. And this is the order and I decided to ask Kathy Arnold to speak first she does. She's, she's been involved in traditional mining and permitting for many years and can, and we'll talk about the problems, especially in the US. My next speaker Salim Ali, Dr Ali is going to give us a global perspective on these issues and possible solutions. And Angela's cooking nose is from the Department of Energy. And I'll be introducing all these speakers later in more detail, but he'll be giving us a federal government perspective. And then Doug Silver, who's been in the mining industry for many years. He's going to do a wrap up for us and we appreciate that he's going to leave together all of the presentations from all three webinars. Now, because of this format, the first three speakers are going to be pre recorded presentations and then I'm going to ask a question after each. Then Doug Silver is going to be live because he's doing this leaving together of all of the presentations from all three webinars. So you are going to hear a very diverse, diverse group of speakers with very different opinions. And I promise you it's going to be lively. All right, next slide please. I'd first like to introduce Kathy Arnold. Kathy's a PE. She's an independent consultant in mine permitting and compliance and has worked in that field for over 30 years. She has a BS in mineral processing engineering computer science and math, and also an MS in project and engineering management from Montana tech. And she is going to be talking about one of these these projects for a large open tech copper mine near Tucson. She also serves on educational and industrial advisory boards, and she's the director of sustainability for Axelium technology group. Okay, Kathy's presentation follows. Thank you for including me in this webinar. And thank you for that introduction. Thank you Kathy Arnold. And I understand today you will hear a variety of ideas regarding the topic we are examining. We may or may not agree with all viewpoints. We'll receive a lot of great information. I'm going to kick this off today by chatting with you about one of the barriers to natural resource energy development permitting. Our discussion today includes permitting statistics. Everybody needs their speakers because we have feedback. We're not, we're not hearing the presentation issues and opportunities with a little closing food for thought. First, I plan to chat about permitting statistics for mining projects in the US. Then I'm going to specifically look at Forest Service BLM and Army Corps of Engineer permits and have a more general discussion of other permits that are required for mining. According to a GAO study of six between 2010 and 2014 mining projects took an average of two years to permit. This sounds like a great statistic. If you look at those 68 projects, nearly 20% were still not in operation by November of 2015. Our case study, Rosemond, was one of the projects examined and is still not in operation today. When compared to the GAO report, the five projects shown in the table illustrate the longer timeframes that are required for the Forest Service review with approval times ranging from four to 12 years. For example, NEPA reviews range from one to 26 years for review completion. None of these projects are in operation currently. However, you can see the effect of process improvements with the Thacker Pass permit. Secretary Bernhardt in the Trump administration implemented strict timelines and data requirements to ensure effective and efficient reviews. The earlier processes are actually fairly prescriptive with timelines ranging from three to more than 14 years. As you can see, approximately 40% of these projects are in operation. So what do mining companies have to comply with to mine? The previous three slides only dealt with NEPA and the analysis that the Forest Service BLM and Corps permits go through before they can be issued. As those agencies go through NEPA, they will include the Historic Preservation Act and Endangered Species Act reviews, but none of the other permits. The NEPA process includes cooperating agencies, consulting parties, and public comment. The White House Council on Environmental Quality only recently updated their regulations on NEPA to give more guidance on timelines and the size of the documents. But historically, documents ran thousands of pages and were written over multiple years. This slide shows not only the permits that we just discussed, but also the additional federal rules that govern mining. Together, there are at least 18 specific federal rules for mining operations and their impact to the environment, culture, and employees. Some of the environmental regulations have been delegated to states, but these provide the general framework for permitting mines on federal level. This does not include the additional levels of control if you are mining nuclear substances. Additionally, there are state and local regulations that must be included. And then the specific regulations is a simple fact that there are an additional 18 or more specific rules and programs that govern mining operations and their impact to the environment, culture, and employees on the state and local level. I say more than 18 because each state has its own requirement. This is delegated by the EPA and other specified in laws and rules. So while some states have minimal requirements, others have added rules that further control operations. The fact of the rules is not really the problem. The issue is that most states have no permit phases that are consolidated. This means that each program could have its own public comment period, generate specific comments, have different mitigation, different permit term requirements, as well as different litigation or permit challenge exposures for the permitee. When you start to think about all of the reviews, authorizations and potential areas for public comment or public challenge, the process starts to get very complex. As you work through the processes over multiple years, agency staff changes, interpretation of policy can change with staff, policy itself can change, and rules of requirements can be updated. This leads to areas where litigation risks becomes very high. Finally, we're going to spend a few minutes on is the Rosemount Copper Project. One thing that gets lost in the current discussion around permitting is the change in permitting that has taken place over the past 100 years or so. The pictures tell the story pretty well. The first minor state claims and mine, the very much vilified mining law of 1872 regulated the mining claims to avoid land or mineral disputes, and had nothing to do with environmental laws. By the 1970s with the advent of environmental regulations, permitting was much more sophisticated and required applications and controls to impacts that may affect resources. Now, there's extensive disclosure requirement with much more analysis, a lot more paper, and generally NEPA documents ran in the thousands of pages. The Rosemount Copper Project is located in a historic mining district, about 30 miles outside of Tucson. The plans include an open pit with conventional milling for copper and molybdenum. In 2006 and 2007, when Rosemount was first proposed, the requirements centered around water use, air impacts, lighting and visual impacts. The biggest mitigation proposed was the use of dry stack or filtered tailings technology. The simple scale of the proposed tailings operation was four to five times greater than any other filtered tailings operation in the world. Other mitigation included tier four engines. They weren't available yet, but were still in development. And finally, dark skies mitigation using LED lighting that filtered out blue light, which was not available nor used in industrial lighting at mine sites. A local vendor and caterpillar worked to help develop lighting that could work in the operations. And this technology resulted in cutting the light impacts to about one quarter of what the original proposal had. But the designs were based upon best available or expected technology in 2007. The original timeline for permitting Rosemount was projected to be approximately three years in the original memorandum of understanding, which was signed by the Forest Service in Rosemount. The timeline stretched and from the plan of operations acceptance in July of 2007 until acceptance of the final plan of operations in June of 2019, it took 12 years for the project. It's important to note that the Forest Service decisions were completed in 2017, but took an additional two years to approve the written plan of operations. The project was appealed and almost immediately and has been under review by the court for four years. Pills are still ongoing, and the project hasn't been constructed. The mine plan of operations that was accepted is worth looking a bit more at the components of the mine plan of operation are shown here. The components range from how to manage noise or light and invasive species to reclamation requirements and bonding. It also looks at long term management, short term pre operational requirements and details community commitments. The core of engineers has very similar requirements on medic on plans for mitigation that look at long and short term monitoring and maintenance, as well as bonding. In addition to the federal permits, plans and bonding required state permits for protection of air groundwater surface water roadways floodplains and land are all required. In Arizona, where permitting has been prioritized, some of the permits can still take up to a year to receive. Most of the permits have an opportunity for public input and appeal, and all of these permits have specific requirements and many add additional plans or program. Still others add additional bonding. So let's summarize some of the effects and issues associated with the timelines. The effects of timelines on mining investment is profound. Typical minds lose more than a third of their value as a result of delays and higher cost increased risk can cut the value of a mind in half. Less exploration makes the US dependent upon aging operations. For instance, most of the mining operations at least the major ones in Arizona are more than 50 years old. This puts the security of the mineral supply at risk, because as you know, assets are not limited. Some of the intangible effects include administrative effects. We're seeing that right now with the resolution project DIFs withdrawal and the twin metals exploration permits being reconsidered by the BLM. At Rosemont we've seen saw a change in forest service policy and objections that extended the timeline by more than 60 days. The effect of staff changes is harder to pin down, but we did see some of those same effects at Rosemont. We've seen separate forest supervisors on our project and three different project managers, each with their own experiences and thoughts on how the project and record should be completed. This made the project stronger in some ways but provided record inconsistencies that had to be managed. Technology changes can affect the public disclosures. The exploration and startup projects are completed by Canadian juniors or other small companies that don't have the wherewithal or the capitalization to complete the long processes. This is what most of the NGOs that work against mining projects count on. The company will run out of money before they can put a shovel in the ground. With resources worth developing, a larger company generally will pick up the asset, but that company may not have the same ties to the local community that the original one did. Some specific issues causing the extended timelines are multiple permits with multiple stakeholder processes that include tribal government and NGO or community groups. Multiple processes are inefficient and extend permitting. The opportunity for appeal of the agency decision or opportunities for court challenges caused by long timelines can cause additional delays. When compared to the Australia or Canadian methods of permitting, the US takes three to five times as long to permit mining projects. The 18 Bear Dole Bear report declared that permitting delays are the most significant risk to mining projects in the US. Opportunities for reforms are shared responsibility between the government and the permitee for development of the permitting documents. Clearly defined timelines. We saw the impact of this in the BLM permit for back or pass. Roles need to be clearly defined for the process, not only for the participants, but also to make expectations clear. The federal process fast 41, the illustrations from dashboard on their website, appears to be making some of these improvements for the federal infrastructure projects. However, it's unclear whether it will work for mining projects or not. And it does not include any of the state permitting processes, only coordination of federal permits. Some things to keep in mind while you listen to the following presentations today. Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50%. It's just to bring wind and solar to a 10% share of the world's electricity. In order to be carbon neutral by 2050. Within the next 10 years, the world must add more than 1000 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity annually, only slightly less than the entire electric power system in the US. The electric passenger cars must reach 60% of new sales by 2030, while half of heavy trucks purchased by 2035 must be electric. President Biden has linked his American jobs plan to green energy, but his vision won't materialize without the necessary raw materials, since green energy requires six to nine times more minerals. President Biden projected that the US has access to six to seven trillion in mineral resources, but we need a lot more streamlined permitting processes to access them. When you consider only about 20% of the projects we saw today are in operation, you have to ask yourself, will the current permitting and litigation scheme in the US allow any of the clean energy goals to be met. Certainly, we are already a year late to meet the presidential goals within the timelines we currently have. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for this presentation and giving us that the history of what's going on at Rosemont in particular. Are you with us. Okay, thank you. I was struck by a couple of your slides that talked about that Rosemont submitted the mine plan in 2007 listing certain technologies and you had to almost guess or plan or expect technologies down the road and now it's 2021. And with water scarcity in particular, I see a lot of new technologies coming out in the mining industry. But is there a disincentive for mining companies when they see these new technologies to change anything, because then you would have to start over again. Deborah, I think that's a great question. Right now I don't think that that's an issue. And the only reason I say that is, if the impacts are less than you have proposed, you don't have to start your permitting over but the disclosures have to be made. And so, while most of the public is is really interested in once genuinely to have a good project that will move move forward. You do have some NGOs that are actually very litigious. And so what happens is is if they don't believe they've had enough time to comment on the latest technologies or the new process that you're proposing that can delay your project because the agency doesn't want to be litigated. And so rightfully, people need to be able to comment, and it generally makes projects stronger. But the hard part is is where's the balance. So sometimes it is better to just wait, and then propose it after you've been issued your permits, and then as a as a less impactful alternative to what you're proposing rather than get it mixed up with the public comment period, which is really a shame. I think the process could be improved to allow some of those changes. Okay, thank you. We're going to move on to our next presenter. And count if you could pull up slide seven please. I'd like to introduce Dr Salim Ali. He's the director of minerals materials and society program and the blue and gold distinguished professor of geography and spatial sciences at the University of Delaware. And Salim you have the longest title of anybody it's very impressive and I like it. You'll have to explain what that means. Salim has a BS in chemistry and MS in environmental law policy and a PhD in environmental planning, all from very prestigious universities. He serves on the United Nations International Resource Panel and the scientific and technical advisory board for global environmental facility. And Salim has a global perspective to share with us today and if we can now pull up his presentation. Thank you. My name is Salim Ali and I'm delighted to make this presentation under the auspices of the National Academies related to frontier issues in mineral governance and I'm doing this in my capacity as an academic and the director of the minerals materials and research program at the University of Delaware, but also as a member of the United Nations International Resource Panel, where we have been undertaking several research efforts related to mineral governance including a global assessment, which was published just over a month ago and is available at resource panel.org. Those of you are inclined to follow me on social media I do tweet quite a bit about issues around mineral governance and would welcome your engagement there in. So let's start off with a current crisis check. We're going through an unprecedented pandemic in a highly globalized world. And what we found in the early days of the pandemic when Bloomberg did this analysis is that the United States was one of the most vulnerable countries in terms of the supply chain connections to China. Minerals are a dominant part of this story but certainly not the only component or industrial sector. To compare Europe and the United States Europe is far less vulnerable in terms of dependence on Chinese supply chains, partly because of connections to Africa and other sources of raw materials from the existing relationships that European countries have had with investment in other countries, often linked to colonial heritage sadly, but that has been the case. This was a real reality check a shock that made the US on a bipartisan level concerned about dependence on minerals externally. However, there is a certain geological determinism with reference to minerals. So, one has to constantly have to play this out in terms of what is ecologically geologically possible in terms of mineral supply and where those minerals are located versus what is more suitable from a security perspective. And that's what this presentation is going to try and unravel for you in the next 20 minutes or so. Now, if you think through the covert 19 risk mapping. Here's a scatterplot that was prepared by the economist and the, the two axes the inventory buffer in terms of days of supply, which is the x axis and the y axis which is the number of alternative sources they give you some level of a risk map. And what we find is that the high tech sector, which is most dependent on a range of metals is the most vulnerable in this regard as well. And the size of the circles also highlights the impact in terms of the economy and the size of the impact globally from those particular sectors. So, this is going to be part of the planning conversation around mineral governance as well the high tech sectors, very high reliance on minerals and where they come from and the level of alternative sources that exists currently. In fact, China, what impact that the pandemic have on Chinese metal production. This is data that was compiled middle of last year, during the first six months of the pandemic by Dr. Dr. Zeng has also spent time as a full bright scholar at Yale, where I interacted with him and he's a very fine scholar very much attention to detail and collecting data. He looked at these different metals and found that remarkably the the pandemic did not have a huge impact in terms of the Chinese metal production itself. And this has something to do with of course the, the resilience that China exhibited in terms of response immediate response to the pandemic the sudden lockdowns, and also a lot of excess capacity in terms of human capital which could be mobilized to make sure that certain parts of the country were in lockdown that production could still continue. In fact, in some cases, what we found is that the production actually went up in 2020, which is the orange lines the orange lines is blue lines is 2019. So it's looking at the six months difference. And so this is quite remarkable in terms of the metal production impact there and it shows you also something more fundamental about mineral governance domestically in China, where China has been built in so many different mechanisms who ensure reliability of supply. And if the world is to compete with China in this regard, or to collaborate with China, there is some learning that is needed in terms of that resilience and supply during another way to think about mineral governance is stockpiles. Now stockpiles during the Cold War were a well recognized area for geopolitical strategy. However, they have gained confidence in the last few years recently, as well as we saw different constraints and the importance of certain metals for the Defense Department. The data on stockpiles is very difficult to obtain and this is relatively old data which I got in terms of the defense stockpiles from 2008. And I have been in fact trying to find from the defense logistics agency, some of the more recent stockpile analysis, but have not been able to get clarity on that from at least the online sources. However, in all likelihood, there are these metals which continue to be major part of the stockpiles. So metals are 53% of the stockpile in 2008. I would imagine that is a similar texture now, and perhaps if there are members in the audience, who may have more recent information, please feel free to add that into the Q&A or the chat feature. Now, important to note that aluminium, which is otherwise one of the most abundant metals in the earth's crust and is not in a source of critical shortage by any means, is still a major part of the stockpile and that has to do more with the importance of its usage in aircraft manufacturing and so on and to have that rapid responsibility. So sometimes the stockpiles are also developed for different reasons, apart from supply security itself. And that's another important factor which needs to be considered in terms of mineral governance moving forward. There is some existing data on stockpiles from the investment community through what are called exchange traded funds, ETFs. There's an example of such a data set for palladium, which is precious metal used, especially for catalysts and various chemical sectors including pollution prevention, and this is helpful, but again, nothing is being done at the global level to coordinate such data sets. Another source of estimates for these numbers are warehouse stock levels and you can get some data from various warehouses. This is what I got from aluminium stockpiles going up, and in real time you can get this data from websites like kitko.com. And there is not much global coordination on these efforts, and that's what I find really interesting that from the point of view of fundamental governance, supply and demand of metals, we need to have a but better understanding and coordination of what is out there. The World Food Program and other UN agencies have tried to do that with, for example, grain reserves and food security efforts. We even have a seed bank where in Norway where we're trying to keep a certain repertoire of seeds in case there is some global crisis. But we do not have the same level of global coordination around metal supply, because metals have been often thought of as a competitive resource, much more so than a collaborative resource. And that's an important question which we have to address if we are thinking of global environmental change processes like climate change, and we all have to work on infrastructure to address climate change. Shouldn't minerals be thought of as more of a collaborative resource supply issue rather than just a competitive one. Now this is from that report that I was alluding to that we worked on for the international resource panel that is looking at essentially the different flows of minerals through the global economy, and how we need to be thinking through each of these phases. And that's where the mineral governance is going to get most clearly operationalized. So you've got the mining, the solid waste and emissions of course and so on but look at the green areas where we can make a difference. In the eco design, making sure that you have modularity of products which are more easy to recycle, you are able to also reuse refurbish remanufacture those products. This is the part which often gets missed in the conversation, especially around our friends in the earth science community. As a system scientist, of course I'm very concerned about geology and geological resources and economic geology, but I have to look at the big picture, and these parts of the production prospects should not be neglected either. In the limits of recycling, of course, we need to have enough stocks in order to recycle, which raises questions about durability of products and how durable the product is can in fact be important in reducing its ecological impact. But then if it's very durable it will not be recyclable so I am aware of all those limitations. However, we often forget that this is part of the overall sustainability systems analysis. This is also part of the overall mineral resource governance as well. Now this diagram lays out for us how we should be thinking about a circular economy around metals. And the two axes here are the stockpile levels and the relative recycling level. Currently these scholars in Korea, which is a country that's highly dependent on minerals because of its own technology dependent economic profile, provides us this way of considering the importance of both stockpiling and recycling. So we should be aspiring towards this point, and number one, which is in that quadrant where you have a relative recycling level which is high and you also have a high stockpile. In many of those other quadrants we would potentially have different kinds of constraints which would come about. And you would see a depletion of the stockpile or you would have other kinds of factors that will play into the need for mining more and so on. So that's the goal ultimately to get into quadrant one so that we are able to have this kind of dynamic moving forward. And this diagram is taken from a book that I put together with some colleagues on Africa's mineral fortune and what we're trying to show here is the linkage between science and policy. And what is needed is essentially a much more efficient process by which we negotiate how science is interpreted by policymakers, geoscience data ecological impact data and socio economic data, they are key at that interface and that's where they lie right there in the middle, in terms of where this interface occurs. And then we have to think about some of these techniques on the bottom side which is the science side of the diagram, industrial ecology ecosystem service provision to make sure that we're able to provide the public with that kind of knowledge and confidence that the mining is going to be done in a way that's not going to irreversibly harm ecosystems and it is possible to do that in many cases through mitigation technologies. On the top side on the policy front we have to have much more effective conflict resolution mechanisms, we need better accountability and relationships between investors. We also have to think about some of the small scale and artisanal mining sources, which are providing livelihoods, even if they are not necessarily the most efficient ways. So there are all of these aspects of a complex adaptive system which need to be considered in this regard. Now some of us have also worked on what we call the smart mineral enterprise development model, which is now linking, not just the science policy interface, but the supply and demand interface. So here we are looking at the private sector the government and public private partnerships. So the green borders are government private sectors and orange and black is the public private partnerships, and you have implementing agencies processes and inputs, which are depicted in different shapes. What we're arguing here is that mineral demand and supply are often not communicating with each other. So many times you have technologies which are being developed by national labs or the private sector like these green technology firms where they will not communicate to the mining industry that we will need this much demand if this product has uptake. And this SMED model provides a better communication between the demand centers and the supply centers and this is described in more detail in this paper which you're welcome to read later in terms of how this could be operationalized. And we've also laid out a whole opportunity for environmental and social risk certification as playing that important role in terms of the financial markets the role of stock exchanges, how you get investment in junior companies. And it's a very practical model, not just pie in the sky every tower but very practical model on this. Now the US governments approach so far has been very much to develop alliances in terms of its supply. We had in the previous administration the energy resource governance initiative which was developed among these five countries. And it's being continued currently by the State Department that seems to be a bipartisan effort. There's also been series of executive orders which we've heard about that are also focused on improving domestic exploration recycling and. In the international arena there are calls for establishing an international mining agency that come out of a series of consultation processes that the UN Environment Assembly had initiated. There is an ongoing major consultation being carried out by my colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia, who are going to be reporting back in more detail later this year they have issued a preliminary review of their comments from the international community globally. There's also the call to establish a global tailings Institute to implement a new standard in the wake of the terrible tragedies in Brazil, due to the tailings dam failures. So, whether or not there's a global treaty on minerals remains to be seen, but there are calls to have a much more engaged governance mechanism at the international level. There's also an inter-treaty protocol, for example, to consider some of the issues around Paris Agreement and sourcing of metals to help countries meet the targets of the Paris Agreement, coordinating all those kinds of mechanisms. That is something definitely on the agenda. Given the range of environmental conflicts on terrestrial mining, there has been an effort to consider mining from inner space, meaning the deep sea as well as outer space. Under the law of the sea convention there is an existing governance mechanism for deep sea minerals. This is an open waters, which are beyond national jurisdictions, and that's the international seabed authority which is based in Jamaica. And this authority has the provisioning of granting licenses for deep sea exploration and mining. The US has not ratified this convention because there has been arguments made that mining in the deep sea is like fishing in the high seas, where you can go ahead and take a resource as long as you are not claiming sovereignty over it. However, there is growing consensus that there should be engagement of the US as well in the law of the sea convention, and President Biden has noted that as recently as last month. However, there is also great opposition to deep sea mining from environmentalists who see this as a threat to marine biodiversity. There is little doubt that the social impact of deep sea mining would be less than terrestrial mining because you do not have to displace people or engage in child labor and so on and so forth. However, this is a very contentious issue which will continue to be debated. Research currently on a systems perspective on this, I've been involved in recently and the carbon footprint impacts of deep sea mining versus terrestrial mining comes in more favorably for deep sea mining. Partly because of the high grade ores of the polymetallic nodules and the clarion cliputin zone in the Pacific, and this paper which is referenced here lays it out in great detail and similarly we are looking at comparisons of waste, as well as diversity comparisons. The clearest concern is the biodiversity, and so that has to be investigated much more sensitively. There are also the Artemis accords which have been led by NASA that are focused on outer space resources. The term Artemis comes from the original goals of these accords was to land first woman on the moon, and hence the name Artemis up to the Greek goddess of hunting. However, they have been expanded into looking at broader extra planetary efforts at resource exploration and exploitation potentially. I mentioned there to that they are a violation of the outer space treaty, which prohibits such unilateral action by a group of countries. So this is a new area that will continue to be explored and deliberated further. And the presentation with this quotation from the most recent executive order around mineral governance that was issued by President Biden in February. And what is clear from this quotation is that domestic production range of supply built in redundancies adequate stockpiles, all of those are now on the radar of the US government and this is a bipartisan non partisan effort. There are now across the aisle. Politicians who are interested in addressing this, and our presentations will hopefully inform that conversation. Thanks so much for your time and attention. Thank you very much for your presentation and are you here with us live. Yes, I am indeed. Thank you. There was there's a question that's been posted from the audience and I also had a question as well and you about the law of the sea and and deep sea mining. I've been following this for 30 years and I'm not aware of any companies that are actually doing deep sea mining. What are some innovative ideas and applications that have been developed to mitigate ocean acidification and governance. Yes. So, first of all, just for clarification, there is mining done under the sea, but it's in coastal waters, like diamond mining off the coast of Namibia. Sometimes people presume that there's absolutely no sort of technological history of mining and underwater but that there is it's just that there isn't any deep sea mining, particularly in deep sea ecosystems and international waters. Now with reference to particular environmental mitigation mechanisms, you know that is currently part of the conversation the international seabed authorities going through the process of developing environmental regulations of sorts that would be part of the approval process for any permits. And that's where there's a multi stakeholder process for engagement and different players can engage on their concerns. I also want to offer some clarification with some of my co panelists are presenting in the chat about the International Council on metals and mining. That is not an international mining agency. It is an industry led entity, which I have followed very closely I was there when it was formed actually as part of the mining minerals and sustainable development effort. It has done important work in improving the performance of the mining industry on a voluntary basis. However, it does not play the role for example that the International Energy Agency plays as a multilateral intergovernmental body, which is what is being proposed in terms of the international mining agency. And, and for those who may be rolling their eyes that oh we don't want another bureaucracy. Absolutely those are appropriate concerns but the people who are engaged in it are very focused on some of those problem solving issues that the industry is worried about, like the supply demand interface and so on. So I think less we become too cynical we should at least give it a chance in terms of conversation. Thank you very much for your presentation and, and some of those answers and we'll get to more q amp a q amp a later. So next up. If you could go to slide eight please. I'd like to introduce Angelos coconut from the Department of Energy, he's the associate deputy assistant secretary for clean coal and carbon management office of fossil energy. That's a long title to very impressive. He's a BS in chemical engineering from University of Massachusetts and MS and fuel science from Penn State. He spent 40 years in fossil fuels energy generation air pollution. Working, not only for the government but with private industry. He's received the distinguished achievement work from fuel science and energy engineering from Penn State, and something I like very much he holds six us patents. Welcome. And we'll now hear your presentation. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a great pleasure for me to be with you this afternoon to discuss the Department of Energy's fossil energy and carbon management program on critical minerals. Next slide please. critical materials are important to the transition to a carbon neutral energy future clean energy. And for example, electric vehicles may consume up to 25% of global global demand of neodymium by 2030. In other words, about 15 and a half kilotons of the demium alone between now and 2050 is needed to realize this vision of electrification of, for example, the transportation sector. Critical materials enable high energy density and high efficiency clean energy technologies. For example, rare earth magnets for electric vehicle motors and often with turbine generators, lithium ion batteries, catalyst solar panels and lightweight alloys. Next slide please. Although they are various definition of criticality. Typically, what we talk about is is that critical mineral, according to executive order 13817 is a non fuel mineral or mineral material essential to the economic and national security. The supply of which is vulnerable to disruption, and that serves an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which will have significant consequences for our economy or our national security. Next slide please. This is a timeline of the key department of energy critical mineral activities. As you can see here we have been working on this for a better part of a couple of for a couple of decades almost. The key challenges that we have faced are fourfold. Number one, the US supply dependent spans from limited imported sources to lack of downstream processing and manufacturing capability. And of course the end of life and what waste management. Number two, there's a supply chain vulnerability that will be amplified with as we switch over to the clean energy future and thereby increasing demand. Number three, commodity specific mitigation strategies are needed. And number four global and domestic supply chains face many challenges, including sustainability market issues and financing. Next slide please. I want to provide you with an idea. I realize it's an eye, eye chart type busy slide, provide you with an idea how the different officers within the areas of the different offices within the department of energy work on and as you can see, most of our offices work collaboratively in the five major areas that we need to be looking at diversity supply, developing substitutes recycling every use system analysis and demonstrations. Next slide please. Just to give you an idea of our core R and D activities they span a very wide range of effort, anything from divert diversity of supply to developing substitutes as I mentioned earlier, improving recycling and use for example recovery from electronics. All of this drives chemical and bio chemical extraction to demonstration and deployment, for example, working on front end engineering design studies to enable pilot scale demonstrations of commercial commercial grade critical minerals. And to go all the way over to financing through our loan program office. We also have significant international collaboration in terms of trilateral agreement with the European Union and Japan, and also we're talking with the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia in developing partnerships. Next slide please. If I were to take a little bit more detailed view of and provide you a more detailed view of what the fossil energy and carbon management office are working on. I want to show you this map and what this map showing is that the location of coal fire power plants, look at them in black, including active coal mines underground and above and above ground, and how those relate to the different programs that we have go currently going in our portfolio. The gold stars identified the sites that we're looking to do pre front front end engineering and design concept studies and the blue stars. The rarest critical mineral pilot facilities that we already have in place. Next slide please. One of the areas why why we're working on this what we're trying to do in the fossil energy carbon management side is we're trying to extract these critical minerals from mostly mostly from mine waste waste materials that is that comes up from in the processing of coal in the mining of coal. This map in particular also sold you all the abandoned mines in the United States. So there's another area that that it's it's ripe for us to be looking for some of these materials, the USGS for example this about 65,000 sites as past producers are active sites. Next slide please. I want to tell you, I mentioned earlier about the commercial potential that there is with this criminal critical minerals and and in particular what I want you to take a look at and I realize you're going to have a copy of the slides of course, but the location. The, the, the table on the right hand side of the of the of the slide, which looks at we did the quick study on Pennsylvania and it looks at the the. And it looks at what we found in terms of cobalt and we found concentrations ranging from 200 part per million all the way up to 6800 parts per million. And some of those sites have concentrations that you can see that as good as commercial cobalt mining operations overseas, for example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Next slide please. We also have a program where we look at small pilot event scale type operations of extracting critical minerals and rare earths from from coal waste or mining waste, including acid mine drainage and those four places are in the University of Kentucky, West Virginia University, the physical sciences site in Western Pennsylvania, where we take fly ash and we get critical minerals rare earths out of it, and also at the University of North Dakota, extracting rare earths from lignite. Next slide please. I also mentioned earlier that we have done some pre feed front end engineering studies conceptual studies to design the feasibility of designing a 123 metric ton per day commercial grade. Rare earth production facilities and out of these 13 studies, we selected eight which are on the right hand side of the table of the slide, ranging again from acid mine drainage to Appalachian type underclays. Next slide please. One program that we have just initiated and we got awards is that we took 13 basins where you can find coal in the United States, the largest ones. And we are looking at the program is called we're looking to build coalition teams and regional innovation centers such that we can catalyze regional economic growth and create jobs and to provide economic potential for producing rare earths critical minerals and high value non fuel carbon based product. We call that program core CM which stands for carbon or rare earths critical minerals program. Next slide please. And with that, I thank you very much. Thank you very much. Of course, working for DOE I'm going to have to ask a political question you've survived many administrations, but is there a difference with administrations now as it relates to critical minerals. But what are the things that are continuing and how does this affect DOE. It's a very good question. I'm in my third administration I started working under the Obama administration I went through the trauma administration, and now with the Biden administration then what I want to tell you is is that in those three administrations I have seen consistency in the approach with all three administrations are are very interested in and appreciate the criticality and this is no pun on the critical minerals and the rare earths. The differences is that I think it and it's not it's a minor difference is it has to do with what sources do we use and all three administrations. We are focusing on using waste mining waste as the as the feedstock for this for that for those materials to extract those materials and and we appreciate the issues associated and they all appreciate the issues associated with the with the permanent process and also we need to to also emphasize the fact that it is a win win situation to give you an example this acid mine drainage issue from old coal mines we are finding cobalt in them and rare earths. And it's a situation where you can clean up those waters and at the same time add you know get something of value to the country. And also about the differences the differences is with the Biden administration is is we are focused on working in communities that have been impacted by the change and by the change into the new energy landscape more towards renewable energy and focus on communities that are hurting economically because of that change such as coal mining communities or other mineral communities coal power plant areas and things like that I'm going to stop right there. Okay, thank you very much. We're going to move on to the next presenter slide number nine steps over. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'd like to introduce Doug Silver. His title is geologist turned economist. He's a very long history in the mining industry. He's worked at several big mining companies that that we know the names of. He started out as a field geologist and he eventually rose to a portfolio manager of a major private equity firm. Doug has an MS in economic geology from University of Arizona. Doug is a well known mineral economist keynote speaker and author, he was recently the keynote speaker at the SME conference, early this year. He was inducted into the US National Mining Hall of Fame. One of the paragraphs about him is that he helps mentor students, and that was highlighted in that US National Mining Hall of Fame, and he's the principal founder of the Denver gold group. Now, Doug has taken on the task of leaving together every single presentation from webinars one, two and three. And so his presentation is going to be live and we appreciate this, this collection of of thoughts from everyone. Thanks, thanks Deborah. There we go. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me as the final speaker. I want to show you why it's so critical that we immediately develop an action item or an action list. Next slide please. Over the past three sessions we've heard from 14 experts representing government academia and industry. Their knowledge base is very impressive, and their willingness to share as greatly appreciated. I was brought into counter this experience. So let me boil it down for you. Raw materials are the basis for economic development. Critical minerals are those minerals needed for national security. The recent efforts to move away from fossil fuels and the accelerated growth of the internet slash new media age is making our response more urgent. Another problem is that we have an inelastic supply relative to an elastic demand. This is really important and you'll see why. In my opinion, the United States government is rapidly losing its global competitive advantage by not executing a strategy plan strategic plan to become critical mineral independent. So, are you looking forward to paying $200,000 for Volkswagen. Are you looking forward to the United States becoming the world's second greatest superpower. We need to execute a strategy as soon as possible, or we're going to suffer these consequences. Not that I buy a Volkswagen. Okay, next slide please. So let's start by reviewing some key dates. The US Bureau of Mines was created 1910 to research and provide expertise to the rule makers. However, it was abolished in the mid 1990s and shortly after the national defense stockpile started disposing of the critical minerals we now need. There have been three critical mineral studies over the past 70 years, as shown in yellow with the most recent being 2018 2019. This last study led to the current magic 35 critical minerals list. It's also noteworthy that over the last three years the federal government appears to recognize the critical minerals are now national security issue, as is the transformation of our energy supplies and demand. Next slide please. The critical minerals are not a new subject. The US government's first mineral yearbook was published in 1933. Presumably its purpose was to track the important minerals required by the US economy. My guess is all of those track commodities were considered critical at that time. Otherwise, why bother tracking them. Of the roughly 60 commodities track 21 are members of the current magic 35 list. The 1952 resources for freedom report a great government moniker by the way, addresses the same issue we're hearing about today. So none of this is new. What is new was presented by Karen hang hoy. The evolution of society has changed our demand picture. The electronic age has substantially grown the number of elements we consume. It's fun watching technology leapfrog itself. Neodymium magnets were invented independently by General Motors and Sumitomo special metals in 1984. Now they're a critical component of computers, warcraft offshore wind turbines, and they hold my fly fishing net to my vest. No wonder we call them critical. Dr. Nasser took this a step further showing the increased reliance and number of commodities that we in the United States are so dependent on. You know we're a consumer nation that consumes far more than we produce. Thank goodness Canada is a close and reliable neighbor. Next slide please. I remember Hubbard speak. Mary and King Hubbard was a geologist with Shell oil, and he predicted that world oil production would peak in 1970, as it did in the US. So why weren't we getting excited about transitioning out of fossil fuels back then. Wouldn't that have been the time for these debates. This applies at the right side of this curve. New technologies can revive a dying industry. This is the key point of my talk, but the United States to solve its critical mineral problem. It needs to invest heavily in research. I would guess at least half of our speakers have pointed this out. Excuse me. Dr. coconut talked about recovering rare is from call and Dr. Hawaii offy spoke of mining research. I want to seal this deal. We need massive research and we need it done by yesterday. This research needs to lead to immediate commercial applications. This is known as relevant research. Next slide please. My question to the audience is why is us capacity declining. We're the richest nation on the planet for now. Yet China is outperforming and outmaneuvering us. I took the scrap from Dr. want to office presentation, and he got his data from the US GS. It's impressive how the Chinese are cornering the market. Next slide please. This is a remote from Missouri presented this powerful slide at a different conference that shows how the US is losing ground and the Chinese are exploding on their efforts to control and build minds so that they control supply for the benefit of their people. Now their people need metal as much as we do. The difference is that their government is taking dramatic and immediate actions to ensure supplies. While ours is focused on studying the situation. It needs to change. Next slide please. Areas it's a lot of tracks us emphasize where the new mega factories are located. But to me, it shows which governments are getting with the program to control product. It's simply stunning how many mega factories are in China, and how few are in the United States. Next slide. Education is the well established necessity to building economies. So to add fuel non fossil to the fire. We need to address the education problems. We used to have about 2425 mining schools, a mining school covered all disciplines from raw exploration to final reclamation. It wasn't just the mining discipline. Today we have 14. These graphs show how enrollment has collapsed. China University of mining and technology has more mining students than all of the US schools combined. This makes sense because they also have the greater need as they buy, build and control minds around the world. I've heard that South Africa has similar numbers to China, but I could not find the reference. Next slide. Education Law Center ranks all of the states on how much they invest per pupil, and Kate the through 12 public education as a function of the state's GDP. The average for all 50 stakes is about $14,000 per pupil, or 3.6% of the states GDP. To make the 10 US states that generate the most mineral revenues, you can see in red that on a dollars per student basis, eight out of 10 or below the national average on spending and also spend less than the national average as a percentage of state GOP. I know from my years of sitting on advisory boards for universities that they see similar numbers, a general lack of support by the states for their own education. What are we going to generate new talent and research for the minerals industry when we have such low enrollment so few schools and painfully low state funding levels. The answer is that we need the Fed to step up and turn this around. Next slide please. A related question that no one has addressed at this conference is why are there so few mining companies. Most of the public mineral and mining companies in the world are Canadian. And most of the companies, mining and mineral companies that list on US stock exchanges are actually cross listing from other exchanges internationally, but are seeking exposure to US investor. The invention of cars and interstate highways allows citizens to live further from their offices. COVID has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that working for mom is actually very productive. This further encourages people to move away from cities. So rural real estate prices are soaring, and the amount of rural land available for exploration and mine development is diminishing. If you do find something, then you get to deal with the federal government not due to supportive, particularly with the NEPA process. The EPA is perceived as being heavy handed, and there are too many agencies involved in the permitting process. Kathy Arnold did a superb job in laying out this issue. So I'm happy to move away from the politics of it all. The disincentive to invest in the US resources just makes us more reliant on foreign mining companies and foreign jurisdictions for our supplies. Based on the political current landscape leadership, it appears that we are comfortable as a country with this approach. So we have a desperate need for critical minerals but aren't interested in being self reliant. Interesting contradiction isn't it. This means that the only way we can get domestic supplies is if we extract them from existing mines. The corporation, a subsidiary of a foreign company recently did this when they commissioned their tellurium circuit at the Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah. And other mining companies need encouragement to follow suit. The research in extracting rare earths from coal is another example. Next slide please. The natural response is to ask the miners to step up to the plate to fund a renaissance in mineral education, not so fast. The US mining companies can make meaningful contributions to the universities, and over the past 20 years the number of major US mining companies has dwindled to so few that you can literally count them on your two hands. Assuming you have 10 fingers. Finance has also radically changed in the past 10 years invention of the internet has transformed the stock brokerage business from one of stock brokers building a book of clients and feeding them deals to electronic platforms that don't need brokers. This makes it hard for public companies to get their story heard. Additionally, the invention of ETS has exacerbated the problem, because ETFs can't invest in private placements and young investors prefer ETFs over direct investments. So how are mining companies going to raise money. It's a very big issue in the industry. I really enjoyed Chris Jones and Renee LeBlancs presentation, not only for their infinite knowledge in this area of expertise, but their graphs repeatedly show how desperate the situation is getting. As I mentioned that the outset, the demand for critical elements is elastic, but the supply is inelastic. It takes years to discover permit and build new minds. These graphs show that demand is going to outstrip supply in the very near term. This applies to all the commodities need to reduce the US dependency on fossil fuels, as well as defend the national security of this country. And a special word about copper, while Chile and Peru are moving towards resource nationalism with massive tax increases on mineral resources. This is one of the most important metals for the energy transformation move, and the supply may be under severe threat. So, the permitting authorities continue to believe that taking a decade to produce a new mine is reasonable, then the mining industry is going to make lots of money during the interim, because commodity prices are going to go asymptotic, as demand is already outstripping supply. What a great time to cash out of my beloved industry. And this isn't gouging. This is simple supply and demand economics, and if the government won't help, then metal prices are going to skyrocket, hence the $200,000 Volkswagen. Next slide please. So the question is, is the federal government doing enough. Who knows. There are so many different agencies doing different things that we citizens taxpayers and mining people have no idea what you're up to, and whether your research has any commercial application. Jim fouled from the state of Nevada gave me the first glimpse of a government program, and his is spot on for Nevada. It gives me confidence that maybe the federal government is farther along than the average mining expert and visions. It would be nice to see similar summaries from the other government agency and the prior speaker gave a hell of a good start. This slide, for instance, shows a list and it's probably a partial list. And it shows a list of the agencies and programs that were listed in the 2019 critical mineral report. The agencies are listed at the bottom, and heaven knows how many more agencies are involved that weren't listed in this particular report. All this needs to get organized. Next slide please. Dr alley presented this interesting graph on where the academic see changes in the flow of commodities a function of this transition. These are all really good ideas, but recycling has been around since 500 BC, when Athens developed the first landfill. Recently, most people think of recycling in terms of aluminum cans, which are 100% recycled in 60 days. And the aluminum recycling industry has done a very good job in reducing their energy requirements to accomplish the speed. This is all well and good but and we should strive for these principles whenever possible, but some alloys just don't lend themselves to recycling. For others, the energy costs to separate the metals are prohibited. Recycling is part of the solution, but it's not the answer. The key. Oh, excuse me, and to Dr hang always pointed out the number of elements we need in today's society has grown. This makes mining even more important. I think the key to winning the day really revolves around innovations and metallurgy, more than any other mining discipline. Now, I believe strongly that one should not be critical, unless they're willing to offer solutions. And I've been talking among my fellow minors about this topic, and try to develop a short list of things that could be implemented immediately and start turning around this critical situation. First of all, since the mining industries expect to implement these solutions. They should also be consulted and play a major role in developing the strategies. This goes on the technology side and particularly on the economic side. The government needs to provide more education funding. A federal agency needs to compile and publish all the critical mineral studies currently underway, including the study title purpose supervising agency budget and awards. Personally, I wish that we would reestablish the Bureau of Mines, because this is what they did before and they were very good at it, but an equivalent agency is fine. And they should be mandated to coordinate all research on supply chain issues and efforts should be made that this is relevant research center Rubio currently has a bill which is an excellent start. The answer lies in federal financial support to expedite success. And I'm not talking about subsidies. I'm talking about the government putting money up so that we can start building a national rare earth refinery. These are extremely expensive operations. And most of the rare earth deposits, even the byproduct or triple product are so low grade that they're not economically viable. But if the government would build a centralized refinery, that would alleviate a big chunk of the capital for mining these low grade deposits. And of course the quid pro quo would be they would have access or control the metal that comes through it. I think that Kennecott's done a magnificent job with their terrarium circuit, and that other mining operation should be encouraged to investigate this as well. And if you give them tax credits for producing extracting or researching byproduct critical minerals. I think you'd get buy in from them very quickly. And Kathy Arnold got it right. The permitting process simply needs to be streamlined and strictly apply. Finally, I haven't mentioned Elizabeth Holly's talk which was very powerful talk. Her should have been the last speaker rather than me, because her message is most important. We need to find holistic solutions that address resource efficiency, sustainable development and environmental justice. For me my message is, let's do it now. Thank you. Thank you for that wrap up and incorporating everyone's talks into your presentation. So I have a question for you. One of your slides says technology saved the day and towards the end you mentioned that metallurgy will provide the solutions if you have any thoughts on what will be those innovations. Currently, metallurgy is a very wide field and it really depends on which element you're chasing but here would be my best response, which is you know Kennecott is supposedly producing nine elements at their mind right now I somebody told me that I don't want to confirm it, but these giant porphyry copper deposits and volcanic genic massive sulfides and layered mafic intrusive deposits, all contain multiple metals of volcanic genic massive sulfide for instance, carrier indium and gallium and other things. I think that because the government does not appear to want to support building new mines, then we're really going to have to rely on existing mines to get these additional metals out. My recommendation would be to start with Superfund sites. We want to clean them up anyway. There might be a lot more stuff that can be pulled out of there. I'll start there. The second is there's billions of tons of mining waste in the United States. So we have a huge resource that needs to be studied. And because you know the tailings have already been ground and crushed a few times. Yeah, they'll need additional additional processing technology, but you've already absorbed the cost for getting them into very fine grain. So, in metallurgy, I think hydro metallurgy is probably a better path than pyro metallurgy. But I think there's plenty of product available in the US that we could not only recover additional metals from, but we would also reduce the environmental footprint at the same time so we would serve both the social side, as well as the commercial side as well as a technological side. And I agree about hydro metallurgy. I'm seeing a lot of innovation in that area. But in recycling, sometimes it's the pyro metallurgy. Which is energy intensive. Okay, we're going to move on now to our question and answer. And I want to thank all the panelists, not just in this webinar, but in the previous webinars one in two. So, we, the committee has had a whole bunch of questions on chat so I'm hoping they'll raise their hands and I see one already. And I'll be asking some of those and then we have some questions from the audience. And again, we have diverse views here different opinions and so I'm hoping it will be a lively discussion. So, our first question. I'm Doug Holly, one of our panels for one of our committee members. Thanks, thanks. Thanks Deborah and can you hear me. Great. So I just a quick question is really for any or all the four panelists. It's really drawing on some comments that were coming from the administration or administration sources about a week ago that indicated that the the government is strongly thinking in the direction of simply going out and buying the critical minerals that it needs from trusted allies from particularly you know Australia and Canada and such, rather than looking for domestic sources and this was reported a number of media sites. So to me it seems like it's, it's, it's sort of looking at statecraft and trade agreements as the critical minerals solution. And so I'm interested when, when we look at supply chain problems, such as we saw in the colonial pipeline. I'm interested in the panelists thoughts on whether you think this is a wise strategy or a risky strategy. Yes, so I can maybe address that since I gave the example of the energy resource governance initiative that's the State Department's effort to do exactly what you were suggesting which is to form alliances with allies and source metals that way and the main reason for that is precisely what the panelists have discussed the delays and permitting and you know if you compare Canada and Australia to the US there's such a huge difference in the project delay. And so if you really need to be competitive on the manufacturing side. You know you have to go through that and I would say as someone who's an American citizen and an Australian citizen the Australian regulations are pretty good, I mean and their environmental standards are pretty high so they do have a more efficient process but at that point I do agree with some of the other panelists, what I disagree with in terms of regulatory reduction is not all regulations need to be curtailed that the ones which are particularly problematic for me are the ones which allow for indefinite appeals especially in many cases where there is just no light at the end of the tunnel. And the other ones which are problematic from an environmental perspective as an environmental planner I find these regulations very problematic are the classification of wastes in a way whereby it actually discourages recycling it actually discourages a circular economy so I'm, I totally agree with Doug when he said that we should be first prioritizing cleaning up super fun sites and using new, you know, in-situ leaching or phytomining or other techniques to or bio mining to get metals out of those sites and cleaning them up. But there are so many regulatory barriers to even doing a cleanup, and then you classify a waste in terms of being hazardous. And this is impossible and this is especially a problem with the rare earth sector because some of the rare earth ores have very small amounts of thorium in them. And, you know, the paranoia around nuclear waste, even at very low levels without people even understanding the basic science of radiation exposure. And someone who is a chemistry background environmental planning background has been a card carrying, you know, member of, you know, environmental groups to, I find that really self defeating that people do not understand the basic risk comparison. So what ends up happening is very low levels of thorium end up being classified in this area where it becomes impossible to be able to retrieve the material, because it's been made into this pariah. So I think these are, you know, very tangible practical, and I would say, still very much sensitive to the environment recommendations. You have a comment. Yeah, I have a comment. Doug, good to hear your voice. Doug was my supervisor during the Obama and the early part of the Trump administration. I have not heard anything official on the comment that you made. In other words, you know the process at the Department of Energy and I have gotten nothing but support in the area of developing technologies and working on trying to find out how we can extract these materials from mainly as it was mentioned by Doug Silver, mainly from mining waste. Thank you. And there's, there's been a number of questions on mining waste and liability. Maybe Kathy, we could start with you. About about the liability and I know there's even organizations, including child unlimited they want to help fund cleanup sites and cleanup of waters, but they're concerned about the good Samaritan liability that accrues to those sites. Yeah, Deborah that's correct and I think a lot more mining companies to be interested in taking on some of the mining waste cleanup and reprocessing issues but the minute that Superfund or a national priorities listing is on a site. There's the potential that anytime you interrupt the waste or touch the waste you'll become tagged with some of the liability at the site. And if it hasn't been assigned to anyone yet you might end up with the entire liability at the site so I think that in order to manage those processes seems right you, we're going to have to look at it and say if we're beneficial, we're initially using those wastes we need to exclude some of the liabilities and manage just the piece that you're touching, not the, not the entire site. And as far as environmental regulations go I think they're all great. I don't have a problem with any of them I've made my living on making sure that people comply with them and they're easy to comply with. I think the hard part is when there's 50 processes you have to step through and each one might have a different requirement, and it's, it's, it's just how they're not cohesive anymore. There are, there's just a lot of them to try to make sure that you don't miss how you're going to comply, and if complying with one causes you to miss out on an improvement later. So that's my, my concern with them. Please. The question was how we're going to deal with Canada providing us with critical minerals. Well, most of the mines in Canada as far as I know are owned by public companies or they're not owned by the government. So, go ahead and sign all the treaties you want but these companies are entitled to get the maximum price they can for their whatever they produce. But I would suggest is do it on a commercial scale. Do something in the US where they want to ship their intermediate or their raw products to the US to have them processed, and that's where you take control of them. And again, this, you know, there's only, there's only one cobalt refinery in Canada and I'm not sure there's any in the US, you know, build one of those in the US and the products going to come across and that that now gives us access to the product. It's a very simple business solution but having the Canadian government go to one of the big global producers and say you need to send it to the US. That's going to be in the courts for a long time. Anyone else want to comment on mind tailings and. Just one quick point on in the chat there was a point made that the reason why we are not doing that is because it's not economically efficient. I would challenge that I think the economics this is where the public sector can help I mean we subsidize so many other things which are actually deleterious for the environment, such as very intensive agriculture, and so on. I think if we were to subsidize cleanup of mining sites so as to retrieve critical metals. That is something which is probably good for society. Yeah, so this is an example where government intervention and a public private partnership can make the process economically efficient, but it can always also be possible in countries like Japan. They subsidize a lot of their high tech industry by investing in geology, you know they have institutions like jogman who work with you know the public sector going out and finding metals in different locations. Korea has begun, you know they have an entity which does something similar. The point was made about what Bureau of Minds might be resurrected some form I think you need maybe it is the US GS playing a slightly more involved role, but finding ways by which with the an interface between such entities and the finance community, so as to provide that requisite injection, where it's appropriate, and we do that in other areas you know the Department of Commerce does a lot so other kinds of activities which are supporting such public goods. And you have a comment. Yeah, a couple of things going back to the mining ways. And I know in coal mining. Most some of the states have responsibility for cleaning up all coal mining sites. I know for example that Pennsylvania has a significant liability. That is in the billions of dollars of cleaning up those sites. I also want to point out that there's several, believe it or not, power plants in Pennsylvania that are combusting right now, coal mining waste material. And as a result of that, they're not only profitable, but also they're cleaning up this the old site to the point where they converted streams into championship trout fishing so there's a there's a benefit when you do that. When you do it is the proper way following proper regulation, you know the environmental regulations. There are a number of mentions from the panel and also in the q amp a about international mining agencies. So, the ICMM was mentioned international Council of Mining and Metals, the International Mining Agency. And a question from the Secretary to Irma, which is the initiative for responsible mining assurance. And then that you mentioned the Bureau of Mines, and maybe, is there somebody that's familiar with all of these and could, could address that question. I raised that problem. So I will bring it back to clarify. So, you know, the International Mining Agency is a proposal. It's not something which exists. That's one of the points that has been raised through this consultation that is ongoing with the un environment program and the UN Environment Assembly, and the focus of that it has been to try and provide something similar to what is the International Energy Agency that exists already, or the energy charter treaty which exists already. But this one would be focused on materials and minerals. So this is very different from ICMM, which is the International Council on Metals and Mining, which is an industry. And the consortium that is focused on sustainable development efforts within the industry. It is entirely funded by industry. The board is the CEOs of these companies. It is not an intergovernmental body. It's a very industry driven organization. It has done good work, as I was saying earlier on improving standards, but it cannot have the same clout as what an International Energy Agency has, for example. Now, the point about Irma, Irma is the standard, which is probably the most stringent standard out there, very good standard for certifying minds in terms of their environmental and social performance. And that's a whole other conversation of what is the role of certification systems in making consumers aware, making it easier for governments to regulate, making it easier for investors to invest. And I think that's the role Irma plays very well, but that's a certificate voluntary certification standard. So that's kind of these different entities which may be confusing people. Does you have a comment and then I have a follow up question? Yes. As a matter of fact, one of the successes that we accomplished actually this past month has been that we were able to get the International Standards Organization ISO to include sustainability in mining operations for critical minerals and rare earths. And this was a very, in my view, this is a very good approach because you basically allow the consumers or the users of those materials to police the extractive metallurgy and the methods that people are using to extract some of these materials out. And we were able to convince a significant number of the members to approve of that and that to me was a very good approach. And there was a question from the audience about what, and this goes back to an international mining agency, is the federal government involved in helping some of these countries like the Congo, so that they don't do poor mining practices they are And, and what goes along with that is, Angela, you mentioned that we have reserves in Pennsylvania, we could be tapping into that. So how do we handle this balance? It's a tricky one, you know, because on the one hand you want to have clean minerals provided, but on the other hand, the livelihood dependence of mining in DRC is much greater in terms of opportunity cost than in Arizona. You know, people are not going to die of hunger if they don't get mining in Arizona compared to in DRC they will literally die of hunger if they don't have any other livelihoods. So, you know, we have to have a reality check we're dealing in a highly unequal world. So we have to figure out a way by which you can still have livelihoods for those people in DRC. And maybe they could have other alternative livelihoods and then you can have cleaner mining in Arizona or wherever. You know, so it needs to be handled with delicacy. It shouldn't be put in either or terms too easily, which is what happened with diamonds. The conflict diamond debate became either or you know Canada started branding their diamonds as clean diamonds meaning that the diamonds from Africa were somehow dirty, rather than saying let's clean up the dirty diamonds. I think we need to be sensitive to the social human development side. There is opportunity for both. I think certainly diversifying the supply chain for cobalt is a good idea. You never want to have dependent 65 70% of cobalt coming from one source is not good from just a basic risk management perspective. But to do it with delicacy so that the social development is not ignored. So I got a comment on this. And unless they're developed countries, regardless of whether the US government has a treaty or anything with them, they're going to break the rules. It's just inherent in how these countries are run. The way that you bring better practices is exactly what's going on in the DRC. Most of the big minds there are owned on, fortunately, a lot of them are owned by the Chinese but the non Chinese ones are owned by public companies. Public investors will not allow you to have multiple standards in different countries. So the environmental standards World Bank standards which are which are the international standards for mining are expected to be used by the foreign company when they're in the DRC or other other less developed countries. And in the course of them adhering that standard, they're starting to infuse those standards into the culture and the and the people. So the mining companies are especially the foreign ones, when they're going into lesser developed economies are very much the agents of change, because if they don't follow the standards and the investors will penalize them heavily. So there's a bit of a carrot and a stick going on there but the countries do benefit from it. Okay. I'm going to put John Morrison on this but he had a number of questions on chat about recycling versus primary mining. And that also came up during our Q&A from the audience. So, so John, could you ask that question. Yeah, no, and I enjoyed the conversation on the discussion on recycling and the circular economy. And I guess, you know, I'm all for it. And, and it's wonderful. And it's great. Let's do it. But the problem is that that the distance problem ahead of us with many or most of these critical minerals is so enormous in the next 15 is that that you know recycling and circular economy components can't get us there. And, and so the problem I have with it is just that we, when we talk about recycling circular economy sustainability as the solution, it's not the solution. And, and we're focusing then on all our energy and effort in the wrong, the wrong thing. Primary, primary production of these metals surely is going to be a major challenge going forward. Massive volumes of these primary metals relative to their current current supply. And, and the big concern here is that we've got another oil crisis looming in front of us. And, you know, we've got a perfect storm here ahead of us with the energy supply, transitioning to renewables massively metals intensive, and then the energy demand going to EVs. All metals intensive that this is a perfect storm like nothing we've seen before. So, so I just worry. I'm worried about how we are categorizing the problem. And when we give to politicians and regulators the way out, which is, oh, just do a better job of recycling. I think we're, we're completely mischaracterizing the, the problem. So I'd be interested in, you know, in, in those comments are, and I can talk about recycling in the copper industry, which is, you know, it's very elastic. The amount of recycling that occurs it depends on the point in the copper price cycle and copper is recycled as much as it possibly can be recognizing that a lot of it's going in the ground and into things that have a very long life cycle. But sorry, I'll, I'll leave it. Does anyone else want to talk about recycling versus primary money. I think John has pointed to important issue that, you know, recycling is part of the solution but it is not the entire solution. And there are thermodynamic limits to how much we can recycle with growing demand as well as we need the stocks to recycle. But there are some areas where I would say there is low hanging fruit that has not been realized with recycling, one of which is simply the design, the modularity of the product and the economic incentives which are not there for things like product take back. You know, there are, you, this is the kind of, we have seen this successfully done with industry look at the photocopier industry photocopiers before were bought universities like mine used to buy photocopiers now they lease them why do they lease them because the incentives were put forward to take back the product and refurbish it, remanufacture it, take apart the materials and use them as appropriate. That was a design issue, and it led to a very successful outcome economically. And it was a very successful ecological outcome. The same can be done with a lot of different materials which are using metals as well and products which are using metals. So I think there, there is still some low hanging fruit to be realized but absolutely we should not lead people up the garden path that recycling will solve the problem. And I think our friends in the environmental community are often led into this kind of utopia which does not unfortunately exist much as we would want it to, but we do need to mine at this point. One one sorry one one quick exception to that very important exception which I should mention is gold. I mean if we really want to go to recycling argument that is one metal where there is plenty of stock above ground. But there are other reasons why we don't recycle it. It's largely lying in bank vaults it's eminently recyclable because it doesn't oxidize and you can recycle it very well. But we do not recycle it for other reasons financially as well as for livelihood reasons and the livelihoods that gold mining provides. So there, there, there is that big exception which people don't talk about the gold is probably we could have indefinite supply of gold more or less on human time scales through recycling if we started to recycle jewelry recycle or stocks of gold, which are lying all over the world, but there are financial reasons why that's not done. There was john are you talking, you're on mute. Oh, okay I have one final. There was a question about education and how can we get people interested in getting degrees in the extractive industry, and I'm actually going to call on Elizabeth. And maybe you can help answer how the academies is helping in that regard, and what we're doing. Yes, yes, I'm here. Thanks the, it's a problem that we've been examining within the academies for quite a number of years because as and as our speakers today also also pointed out the, the numbers of schools who have mining mining economic geology metallurgy and related fields their their number of schools is dwindling. And the students supply students coming into the fields is also not not that numbers that they used to be for a variety of reasons, something that our, our committee is going to try to do in the autumn. And one of their meetings is to see if we can engage, particularly with underrepresented groups in in mining schools and engage with undergraduate students from HBCUs from tribal colleges from schools that that teach it towards the Hispanic student populations, and see if we can have a career virtual career forum where different job opportunities in the earth resource arena, and that's quite a broad arena, but would include some mining fields, where the students can interact with professionals in those fields and understand what sorts of career opportunities there may be also looking at them in terms of holistic approaches to these careers because I think we tend to silo the opportunities and what Selim, and others have raised and then this, this webinar series to is looking at the opportunities for examining mining not as maybe traditional in the traditional sense that that students might perceive it in the traditional mining career but more looking at it from the aspect of these various elements of the geosciences the economics the environmental aspects, the legal and regulatory aspects so that students can see that there's a very broad, broad approach to that so that might be something to look forward to in the autumn, if we indeed have this virtual career forum for undergraduate students so we'll keep the audience here posted on that as the as the developments transpired during the summer. So we only have three minutes left and I want to wrap up from each of the panelists and then finally with Jim our chair so if you have comments on that you can do that we're going to do this in reverse order of your presentations. So it's going to be dead, Angelos Selim, Kathy and Jim. What do you want us to comment on. Yeah 30 seconds wrap up. My big takeaway is, we've been studying this issue since the 1930s, and although research needs to be continued. What really needs to happen is the government's got to get off its butt and start putting money into things to make a difference. And if they're not willing to do that, then the US economy is in deep trouble. Next, a challenge to the government. One of the things that we're doing is with this core CM program that I briefly mentioned is that this is a partnership between academia, private industry and state local and federal governments. And it was, it was set up such that we understand the issue of not having expertise of losing the expertise in areas like extractive metallurgy and critical minerals and also knowing where those critical minerals are. Believe it or not, the USDA, although it tells us where they are, they don't tell us how much of that stuff is recoverable. So, thank you. So we mirror up. Yes, thank you Deborah for great moderation my take home messages there is no free lunch in the universe, wherever we're going to need to extract minerals materials. There will be some impacts, but we have to reconcile them we have to wear the options and we have to be willing to take risks where possible so I think we need to be thinking much more pragmatically than we do. It doesn't mean we're going to compromise our values, but it does mean that we'll be realistic and sync with science and society. Thank you Kathy. I think that my big takeaway is is that nobody wants the environment to be bad. And so to assume that people want environmental regulations to disappear is incorrect. I think all the companies would welcome investing in the United States and developing great projects. I think they just need some certainty on when they can get their permits and how that investment can can actually come to fruition you can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholders money and not have a way to get it back. Thank you and panelists today you're all great and previously all the panelists from one and two. I'm turning it over to our chair, Jim. Well, okay am I am I on okay. Thank you so much. Thank you Deborah thank you Kathy and Salim and Angelos and Doug and really great panel today so we all applaud you and thank you for your participation. And a couple quick wrap up comments. First of all, to address a logistics question that was raised and a reminder we will post a recording of this webinar which will be added to the first two, we will not post the individual presentations and review the recording and review the slides through that but we we don't have access to to be able to post the presentations and make them all available. Second just a quick wrap up for the series. The, the energy system is very complex, and, but it's, it's pretty much an engineering Marvel and in the United States I think largely our energy system is the envy, envy of the world and we look at the reliability and and the delivery and the economics of it and it's, it's a pretty impressive feat that that we many times take for granted, but it's not without vulnerabilities. And we've seen that recently with a couple events such as the Texas power outage and then the colonial pipeline issues and so we need to be thoughtful. And the energy system changes and critical minerals is is clearly one important component of that. And definitely important and perhaps may even be one of one if not the critical path items to an energy transitions and I think that the series has showed the importance of those of minerals to that. I'm sure everybody that this is is a continuing project to the committee there is is and and and as with good with with when our we have successful meetings. We raise more issues than we do answers and it gives us the, the, the insight and information to carry forward and how the national academies can help through a variety of different mechanisms, help move us to answers or information that can provide better decisions. So, so we'll continue that so stay tuned for those of you that have tuned in perhaps this guide your interest we do. We do a spring and an autumn committee meeting and so we will be and Elizabeth mentioned our, our autumn meeting, which will will be focused on likely focused on workforce. And with that one final very important series of thank yous. First of all, thank you to our audience. We really rely on having a just our audience as adds as much to it as our panel and our speakers and everything else so we really do appreciate your engagement and your participation. And in, we hope in the not too distant future to have the opportunity of not just being online, which we typically always are but, but if you wish to attend in person you'll have that opportunity and it's always following conversations of breaks and stuff with all of our audience attendees. Thank you to our committee members. I didn't mention it's important for everyone to know our committee is all volunteers we we serve because we we have an interest and passion in this and, and so thank you for our committee. Again, thank you for all the speakers for the and the moderators for our entire series and, and the committee members that worked diligently and with a lot of time to pull this series together. And last but, but perhaps most importantly, it wouldn't happen without the support and and commitment of the National Academy staff. So you, you met briefly Elizabeth 80 but, but also sitting there in the background that that make these things happen are Calla Rosenfeld and Eric Edkin, who, who did a tremendous amount of work and wouldn't happen none of this would be able to happen without their support. So thank you Eric and Calla. And again, finish thank you for joining us, and we'll look forward to getting together on on this and new topics in the autumn. All the best have a great rest of your, your day and week. Thank you.