But from the start it has been a messy and opaque process. On the one hand \u201ccritical minerals\u201d sound like they hold the promise of riches and security from elements we can extract from our rocks. On the other, though, the debate is mired in confusion, duplicity and agendas \u2013 not all our own \u2013 that come back in large part to a poorly defined set of minerals and a weak understanding of how these \u201ccritical minerals\u201d work on the global stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start, then, with the obvious \u2013 just what the hell are these \u201ccritical minerals\u201d? Right from the start, the story is not simple. Originally (back during the first world war), the term \u201ccritical minerals\u201d meant those that were regarded as holding strategic significance for a country\u2019s manufacturing sector and national defence. More recently, as renewable energy sources (solar, batteries, turbines) took off, the term became attached to minerals needed for \u2013 critical to \u2013 the \u201cgreen energy transition\u201d. In the last few years the two meanings have become messily entangled. As we\u2019ll get to in a minute, we\u2019ve added another slightly bizarre twist to the definition of critical.<\/p>\n
And upfront, we do need to look carefully at the drivers of this interest in \u201ccritical minerals\u201d. A recent paper<\/a> has estimates \u2013 based on the scant data currently available \u2013 that at least 33% of chromium usage is for military purposes, which also absorb 11% of global copper supply, 18% of antimony, and not insignificant amounts of titanium and tungsten. Given the scale and rapid growth in global military spending, demand for military use outstrips that of \u201cgreen transition\u201d technologies for many of the identified critical minerals.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition, what is \u201ccritical\u201d (or strategic) for one country at one point in time may not be critical to another. Hence each \u201ccritical minerals\u201d list produced recently by countries (and the EU) has been slightly different \u2013 Australia has 31, the US 60, New Zealand 37. And just because they are seen as \u201ccritical\u201d for manufacturing or security, this doesn\u2019t mean we have them, or can mine them ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n The combination of continued industrialisation (think China, India), global population growth \u2013 in the last 25 years we\u2019ve added just over two billion additional humans to the planet \u2013 and new industrial and defence uses all add up. In the mining industry much of the talk is about a desperate need for large new copper deposits, and over the same period, global copper production has increased by more than 80%. Some are so critical to energy storage that the numbers are truly dazzling \u2013 global lithium production has increased by almost 1500% over the past 25 years and is now in global oversupply (and therefore is no longer considered a \u201ccritical\u201d mineral).<\/p>\n That\u2019s the global context, then. So where does that leave us?<\/p>\n Well, for a start, working off a different list to much of the world. Three of the critical minerals listed on New Zealand\u2019s list are unusual in the global context: aggregates and sand, gold and metallurgical coal are not on the lists for the US, UK or Australia (the EU does include coal). The first of these, aggregates and sand, actually makes a lot of sense. We need these for construction and roading. Securing access to land for these is important nationally, and is increasingly contested in planning processes \u2013 the nimby syndrome often at work. BTW, the correct answer to the pub quiz question of \u201cwhat is the largest and most valuable part of New Zealand\u2019s mining industry\u201d is these aggregates and the hundreds of quarries, large and small, around the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second and third oddities on our critical minerals list are gold and coal. They are unusual as they don\u2019t meet the original criteria: to be a New Zealand critical mineral originally you had to be \u201ceconomically important and vulnerable to supply risk<\/a>\u201d. Despite industry advocacy, gold and coal were excluded, as they didn\u2019t meet supply risk criteria, and even resources minister Shane Jones\u2019 paper to his cabinet colleagues<\/a> admitted as much. However, when the final recommended list went to cabinet, the criteria were broadened to include minerals such as coal and gold, which were \u201cvital to New Zealand\u2019s mining sector\u201d. And in came the coal and gold interests. In other words, they are \u201ccritical\u201d mostly to the industry and its future, not to our national interest or global supply chains.<\/p>\n Right, now we have a list. It is divided into 10 minerals we currently mine (that includes coal and gold), 11 we could potentially produce with a lot more exploration and investment, and 16 that we rely on other countries for.<\/p>\n So what can we offer the US president? Well, again leaving aside the \u201conly-critical-to-the-sector\u201d coal and gold, and going by the government\u2019s own assessment from GNS, the answer at this time is \u201cnot a lot\u201d. We currently do not appear to have critical minerals in abundance, especially, as Meyer for Newsroom<\/a> points out, because the FTA panel has just declined \u2013 in draft, anyway \u2013 a permit for the most-advanced significant new source of titanium and vanadium, the controversial TTR seabed mining project of Taranaki.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile the GNS interactive critical minerals map<\/a> appears to highlight terrifyingly broad swathes of critical minerals across the motu. But a closer examination reveals almost universally these are small outcrops or exposures that have been identified but never really pursued or assessed for their economics. A few are legacy areas, where mining has occurred in the past and could, with new technology, potentially be reopened. And outside of this map, some of the metals are found in waste products from other processes \u2013 vanadium in iron-ore slag, for example. There is also the question of lead times: GNS itself indicates a typical 15-year timespan between identification of a mineral outcrops, exploration, testing and proving up, feasibility, permitting and construction through to the start of production.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the more peculiar end of the debate are calls for us to mine these kinds of minerals so we are able to be more economically self-sufficient. The reality, however, is that most of what we produce is or will be exported in its raw state, incorporated through complex processing and manufacturing process into global supply chains (mostly in China currently), and then the \u201ccritical minerals\u201d we actually need\/use are all embedded in the technologies and manufactured goods we import from, again, mostly China. We don\u2019t, and can\u2019t, mine, process and consume these minerals all in New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amid all of the debate, it is perhaps worth casting a glimpse over the ditch to the recently signed US-Australia critical minerals deal<\/a>. Included in it are some good hints of what might be coming our way \u2013 direct government investment in minerals projects (the ministerial announcement late last week <\/a>is a good example of exactly this), price guarantees and national security provisions around potential asset sales (which is diplomat code for not selling things to Chinese companies).\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps most worryingly, the Australian agreement also notes that both governments \u201care taking measures to accelerate, streamline, or deregulate permitting timelines and processes\u201d. A commitment to do similar here could have significant consequences if it means the fast-track process get faster or simply progress directly to a minister\u2019s desk, as Minister Jones has suggested it should<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is no wonder the debate in New Zealand we\u2019ve had so far has been muddled, mired by speculation and political and sometimes moral double-speak.<\/p>\n Given the entanglement of the current debate in the American president\u2019s global hunt for minerals to support the US manufacturing and defence sectors, and Jones\u2019 desire for a firmer hand on the fast-track tiller, perhaps where critical minerals actually become critical for Aotearoa is as a geopolitical piece of virtue signalling wrapped around the thin end of the \u201cShaneocracy\u201d wedge that might face us after the next election.<\/p>\n *This piece has been amended from an earlier version to clarify the role of GNS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elements we can extract from our rocks promising riches and security may sound appealing, but the reality is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[492,30587,2752,111,43,139,69,2114,135,12243],"class_list":["post-300195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-comments-enabled","tag-critical-minerals","tag-mining","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-shane-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Workers at a mine in Afghanistan in 2022 sort through crushed rocks containing chromite, before it goes through a process to refine and extract the ore that yields chromium. (Photo: Marcus Yam\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
OceanaGold\u2019s open-pit gold mine in Waihi (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n