Rare Earth Elements

The Recent History of Rare Earth Elements

The $13 billion global rare earth market is growing at 10.8% per annum according to Global Market Insight Inc., as demand for electric vehicles, cellphones and other products rise. Since 1988, China has been the dominant supplier of REEs. In 2011, China provided 95% of the global market and decided to restrict exports and favor its own domestic industries—a decision that resulted in REE price volatility. Consequently, rising concern among industrialized nations has revitalized global interest in REE mineral exploration and extraction. Worldwide, several new commercial REE projects, in various stages of planning and development, are focused on diversifying supply; however, new efforts to purify and refine REEs remain limited.

In 2009, intensified interest in strategic materials culminated in discussions regarding our nation’s ability to secure reliable supplies of REEs and other strategic materials.

Strategic materials were identified as critical for growing the U.S. green energy and electronics industries, as well as for specialty military applications. In response, DOE released the first Critical Materials Strategy in 2010, identifying ytirium(Y), neodymium (Nd), europium (Eu), terbium (Tb) and dysprosium (Dy) as critical REEs.

Nationally, Congress appropriated funding in 2014 to explore how the US can produce more REEs, recognizing the importance of this resource to U.S. economic security, In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a federal critical minerals strategy, which would cut red tape and boost resources for exploration.

In January 2020, Canada and the US signed a Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration, aimed to advance the countries’ mutual interest in securing supply chains. In April, the Rare Earth Element Advanced Coal Technologies Act was introduced, which would allocate $23 million a year to the Department of Energy and its National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) through 2027 to help de- velop technologies that could extract rare earth elements from coal and coal by-products in U.S. mines.

Local industry groups in Central Appalachian coal region including the DCL principals, launched R&D efforts to identify and locate domestic reserves containing elevated REE concentrations in coal and coal-related materials.

They also began to explore commercial and novel transformational REE separation and extraction concepts, and to address REE separation technology performance and process economics.