Renewable Energy Blog

Rare earth-materials are used in a wide range of today’s high-tech consumer and industrial products and are critical enablers for many emerging ‘green energy’ technologies, such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, some of the latest PM-type generators for wind turbines, compact flourescent lighting and miniaturized components incorporated in computer hard-disks, mobile telephones and MP3-players.

Commentators expect global demand for NdFeB to almost quadruple by 2030 and quantities required for specific applications can be significant. Industry sources quote, for instance, that the 60 kW fast speed electric motor fitted in a Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle contains at least 0.5 kg of NdFeB magnet material. For a PM-type generator fitted in a 5 MW direct drive wind turbine, these same sources quote a figure of up to 200 kg of NdFeB per MW power rating, around one tonne per machine. This is a much higher quantity compared to the relatively light and compact fast speed systems.

Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping observed years ago that the ‘Middle East has oil, but China has rare earth-elements.’ Xiaoping’s quote reappeared in the world’s press as the issue of supply of the materials resurfaced last year. This coverage followed a leaked Chinese government report named ‘Rare Earths Industry Development Plan 2009-2015’, which stated that China currently accounts for 93% of the world’s production of rare earth-elements (other sources speak of at least 95%). China also produces more than 99% of the output of dysprosium and terbium, which are vital for a wide range of green energy technologies and military applications.

The report stated that within six years (2015) Chinese rare earth-material exports might be restricted to 35,000 tonnes annually. By comparison, global demand during the past decade increased three-fold to about 125,000 tonnes and might reach 200,000 tonnes annually by 2014. By that time, China is expected to need its full annual rare earth-metals output for its local industries, with exports being reduced to zero. Simultaneously, China is said by the report to contain ‘only’ 53% of the world’s cumulative rare earth-element deposits. A major reason for this huge discrepancy between resource availability and China’s current near-monopoly market position is said to be largely economic.

During the 1990s a combination of surplus production, resulting low price levels and stringent environmental legislation led to a spate of mine closures in the West. China kept its mines open, benefitting from lower wage levels and, it is claimed, less stringent environmental legislation. Any prospect of rare earth-element/materials scarcity represents a worrying scenario for the many non-Chinese high-tech industries that increasingly depend upon their unrestricted availability on the open market.

Options to counteract a looming future shortage include – as some have already done – shifting industrial activity that depends on these materials to China itself, in order to safeguard supply.

However, besides the potential conflict with strategic and national security interests, this strategy might also severely hamper goals in other countries and regions to build strong ‘green Industries’.

A second option is accelerated mine reopening outside China, which is already being implemented in the US at Mountain Pass and Australia’s Mount Weld. Apart from these mines there are at least four additional, but smaller, mining locations spread over Canada and Australia. A third option is to search for other solutions outside the rare earth-material scope.

In a sign of its concern, the Japanese government has compiled a ‘Strategy for Ensuring Stable Supplies of Rare Metals’. Europe, like Japan, is not in a favourable strategic position as it lacks any significant resources in this area leaving the continent, according to some experts, fully dependent on imports for supplies.