{"id":26201,"date":"2025-04-17T20:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26201"},"modified":"2025-04-17T21:32:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T21:32:00","slug":"heres-what-to-know-about-rare-earth-minerals-and-renewable-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26201","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s What to Know About Rare Earth Minerals and Renewable Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The shift to cleaner power needs resources from China. An export ban just cut off some supplies.<\/p>\n

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In 1886, a French chemist dissolved holmium oxide in acid. Then, he added ammonia. Toiling over the marble slab of his fireplace, he repeated the procedure dozens of times.<\/p>\n

Finally, voil\u00e0: He\u2019d extracted a new element.<\/p>\n

More than a century later, Paul-\u00c9mile Lecoq de Boisbaudran\u2019s painstaking discovery \u2014 which he named dysprosium, from the Greek for \u201chard to get\u201d \u2014 is a crucial ingredient in the powerful magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors.<\/p>\n

If the world is to succeed in its efforts to slow global warming, it will need dysprosium. It will also need a suite of other rare earth elements and minerals that many of us first heard about this week when China announced export controls that would effectively cut off the global supply of seven rare earths.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s export ban<\/a>, part of the country\u2019s retaliation for President Trump\u2019s steep new tariffs, has exposed the extent to which the global energy transition depends on raw materials produced by China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s not just rare earths<\/a>, as my colleague Max Bearak and I reported this week. China supplies more than half of the 50 minerals the U.S. government has deemed critical<\/a> to national security and the economy.<\/p>\n

Among those critical minerals are lithium, cobalt and nickel, components of the rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy on the grid when the weather is unfavorable for wind and solar generation. China refines or mines significant portions of the world\u2019s supply of all three, and Chinese companies have acquired major stakes in mineral-rich countries: nickel in Indonesia, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n

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The shift to cleaner power needs resources from China. An export ban just cut off some supplies.In 1886, a French chemist dissolved holmium oxide in acid. Then, he added ammonia. Toiling over the marble slab of his fireplace, he repeated the procedure dozens of times.Finally, voil\u00e0: He\u2019d extracted a new element.More than a century later, Paul-\u00c9mile Lecoq de Boisbaudran\u2019s painstaking discovery \u2014 which he named dysprosium, from the Greek for \u201chard to get\u201d \u2014 is a crucial ingredient in the powerful magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors.If the world is to succeed in its efforts to slow global warming, it will need dysprosium. It will also need a suite of other rare earth elements and minerals that many of us first heard about this week when China announced export controls that would effectively cut off the global supply of seven rare earths.China\u2019s export ban, part of the country\u2019s retaliation for President Trump\u2019s steep new tariffs, has exposed the extent to which the global energy transition depends on raw materials produced by China.It\u2019s not just rare earths, as my colleague Max Bearak and I reported this week. China supplies more than half of the 50 minerals the U.S. government has deemed critical to national security and the economy.Among those critical minerals are lithium, cobalt and nickel, components of the rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy on the grid when the weather is unfavorable for wind and solar generation. China refines or mines significant portions of the world\u2019s supply of all three, and Chinese companies have acquired major stakes in mineral-rich countries: nickel in Indonesia, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium in Zimbabwe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26203,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26204,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26201\/revisions\/26204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}