Huge upticks in renewable energy capacity installations around the world are causing demand for key rare earth elements to skyrocket. While these materials aren’t as geologically rare as their name might suggest, their production is limited as a finite number of already developed supply chains struggle to keep up with demand. As a result, prices are skyrocketing.
However establishing trade agreements that China hasn’t already gotten to first has proven difficult. China has been busily expanding a green energy empire in lithium-rich Latin America, for example, but the United States has had a comparatively difficult time entering into the same market. Luckily, the United States is also geologically rich in many rare earth elements – it will just require building an entire extraction and processing industry from the ground up.