Earth Equity News

Rare Metals and Sustainable Energy Technology. By Craig Canine, OnEarth, May 28, 2009. "Metals known as rare earths -- a group of 17 elements with exotic-sounding names like lanthanum, neodymium, yttrium, and erbium... are essential ingredients in a host of high-tech gadgets, including automotive catalytic converters, air-bag sensors, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, and precision-guided missiles. Although they are produced and used in tiny quantities, rare earths and a few other obscure metals such as indium and gallium are also essential ingredients in virtually every sustainable energy technology. Lanthanum, for example, is required to make nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, which are used in hybrid cars. Energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulbs contain small amounts of both yttrium and europium. 'Super magnets' made with neodymium form the heart of compact but powerful motors and generators like those used in wind turbines, today's hybrid cars, and tomorrow's plug-in electric vehicles… Economically viable concentrations of rare earths are known to exist in only a handful of places -- mainly in China, Australia, and North America, with smaller deposits in India, Brazil, Malaysia, and South Africa. China's reserves, which are located mainly in Inner Mongolia and in soft clay ores in southern China, are, by a wide margin, the world's largest… 'The global annual production of neodymium, essentially all of which is mined in China, is today at an all-time high,' [says Jack Lifton, a 'technology metals' consultant] 'There is no surplus -- the existing demand uses up all that's produced each year. So to build more wind turbines and hybrid cars, you'll need more neodymium. Where are you going to get it?'"