Full Title: Recommendations to Improve Mining on Public Lands
Author(s): Biden-Harris Administration’s Interagency Working Group on Mining Laws, Regulations, and Permitting
Publisher(s): U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Interior, USDA, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of State, and U.S. ACHP
Publication Date: September 1, 2023
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This report addresses four hard truths implicated by this charge: First, demand for hardrock minerals, and critical minerals in particular, is growing at an exponential rate. According to the International Energy Agency, already announced clean energy policies will cause total mineral demand to double by 2040, and in order to meet climate goals by 2040 that demand would double again. Certain minerals would be in even higher demand: meeting climate goals could require 19 times more nickel, 21 times more cobalt, 25 times more graphite, and 42 times more lithium than produced today. Hardrock minerals like copper and gold, which are not classified as “critical” by the U.S. Geological Survey, are also in high demand and subject to intense development pressure.
Second, the United States depends heavily on foreign nations—in some cases non-allied nations—to produce and refine many of the minerals that are in high demand and critical to our economic and national security. That dependence will likely increase in the absence of Federal leadership. Mineral supply chains, moreover, are vulnerable to disruption. While the United States works closely with strategic allies who have robust mining industries, like Canada and Australia, the U.S. is heavily reliant on Chinese imports for many of these minerals in processed form. As stated in the Biden-Harris Administration Fundamental Principles for Domestic Mining Reform, “to meet current and future demand, and to break our reliance on single sources while creating good jobs for American workers, mining reform should assure that a reliable and sustainable supply of critical minerals can be provided both through environmentally and socially responsible mining and processing projects and other sustainable sources.”
Third, efforts to address mineral supply chain challenges are complicated by the General Mining Law of 1872, a Reconstruction Era law promoting free access to minerals that are found on Federal land. The General Mining Law, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant, has largely gone unchanged despite 151 years of profound social and scientific change. The Law fails to direct mineral exploration and development towards areas that are appropriate for development and away from sensitive resources. It fails to promote timely development of mineral claims. It fails to promote early and meaningful engagement between mining interests, government agencies, and potentially impacted communities. And it fails to provide the American taxpayer with any direct financial compensation for the value of hardrock minerals extracted from most publicly owned lands. Overlaying the General Mining Law’s promise of free and unfettered access to minerals on Federal land is a complex web of more recent laws enacted to protect air, water, wildlife, communities, and public health. These laws were enacted to provide balance, promote thoughtful and informed decisions, protect Americans, and build confidence that development is conducted with proper safety standards and oversight. Better integration, and reconciliation of competing objectives, is critical to strengthening America’s mineral supply chain.
Fourth, these laws are not self-executing. Sustained underinvestment in the technical resources and skilled agency staff needed to address a rapid increase in mineral development proposals leads to under-engagement between agency staff and prospective miners. Under-engagement leads to incomplete or inadequate permit applications, the requests for supplemental information they engender, and the delays that result. Staffing shortages undermine efforts to coordinate across agencies, inviting inconsistency, redundancy, inefficiency, and delay. And of course, inadequately staffed and under resourced agencies are ill-equipped to swiftly process permit applications and associated environmental reviews.
The charge to the Interagency Working Group that prepared this report is therefore both correspondingly simple and staggeringly complex: expand domestic mineral production in a timely manner to ensure that “our actions are conducted with strong environmental, sustainability, safety, Tribal consultation and community engagement standards so that the American public has confidence that the minerals and materials used in our electric vehicles, smartphones, solar panels and other technology are sourced under responsible social, environmental and labor standards and that the Administration wisely stewards our shared natural resources for Americans today and future generations.”