Secure Access to Critical Metals used in Green Technologies

Although Scotland has resources in the sense of wind and water, we are dependent on imports of green technology metals (notably rare earths such as neodymium and terbium for wind turbines) to underpin these technologies. The many ambitious targets for decarbonising economies across the world assume that we will have unrestricted access to these metals when they are wanted, whereas they currently are supplied almost exclusively from China. Scotland itself has no natural rare earth reserves but many countries, including some third world countries, have critical metal resources but not the energy expertise to develop them.

If Scotland were to a) develop its expertise in critical metals from mine to magnet, from University to Factory, and b) promote itself as somewhere which would exchange its energy expertise in a culturally and socially equitable way to develop overseas rare earth production. In doing so, it would ensure future supplies of these critical resources as global demand for critical resources takes off.

Almost all the rare earths produced in the world come from China and hence every wind turbine and every water turbine in a hydroelectric plant in the western world has been built from metals, notably neodymium and terbium, imported from China. China's near monopoly on rare earth production means that it has a stranglehold on global decarbonisation. The green futures outlined in the Scottish government's vision for net zero futures are entirely dependent on access to rare earths and other critical metals such as lithium. China has already exercised export controls and tariffs on its critical materials, which have artificially increased the costs of many critical metals, as OPEC did with oil in the 1980s.

Unfortunately the UK has no rare earth resources of its own and so it will always be dependent on imports to realise its zero carbon futures. However, it has one of the world's largest industrial energy sectors and many of the skills in oil are common to rare earths. The challenge is to turn our expertise in exploration and development of black (carbon) energy into an equivalent green (metals) energy industry. Scotland has, for example, a University sector with expertise explicitly in exploration for green technology metals and experience of mining and exploration projects across the globe.

Furthermore, as we have seen with gas supplied from Russia, if political tensions between countries amplify, then resources become caught up in the conflict. If tensions over e.g. Taiwan were to erupt into open conflict between China and the West, then we would have no access to rare earths needed for the green energy futures, and without these metals, net zero would not be achieved.