The Green New Twilight Zone
The Biden-Harris climate policy is riddled with contradictions that will send Minnesota into an energy black hole.
While the media focused on Pres. Joe Biden’s disastrous CNN debate performance on June 27, it ignored the administration’s glaring contradictions in its climate policy. The day after the debate, the Interior Department squelched the last hopes of the proposed Ambler Road project in northwest Alaska.
Denying the construction of the Ambler Road blocks off a wealth of minerals needed for the administration’s clean-energy agenda. Mining proposals across the U.S., including Twin Metals and PolyMet in northeast Minnesota, have faltered because of the administration’s opposition to any development of natural resources. But if Biden — or a potential Harris-Walz administration — wants to do more than virtue-signal its green ambitions, it needs to promote domestic mining.
The Ambler Road would have spanned 211 miles in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough and unlocked access to significant deposits of cobalt, copper, lead, silver, and zinc. Building the road and its proposed mines would create almost 5,000 direct and indirect jobs. Even the most promising potential mine would produce 149 million pounds of copper, 173 million pounds of zinc and 26 million pounds of lead — annually.
The other three potential mines have no estimates available because it is extremely difficult to explore and plan for a mine without a road to access the area. The Interior Department doesn’t seem to understand this chicken-and-the-egg problem, based on one reason it listed for denying the road: “There are no active mines in the area and no mine plan proposals pending before the federal government.”
Alaskans are all too familiar with fighting for the right to develop their natural resources, as the Ambler Road is only the latest Alaskan natural resource project to be stymied. Alaska’s Pebble Mine, a proposed copper mine in Bristol Bay, was vetoed by Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in January 2023 by a little-used section of the Clean Water Act (Section 404(c)).
In Alaska, 28 million acres were put off limits to oil, gas, and mining exploration in 2024, adding to the nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska that was put off limits in 2022. The administration also revoked leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) that were specifically intended for oil and gas exploration. It seems the administration would prefer it if western states were enormous nature preserves fully dependent on tourism.
But why should Minnesotans care about what happens in the remote corners of the Alaskan tundra? Minnesotans face the same indecisive flip-flopping that deters investment and hurts local economies. In January 2022, the Biden administration thoroughly derailed development of the Twin Metals mine, planned in the Duluth Complex in northeastern Minnesota, by canceling two federal mineral leases in the Superior National Forest. Twin Metals estimates its mine would create 750 direct jobs and 1,500 jobs within the local community.
The canceled leases flip-flopped the Trump administration’s 2017 decision to reinstate the leases and renew them for 10 years. Mr. Trump’s actions were themselves a reversal of an Obama administration decision to deny the lease renewal application in 2016. The future of Twin Metals is now also jeopardized by a 20-year mining moratorium on 225,000 acres in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, including the lands where the company’s leases are located.
The NorthMet project, which would be developed by NewRange Copper Nickel (formerly PolyMet Inc.) to extract copper, nickel, and precious metals, has been delayed since June 2023. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pulled the project’s permit under the Clean Water Act (Section 404). NewRange estimates that NorthMet would create up to 1,000 jobs and produce and process 29,000 metric tons of ore per day.
It’s a miracle that mines are ever built, given the federal government’s lengthy, costly, and adversarial permitting process. In the U.S., projects determined to have an impact on the environment must undergo either an environmental impact statement or an environmental assessment at the federal level, depending on scale. This applies not only to federal agencies, but also states, localities, private citizens, and corporations. The applicants for a project must submit a litany of technical, environmental, and procedural documents proving the safe construction, operation, and closure of mines. Applicants also engage in stakeholder meetings and public comments.
While a rigorous permitting process sets a high bar for quality control and safety, it can take a decade or more to finish, especially if it is drawn out by lengthy litigation — with no guarantee of success. For example, the NorthMet project was first proposed in 2004, and nearly 20 years later, finds itself missing a required permit after the administration radically changed. Permitting is frequently politicized, and opponents bring legal challenges to almost every project. If a judge rules that the process was done incorrectly at any stage, they can order that the agencies redo the analysis entirely, which adds years and millions of dollars to the process.
Uncertainty has consequences for investors, as evidenced by the Ambler Road debacle. NANA Regional Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation that owns a portion of the lands along the proposed route, has indicated that it will not renew its surface access leases to the state of Alaska. Why? In its final environmental impact statement, the Bureau of Land Management floated that “after the useful commercial life of Ambler Road,” it might become public, contrary to most stakeholders’ wishes for “controlled access.” NANA said in its statement that BLM’s analysis “goes beyond the law.” The Ambler Road is effectively dead, unless the state persuades NANA to reconsider or somehow plots an alternative route that avoids its lands.
Despite delaying and denying domestic mining projects, the administration’s green dreams live on. Without enough materials for electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, the green dreams will crash, and fast.
Consider how many materials are used in green technologies. Both cobalt and copper are crucial to EVs, solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage. A battery EV uses 80 kilograms (kg) of copper, whereas a normal internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle uses only 22 kg. (A battery electric bus, like those roaming Minneapolis in the Metro Transit system, uses about 253 kg of copper.)
Onshore wind turbines require 5.5 metric tons of zinc, 2.9 metric tons of copper, and 0.78 metric tons of manganese per megawatt of power produced. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels require 3.9 metric tons of silicon and 2.8 metric tons of copper per megawatt of power produced.
Fueling green-energy dreams will need far more miner- als than the U.S. or the world — currently produces. Even business-as-usual demands, not including vehicle electrification or net-zero, will require 115 percent more copper by 2050 than has ever been mined in human history. Global vehicle electrification will need 55 percent more copper mines than that. Net-zero is even more implausible.
The world will need all the materials it can get.
But if we don’t get them here in the U.S., then we will have to source them elsewhere — and those supply chains are dominated by China. Nearly 90 percent of rare earth elements are refined by China, which also produces more than 80 percent of the world’s cobalt through its ownership of key mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Foreign countries have little regard for environmental protections and worker health and safety compared to America’s strong domestic protections. There’s also substantial evidence that minerals like cobalt are being mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by children as young as six.
It would be concerning under any circumstances to depend on a single country for most minerals vital to national security. It’s a serious national security risk when those minerals are dominated by China, who may choose to withhold imports at any time. For instance, in August 2023, China began exporting restrictions of gallium and germanium, which are used to produce semiconductors, high-frequency computer chips, and fiber optic cables. High-frequency computer chips and specialized semiconductors using gallium are used in next-generation missile defense, radar systems, electronic warfare, and communications equipment. In December 2023, China also began restricting exports of high-quality graphite, which is important for the anodes of EV batteries. Exports resumed in September 2023, but at a significantly restricted level.
This could be a problem when, as of 2022, China produced 98 percent of the world’s gallium and 65 percent of the world’s graphite. Whether China is bluffing or not is beside the point: These materials are necessary not just to fuel green ambitions, but for the indispensable technologies that power U.S. national defense.
Yet the Biden administration doesn’t seem to care about the consequences of procuring these minerals from foreign countries. Amos Hochstein, a White House official, said in his comments at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles this year:
“We can all live in the capitals and cities around the world and say, ‘I don’t want to do business there.’ But what you are really saying is we’re not going to have an energy transition… Because the energy transition is not going to happen if it can only be produced where I live, under my standards.”
Spokespersons for the administration like Hochstein and U.S. policy choices send a clear message: The U.S. is uninterested in the impacts of procuring these materials, so long as it happens out of sight, out of mind. Domestic mining in states like Minnesota is a better solution because our rigorous permitting processes hold high environmental standards, and U.S. law better protects worker health and safety.
The administration also leaves another question unanswered. Assuming the world has enough of the materials we need for a green energy transition, is it right to use up the Earth’s supply of copper, cobalt, and other minerals in its pursuit? Are we so certain that this is the best use of our resources that we are willing to deprive our grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the opportunity to use resources for other ends? Advances in technology and recycling will help bring materials back into circulation, but “new technology will make up the gap” is no substitute for having a plan.
One should expect a potential Harris-Walz administration to, at best, continue the progressive climate, energy, and environmental policies of the Biden-Harris administration. As a senator, Kamala Harris was an original supporter of the Green New Deal, which would sacrifice modern living standards alongside fossil fuel use, and claimed climate change is “an existential threat” to the U.S.
In her short-lived campaign in 2019 for the Democratic nomination, Harris claimed that as California’s attorney general, she sued Exxon Mobil in 2016 over its “climate change disinformation” efforts (though it seems that no lawsuit was ever filed, as various fact-checkers pointed out after the debate). She also said in a CNN town hall that she favored a ban on hydraulic fracturing and has since flip-flopped on the issue to appeal to swing-state Pennsylvania. Harris also proposed a carbon tax and floated the idea of a “Climate Equity Act.”
Gov. Tim Walz fares no better on energy and environmental policy than Harris. Walz promised a “modest” increase in the gas tax while campaigning for governor in 2018, then sought to raise the tax by 20 cents per gallon — a 70 percent increase. He campaigned on the promise of requiring 50 percent of Minnesota’s electricity to come from wind and solar by 2030 and then advocated for a more radical proposal to require 100 percent wind and solar by 2040, which passed. He also proposed a low-carbon fuel standard that American Experiment estimates would increase prices at the pump between 39 and 45 cents per gallon by 2030.
Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, of Always On Energy Research and formerly of Center of the American Experiment, estimate that Walz’s wind and solar mandate will cost $313 billion through 2050 and cause families to pay $1,642 more per year, reaching $2,934 by 2040. Industrial customers would see an average increase in electricity costs of $222,387 annually.
Under a Harris-Walz administration, Minnesotans should expect a continuation of Biden’s mining policies. Orr says, “For Minnesota mining, it can’t get worse. Joe Biden didn’t say anything about copper-nickel mining on the Range. Then he pulled the leases for Twin Metals and canceled the Section 404 wetlands permit for PolyMet. They’ve killed basically every project on the Range. Twin Metals is looking for opportunities to mine outside of federal lands.”
Contrast a potential Harris-Walz administration with a potential second Trump administration. For Minnesota, the administration had worked to advance Twin Metals and PolyMet, including a 2019 renewal of Twin Metals leases by the BLM. During his term as president, Trump signed executive orders to expand domestic critical minerals mining and supported mining jobs and education. He also lifted an outright ban on mining imposed on 10 million acres in six western states, allowing lands to be considered for exploration and development. Trump also supported streamlining permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act, which would improve not only the speed at which mines come into operation, but also wind and solar projects, transmission lines, and any other projects needing federal environmental review.
Despite Harris and Walz’s angling toward the center on energy policy, they’re anything but moderate. Their climate policies are just as confused as Biden’s. One hand has doled out billions of dollars to incentivize the adoption of wind and solar power, electric vehicles, and battery storage while paying lip service to the importance of responsibly sourcing critical minerals. The other hand is working to stymie every whiff of a domestic mining project, handing power to U.S. adversaries abroad. The government’s left hand would be wise to consult what its right is doing.