A view of homes in Nuuk, Greenland, June 22, 2025 / AP-Yonhap
Greenland’s harsh surroundings, lack of key infrastructure and tough geology have thus far prevented most individuals from constructing mines to extract the sought-after uncommon earth components that many high-tech merchandise require. Even when U.S. President Donald Trump prevails in his effort to take management of the Arctic island, these challenges will not go away.
Trump has prioritized breaking China’s stranglehold on the worldwide provide of uncommon earths ever for the reason that world’s quantity two economic system sharply restricted who might purchase them after the USA imposed widespread tariffs final spring.
The Trump administration has invested a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} and even taken stakes in a number of corporations. Now the president is once more pitching the concept that wresting management of Greenland away from Denmark might resolve the issue.
“We’re going to do one thing on Greenland whether or not they prefer it or not,” Trump mentioned Friday.
However Greenland could not be capable to produce uncommon earths for years — if ever. Some corporations try anyway, however their efforts to unearth a few of the 1.5 million tons of uncommon earths encased in rock in Greenland typically have not superior past the exploratory stage.
Trump’s fascination with the island nation could also be extra about countering Russian and Chinese language affect within the Arctic than securing any of the hard-to-pronounce components like neodymium and terbium which can be used to provide the high-powered magnets wanted in electrical automobiles, wind generators, robots and fighter jets amongst different merchandise.
“The fixation on Greenland has at all times been extra about geopolitical posturing — a military-strategic curiosity and stock-promotion narrative — than a practical provide resolution for the tech sector,” mentioned Tracy Hughes, founder and government director of the Essential Minerals Institute. “The hype far outstrips the exhausting science and economics behind these crucial minerals.”
Trump confirmed these geopolitical issues on the White Home Friday.
“We don’t need Russia or China going to Greenland, which if we don’t take Greenland, you may have Russia or China as your subsequent door neighbor. That’s not going to occur,” Trump mentioned.
The principle problem to mine in Greenland is, “in fact, the remoteness. Even within the south the place it’s populated, there are few roads and no railways, so any mining enterprise must create these accessibilities,” mentioned Diogo Rosa, an financial geology researcher on the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Energy would additionally need to be generated domestically, and skilled manpower must be introduced in.
One other concern is the prospect of mining uncommon earths within the fragile Arctic surroundings simply as Greenland tries to construct a thriving tourism trade, mentioned Patrick Schröder, a senior fellow within the Atmosphere and Society program on the Chatham Home assume tank in London.
“Poisonous chemical substances wanted to separate the minerals out from the rock, so that may be extremely polluting and additional downstream as properly, the processing,” Shroder mentioned. Plus, uncommon earths are sometimes discovered alongside radioactive uranium.
Moreover the unforgiving local weather that encases a lot of Greenland beneath layers of ice and freezes the northern fjords for a lot of the 12 months, the uncommon earths discovered there are usually encased in a fancy sort of rock referred to as eudialyte, and nobody has ever developed a worthwhile course of to extract uncommon earths from that sort of rock. Elsewhere, these components are usually present in a special rock formation referred to as carbonatites, and there are confirmed strategies to work with that.
“If we’re in a race for assets — for crucial minerals — then we needs to be specializing in the assets which can be most simply in a position to get to market,” mentioned David Abraham, a uncommon earths skilled who has adopted the trade for many years and wrote the ebook “The Parts of Energy.”
This week, Essential Metals’ inventory value greater than doubled after it mentioned it plans to construct a pilot plant in Greenland this 12 months. However that firm and greater than a dozen others exploring deposits on the island stay distant from really constructing a mine and would nonetheless want to boost a minimum of a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
Even probably the most promising tasks can wrestle to show a revenue, significantly when China resorts to dumping further supplies onto the market to depress costs and drive opponents out of enterprise because it has performed many instances prior to now. And presently most crucial minerals need to be processed in China.
The U.S. is scrambling to develop the provision of uncommon earths exterior of China throughout the one-year reprieve from even harder restrictions that Trump mentioned Xi Jinping agreed to in October.
A variety of corporations around the globe are already producing uncommon earths or magnets and may ship extra shortly than something in Greenland, which Trump has threatened to grab with army energy if Denmark would not conform to promote it.
“All people’s simply been working to get to this endpoint. And should you go to Greenland, it’s such as you’re going again to the start,” mentioned Ian Lange, an economics professor who focuses on uncommon earths on the Colorado Faculty of Mines.
Many within the trade, too, assume America ought to concentrate on serving to confirmed corporations as an alternative of attempting to construct new uncommon earth mines in Greenland, Ukraine, Africa or elsewhere. A variety of different mining tasks within the U.S. and pleasant nations like Australia are farther alongside and in rather more accessible places.
The U.S. authorities has invested straight within the firm that runs the one uncommon earths mine within the U.S., MP Supplies, and a lithium miner and an organization that recycles batteries and different merchandise with uncommon earths.
Scott Dunn, CEO of Noveon Magnetics, mentioned these investments ought to do extra to scale back China’s leverage, but it surely’s exhausting to vary the maths shortly when greater than 90 p.c of the world’s uncommon earths come from China.
“There are only a few of us that may depend on a observe report for delivering something in every of those cases, and that clearly needs to be the place we begin, and particularly for my part should you’re the U.S. authorities,” mentioned Dunn, whose firm is already producing greater than 2,000 metric tons of magnets annually at a plant in Texas from components it will get exterior of China.
