The Future of Critical Minerals with Amanda Van Dyke, Author of The Mineral Imperative

Olivia Dunning: Hello, everyone. I'm Dee Martin. I'm your Madam Policy host. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Amanda Van Dyck, the author of The Mineral Imperative. And I hope everyone has a chance to take a look at this book. It is excellent. We're gonna jump into that. But first, let me say, Amanda, welcome. Thank you so much. So, ⁓ folks, Amanda is an internationally recognized mining finance professional, an author, as I've mentioned. And she is the founder of the Critical Minerals Hub, and that's her online platform for all things critical minerals. ⁓ she also has a YouTube channel, which we're going to talk about in just a little bit, and ⁓ I think has some really excellent information and explainers included there. She's also the founder of Women in Mining UK, where she successfully advanced the business case for more women to serve on boards in the mining sector. She's a fellow of the Royal Geological Society. Very exciting. And the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining, IOM3. In short, Amanda is amazing, very busy, and I'm excited for this conversation. So Amanda, let's go ahead and get started. Now we're gonna talk about your book, we're gonna talk about your work, but I just want to level set here. For those uninitiated in the world of critical minerals, ⁓ and I'm talking to our folk our listeners now, start with chapter three of this book. In it, Amanda, you answer the foundational question, what is a critical mineral? And then you walk readers through how these minerals are used across defense, technology, and energy, ⁓ among others. So let's level set for everyone. What is a critical mineral and where do we encounter them in everyday life and in national security? Critical makes people think that it's about how essential it is to something. And in actual fact, it has nothing to do with how essential it is, but how sensitive or vulnerable the supply chain or access to it is. Every mineral is something that we need at some level for something. And when it becomes critical when we cannot secure, we don't know that we can get enough of it for a long enough time. So criticality is inherently regional andor industry specific. So if you make lots of something so a a really good example is iron ore. Steel is actually Iron ore that goes into steel is by volume and actually by money, the mineral that we use more of in tons and in dollar value than anything else. Modern society, as we know it, needs steel in incredibly large quantities. It is truly essential to just about every industry on earth. Like steel plays an integral role. ⁓ so you'd think, why isn't steel a critical mineral? Steel's not a critical mineral because iron ore is fairly common. And more than it's common. The world has a really well-functioning global critical mineral steel supply chain. So we mine it in lots of places, we process it in lots of places, and the supply chain works sufficiently well that we don't have to stick it onto a critical minerals list. Now, the US has one of the most effective critical minerals lists in the world. They do a ton of the United States Geological Society does a ton of work in figuring out. what minerals are critical to the US economy and what supply chains are vulnerable. And there's a lot of different policy levers, which are probably more your specialty than mine, to try to ensure that the American economy and American industry can can get access to them. And that's so and it's that access that criticality is mostly about access. Okay. So I have I have two follow-up questions. And that's that's a very helpful explanation and thank you. ⁓ so USGS It creates this list. And I believe working either in conjunction or the DOE has its own list, but that list is reviewed and updated, I think, every five years or something like that. And stakeholders in the United States have an opportunity to weigh in on that process to inform the federal government about the scarce scarcity availability of those critical minerals to the industries in which they're working. Is is that correct? That's that's exactly correct. But I I would give it a tiny bit more nuance. Okay. So the DOE. Yeah. Tends to ⁓ the DOE sounds like it's just energy, but the DOE has the mandate to cover all minerals as well. But it tends to cover things that are essential for ⁓ for energy and industry together. So any mineral that's important to energy and industry. On the other hand, the Department of War, ⁓ there's a completely separate list of defense minerals that are essential to the Department of War. And and that list is slightly different. And USGS. works closely with both in actual fact to ensure that their list covers both. Got it. ⁓ because they're they are slightly different. And anything that has an essenti is essential to military applications, but that also has a vulnerable supply chain tends to get put up a little bit higher on the list because it's a different kind of vulnerability. Okay. That okay, that's that's very helpful. So then let's let's think about what happens If we're facing a critical mineral, let's say crisis, right? There's an urgency, there's a scarcity that has emerged, perhaps there's a geo ⁓ political issue that's driving that scarcity. And you wrote recently in a Substack post, and folks, you should follow Amanda's Substack or subscribe to Amanda's Substack. You wrote recently about ⁓ maybe an impending fertilizer crisis. What can you tell us about that? So everyone thinks that it's gonna be an oil shock where they believe it's an oil shock that's heavily price dependent that's coming out of the gulf. But what a lot of people don't realize is that two key fertilizer ingredients, ⁓ sulfur, which makes sulfuric acid, which is really part of an essential part of the phosphate supply chain. Yeah. And ammonia, which is part of the nitrogen supply chain. So about forty, forty five percent of both of those things are ⁓ derivatives of oil and gas that comes out of the Gulf. And they're all stuck behind the straight of road with all the other oil. Okay. And and that really is a crisis that we're not feeling right now because it takes it there's a there's a domino effect before you feel the effect of a critical mineral or a st a shortage. Right. Now, as it happens, things like potash are already on the US critical minerals list. But up until now, that supply chain functioned so efficiently, nitrogen and phosphate weren't on that list. And that may change with this. But anyhow, with forty-five percent of both of those critical parts of that supply chain at risk right now, fertilizer prices are up. But that's not the real problem. The problem is it's real scarcity. And that farm about 50% of everything we grow on the planet from in modern agriculture is there because it's fertilized. We couldn't grow enough food to feed the world at all without fertilizer. And and the prices have gone up. But it's not it's not just about high prices making it hard for for farmers around the world. It's about true scarcity. And the problem is if we miss a key growing window, if we miss an application period, starting right that we've missed a key growing window and it still needs to go through an essential supply chain to be transformed into usable fertilizer. Now, to be fair, America has really decent fertilizer supply, domestic fertilizer supply chains. It mines And produces and processes fertilizer sufficient to American needs. ⁓ so America should be okay, but the rest of the world is not. Now, American farmers are still gonna hurt because they they're subject to international pricing, which is when you get to the pricing issue. Yeah. So they might underapply slightly, but for a lot of the rest of the world that doesn't have a secure s fertilizer supply chain. They're going to be hurt by this, either because they can't afford it or they're just not enough to go around. And that might mean, and that's the problem. There's it's a domino. So we're not going to feel that scarcity of of lower yields globally for another six months. And so I think ⁓ it's funny because at the same time that you said domino, I was writing the word domino. And I think that's the the best way for us to think about this is that those raw materials, critical minerals. affect many things within the supply chain and could eventually lead to a hunger issue, food issue, s other scarcity of of critical resources. And so look, you've been in the mining finance field for more than 25 years. You founded, as I mentioned earlier, the Critical Minerals Hub. Again, folks should check it out. You also have ⁓ your YouTube channel, which is at Critical Minerals Hub, where you have some really excellent video explainers on there. So I I urge people to take a listen. But let me ask you the obvious question. And I think now I know the answer. Why did you write the mineral imperative? You have many ways to have your voice heard and to talk about this important issue across platforms. So why the book? And I loved the book. Thank you so much. ⁓ because I feel that critical min minerals generally mining and processing and and the essential nature of minerals to our way of life. And how we get them is a really, really misunderstood topic. And we're at a tipping point where the number of people in the world and the technology in the world and the demands for energy and raw materials is getting beyond the ability of industry and the present global supply chain to supply it. And I think it's, I mean, it's well known now. Everyone talks about rare earths. ⁓ and and that's the critical mineral most people know about. But What's true to rare earths is true to almost every mineral to some extent. And I felt that someone needed, and it's it's complicated, and that's the other thing. It's not easy. It's a really complicated subject that we need to know more about. We all kind of know that food and agriculture is really important, and that we need to support farmers, and that we need good agricultural technology to be able to ensure that there's enough food to keep everyone fed. Every country seems to know instinctively that's the case. But I would argue that mineral supply chains are equally, if not more, important to our way of life. And they don't get anywhere near the same amount of attention up until very recently. And I felt that someone needed to be explaining this in slightly more layman's terms because it was is a subject the world needed to understand better than it did. And unfortunately, I felt the way that it was covered in the world press was not very good. Well, I think ⁓ and I commend you for writing in lay in in layman's terms because I appreciated that not having a a a technical background in critical minerals, although do I do policy work in that space. But you've talked a little bit about demand and this and the tipping point. You identify in your book ⁓ four converging forces that are driving demand for critical minerals. I wondered if you could talk about those forces and why they matter. And then I'm gonna show folks this my favorite figure in this whole book. That explains exactly how an individual consumes or is a user of critical minerals. So let's begin with what are those forces and why do they matter? The forces that really matter is so energy is the biggest one. Our demand for energy is overwhelming, much more than just so climate change and our desire to have a lower carbon environment is one of them. But the the bigger the bigger subject is actually that the the amount of energy per person. That we require to maintain the quality of life that almost everyone on this planet aspires to is higher and higher. Yeah. ⁓ and energy by itself is actually quite mineral intensive. Every way in which we consume energy is mineral intensive. The grid, electricity, even cars, even c internal combustion engines. Like we understand that oil is important, but there's so much metal in a car. For example, so our our demand for energy, our the growing population of the world. And also technology. Technology has become significantly both more energy and mineral intensive. The number of minerals we need to maintain our quality of life, the number, I mean, there's there's more than 60 separate minerals in the average smartphone. More in some of them. Most of them people in mining have never heard of. I mean, there are very few people that can name all 17 rares. ⁓ and then last but not least, food and other things. Yeah. Just Generally speaking, as I said, there's a tipping point, all of these converging forces of energy, technology, population that are just rolling together. ⁓ that are all separately increasing demand. And instead of it being incremental, it's gonna become a tsunami. And and then the last thing is scarcity. Yeah. Globally, our ability to find, develop, build and process more minerals. So as we need more and more, our actual ability to get it is falling off of a cliff, right? The mining industry has gone into something called diseconomies of scale. So the cost of mining per unit in just about every mineral in the world is going up, not down. Global grades for key minerals, things like copper, are falling off of the cliff. So just as we need more of it, it's getting harder to find and harder to get. And that is that's a problem for lack of a better word. So let's talk about You and me, right? You say in your book, ⁓ everyone born today, let me get the amount right, will need more than three million pounds of minerals, metals, and fuels in their lifetime. And here's your here's the picture. So you can if you see the the fine print where I got that from, that was that's actually an American. That's how that's how much every American will need. I think that's a twenty twenty four number. Twenty twenty four, yeah. ⁓ and so I mean, one of the things is I believe every nation on the planet needs to understand what its mineral demands are for its people and its industry. And I think that's a a policy change that the world needs to prioritize because we're co we're going into a time of scarcity. The US is actually leading the way globally on minerals policy by making it core to national security, which it is. Yeah. ⁓ and securing it on behalf of the American people. And and it's organizations like the United States, ⁓ Minerals Education Coalition that's helping to do that and the United States Geological Survey by quantifying how much people use in what quantities throughout their life. And there's a lot of big macroeconomic statistics involved and and tracking to get to that number. It it's actually quite complicated. Nonetheless, it's essential because you really can't run a modern economy if you don't know what minerals you use and where you're getting them from. And you mentioned ⁓ nations ⁓ and and the policies that they have developed or are developing. And of course President Trump in in January when he first ⁓ took office i issued an executive order securing ⁓ on the basis of national security, critical minerals. And so you can see that that there's a there's a lot of US interest in policy related to critical minerals. Now, in your book, you write that, and so we're going to pivot a little here to some of the policy issues and some of the geopolitical issues. You wrote nations that control mineral supply chains, set the terms of trade, the pace of industrial development, and the strategic options available to others. Now, historically, and you talk about this, minerals, and this is your bailiwick, minerals largely functioned as global commodities driven by markets and demand. But today governments are really becoming central actors, securing supply chains, shaping investment, and treating critical minerals as instruments of national power. Do you think that we are witnessing a fundamental shift from market driven commodities to state driven strategic assets? And can critical minerals really function as free market commodities once nations view them as essential to national strength? No. They can't they can't be free market commodities anymore. I think that ⁓ so China's a really good one to start with. When the communist government took over in China in the 1950s, China was desperately poor. It was one of the poorest nations per capita on the planet. And in terms of their national rejuvenation, the Communist Party really committed early on to rebuilding the economy and becoming a a great power again, as they saw was their historical role. ⁓ and they realized really early on that they were what's called Price takers rather than price makers. As in, they bought all their commodities on the international market necessary for their economy. And they took whatever price anyone gave them because they had no choice, because they had no pr they had no no pricing power. And they decided that made them fundamentally weak, and that the access to commodities of all kinds were going to be come under state control because it was too essential to the economic future of the nation. And every single Chinese leader since then. Has doubled down on that pledge to make access to control of supply chains, whether they make so they ⁓ look, China actually is a huge miner, contrary to popular belief. They mine tons. They're the biggest coal miner in the world. They're the biggest lithium miner in the world. They're the biggest rare earth miner in the world. But in top on top of that, they've created a can a total supply chain dominance by investing in mines. All over the world and investing in a huge amount of processing. Because the stuff you get out of a mine isn't particular nobody can use almost nobody can use stuff that comes directly out of a mine. Most minerals, as they come out of the ground, require a lot of processing before they get into a form we can use them in. And so they secured access to the minerals from the mines and they also s created a huge Goliath process mineral processing complex within China that was very energy intensive to ensure that they had suppl enough minerals to to to not just keep their people fed and to keep their their basic industries going, but also they became a manufacturing powerhouse. And they knew that their their competitive advantage in manufacturing would be ruined if they started having to pay international prices like we all are now for all of these basic commodities, from little stuff like rare earths all the way up to steel and copper. So they realized that early. Unfortunately, they basically got they almost 60% of almost every mineral on the planet, with a couple of exceptions only, are processed in China. There's like maybe five exceptions to that. And that gives them a, if not a monopoly, an extraordinarily powerful trade position that now every single industry in the world outside of China and every single country in the world outside of China realizes they get to write the terms. That's what monopolists do, right? And and I think people have realized that the inherent logic behind. state control and state su I don't know if it's control, but securing state securing of supply chains is really essential to the economy and to your industry. And that really you're not if you're a price taker, if you don't set the if you don't set the terms of what you've got. And and I think that right now with the increase in the number of wars, the increase In in scarcity, every country has realized that they need to figure out how to s secure those supply chains and that it goes beyond. We used to have a prevailing attitude in the West that the market will take care of it. Right. That just let it, you know, we'll produce it wherever it's cheapest. And in globalization and market terms, it'll all equal out. We'll for a price, we'll be able to get it and the market will set the terms. And now we've realized that that's just not good enough. Right. That that geopolitics and And like they're geo just like rare China is now using its incredible monopoly on rare earths as a geopolitical lever, ever rare earths are just the tip of they're just the tip. I mean, every single mineral on the planet can be used as a weapon, just like fertilizer in the Gulf. I mean, they're not using it as a weapon, right? But that scarcity, it's a threat to dozens of nations in the world are going to experience food scarcity this year. Because they couldn't get access to basic fertilizer commodities. So let's talk about that scarcity for a minute then. You do discuss briefly in your book the fact that, you know, we are we're really not tapping into the full resources that are available to us on planet Earth, right? So we are pr effectively mining about 30% of the Earth's crust because 70% is covered by water. There is deep sea mining for critical minerals, but it is quite controversial. Talk a little bit about that ⁓ controversy and the importance of potentially getting to those critical minerals that are that are beneath the earth the earth's surface in the sea. So ⁓ as you mentioned, seventy percent of the earth's crust is underwater. We actually discovered that there were metals on the seabed, but i in about the eighties metals prices crashed because we were slightly overproducing what we needed at the time. And so between the crash in metals prices and the fact that we had no effective way of getting those metals out, because a lot of those metals are sitting in like five, six, six thousand meters of water. And that's very, very deep. And we just didn't think we could get them out at anything close to an economic price. The technology j was just not there. And what we could do was exceptionally expensive. But now that we're encountering scarcity, Suddenly the minerals that are sitting in the deep sea became far more interesting. And with President Trump's and and to be fair to President Trump, he actually started this by critical minerals and reprioritized them in 2017 during his first term. Yes, that's right. Mm-hmm. And it's one of the few areas of policy that support that I believe has a lot of bipartisan support on both sides. Because everyone kind of sees the logic of how desperately we need minerals to maintain our economy and our way of life. And then when he came to power in twenty twenty-five, or came back to power, should I say, he reprioritized. He he sort of brought brought that critical minerals way, way up the priority list. And suddenly deep sea mining was no longer a far-off science fiction thing in the future. The technology evolved. There were some companies that were doing some incredible work. So the US, ⁓ via NOAA ⁓ re so it basically reopened their old international mining legislation, as it were, and said we need to start considering this as one of the we need to get more minerals or more access to minerals. We don't have sufficient. There's there's 65 minerals presently on our critical minerals list. Where are we gonna get them from? And can we revisit an old idea? And they did. And they've started giving out licenses again in international waters. And there's a few companies, the metals company being one in the US, it's the best known one, ⁓ and it's listed in the US that's looking to start mining or early small scale mining in 2027, 28, I believe. And a brand new company whose name I'm gonna forget was just listed in the US as well with over a billion dollars to explore. And I think there's gotta be five or 10 different companies that have applied for licenses under the US administration. The big ones are nickel. Copper and rare earths, which are all extremely critical for every country, but ⁓ for the US especially, and are available in huge quantities and perhaps and potentially, if the numbers are right, and and we need to be a little bit careful about this, because nobody has successfully figured out mining regularly and efficiently. Unfortunately, at the same time, and the reason this is so controversial in what you alluded to earlier. Is the reason that the ISA has 31 active exploration licenses and not one exploitation license is because the global NGO set have started a movement called No Deep Sea Mining Ever. And they I think there's like 30 different NGOs that have become observers to the International Seabed Authority and are promoting a moratorium on deep sea mining. So then we're here we are at the tipping point. And the technology is available. We're getting to commercial and then there's also international opposition to undertaking it, trying to press for a moratorium. So more to come on that. I am gonna ask you soon about your next book. And if it's not about seabed mining, I'll be surprised. But let me let me ask you about writing, if you will. I wanna pivot to you as a writer. You know, you claim that you're not a professional writer, although I do find that hard to believe, and so we can debate that at some point. But at the very least, I think we can agree that you are impassioned and I find at times a quite lyrical writer. You say, for example, and I quote, minerals are the difference between cold and warmth, hunger and plenty, darkness and and light. Now, I'm a writer and I love Both the beauty of that sentence and the weight it carries about the role of critical minerals throughout human history. So tell me, how do you write? What is your process? Talk to me about being a writer. So the book was originally called Welcome to the World of Mining. And it's because I had something to say. I felt like minerals and mining were profoundly misunderstood industry. And there was nobody explaining them in layman's terms and how important they were and how the industry worked in layman's terms. And I thought that was something that I could do. It was hard. Getting your thoughts on paper and making it logical and easy to understand. I mean there were a lot of rewrites. ⁓ it was a process, but it evolved. And as it happened, I really liked it. Yeah. ⁓ and that's what led to me starting a Substack. And now I write I really enjoy it. The process is Kind of the same. I can just do it a little faster now. That happens. And it's more like, what do I know? What do I think is being profoundly misunderstood or misinterpreted? And how can I, how can I correct it? And usually the first step is not actually, ⁓ this is what you don't get. Yeah. Right. It's do some research. Make sure that whatever my understanding is is right, because I get things wrong and technology changes, situations change. So do some research. Figure out if what you think is right. ⁓ figure out what's new, what's going on. And then try to and then once you're you're sure that you're at least on the right track, hopefully. Yeah. And then try to write about it. And it's still a question of you write it down. I'm like, this is this I mean, the article I wrote about fertilizer and And what the long-term costs are gonna be. I think it took three drafts because I wasn't getting it across in the first time. But you know, check your sources, check your facts. And once you've done that, try and try again and try to reiterate it. And for me, it's about trying to make it accessible, trying to use layman's terms and relatable anecdotes as it were. Like try to explain something it's light. And I think you do an excellent job. You the analogies that you use, but also the word choice that you that you make is really helpful because it's impactful and it's understandable and your book is is quite digestible. And so thank you for that. So well so what's next for you? Are you gonna write another book? So yeah, you you got it right. I think mine I I re it was actually a very recent I finally I wasn't sure what it was going to be on, and I think it will be on deep sea mining because I think it's going to be a reality so much faster than most people realize. And I think that people deserve to understand it. So, Amanda, thank you so much for being on Madam Policy. ⁓ I'm gonna end our episode the way I end every episode by asking what piece of advice would our internationally recognized speaker, author, and critical mineral and mining expert, Amanda Van Dyke give to her 24-year-old self? I think I would tell people or tell myself to be a bit more careful with the advice I took. So everyone wants to give you advice and there's some really strict paths that you're supposed to do when you develop a career and and how you think about things. And if it was easy, we'd all just read a book and do it. Right. It would be but life is a lot harder than that. And advice No matter how well meaning is not always useful, sit back, think hard about everything and say, is this, is this going to be, do I know enough? And is this going to be where my I would just be a little bit more careful with the advice I took. I would think harder about the future and what I wanted to do and the advice I took going forward. Cause I think that there's so many people shouting at us from different, yeah, from different areas saying, You should do this and you should do this and you should do this. I think we need to sit back, think harder about things ourselves a little bit more often. I think I'd be I would try to give myself the confidence to to back myself to think critically about the future and and what I wanted to do. Look, I think that is excellent advice. But also you've just for me uncovered the through line of your work, your writing and your personal self, which is yes Take in the advice, the facts, the information, but apply it to the actual situation on the ground. And so for you personally, what was happening with you at 24 or in the critical minerals space? Okay, we understand what critical minerals are. We understand what's happening with them, but we also have to understand the facts on the ground. There's a convergence four of four issues that could create scarcity and we need to secure our supply chains. So I now get it. The Amanda Van Dyke through line, which is application of facts to your reality. So Amanda, thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Sure.