Rare earth metals and other raw materials are critical to continuing the transition to a clean energy economy. In its “2011 Critical Materials” report, the DOE identifies and assesses the importance of 16 key clean energy raw materials and plots them against supply risk over short and medium-term scenarios.
Manufacturers warn a decline in the supply of rare earth metals will continue to drive the cost of fluorescent lighting even higher. Over the summer, every major lamp manufacturer announced significant price increases due to the shortage of rare earth metals. Then, prices were forecasted to increase between 5% – … [continued]
Other cleantech news from around from the past week or so, stuff that didn’t fit into my other five categories too well — politics, solar energy, wind energy, transportation, and energy efficiency.
Some of the best or biggest clean transportation news from the past week (other than what we covered): Road Trains This is actually an idea my dad had a few years ago. I figured at that time someone was probably working on it, but had never heard of such a … [continued]
The United States may run into major supply disruptions of rare earth metals, metals which are used in many clean tech products (i.e. wind turbines, electric vehicles, and solar cells), unless it finds a way to diversify where it gets these minerals from, according to a report being released today … [continued]
Jeremy Bloom of Red, Green and Blue wrote an excellent piece this week on a possible trade war between China and the U.S. (which our own Susan Kraemer also had a good story on this week), the complexity of rare-earth-metal mining and export, and the risk of a clean energy … [continued]
Rare earth metals are a key component in the clean technologies of today, with elements like neodymium, lanthanum, dysprosium essential to the creation of hybrid and full-electric vehicles produced by Toyota in the Prius line of vehicles and their competitors in the green car market, as well as for use … [continued]
