Mining magnets: Arctic island finds green power can be a curse

The world’s biggest island has huge resources of metals known as ‘rare earths,’ used to create compact, super-strong magnets which help power equipment such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, combat aircraft and weapons systems.

The metals are abundant globally, but processing them is difficult and dirty – so much so that the United States, which used to dominate production, surrendered that position to China about 20 years ago.

As Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers recede, two Australia-based mining companies – one seeking funding in the United States, the other part-owned by a Chinese state-backed firm – are racing for approval to dig into what the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) calls the world’s biggest undeveloped deposits of rare earth metals.

https://wtxnews.com/2021/03/02/budgets-400m-uk-travel-red-list-failure/