REUTERS/Gustavo Grafby Tim McDonnell THE NEWS A showdown between China and a coalition of island and European nations is taking place in Kingston, Jamaica this week over the prospect of mining minerals on the seafloor. For now, the industry has the upper hand. “This is the crunch-time moment,” said Emma Wilson, policy officer at the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an environmental group. TIM’S VIEW It seems likely that deep-sea mining could begin in earnest within the next two years. The debate over the emerging industry goes to the heart of a central dilemma of the energy transition, which is that production of the minerals needed to build EV batteries and other clean tech entails its own unavoidable environmental risks. Deep-sea mining could reduce the need for even more damaging forms of onshore mining; a boom in nickel production in Indonesia, for example, is emerging as a major threat to that country’s rainforests. But it’s not clear that these two forms of mining are indeed mutually exclusive, given the global economy’s voracious appetite for minerals. So the end result could be more mining on both fronts.  Thus far, deep-sea mining has not yet been done at commercial scale anywhere in the world. But a handful of companies — with the backing of China and other countries hungry for a new supply of nickel, manganese, and other minerals needed for the clean energy transition — are ready to forge ahead. “The notion of a delay or moratorium is nonsense and has zero legal basis,” Gerard Barron, the CEO of Vancouver-based The Metals Company, told me. To go ahead, they need approval from an obscure UN agency called the International Seabed Authority, which hit a legal deadline this month to finalize regulations for the emergent industry and is now negotiating them in Kingston. TMC is happy with draft rules currently on the table in Kingston, Barron said. It plans to file its mining application once the rules are adopted, and is prepared to begin mining by late 2024 or 2025. China holds the greatest number of ISA exploration licenses, and is keen to extend its existing dominance of the critical mineral supply chain to the deep sea. For now, only Canada, France, Germany, and about a dozen other countries support a temporary or permanent halt, which would require a majority vote by the ISA’s 167 member states. The U.S., which is not an ISA member, has not taken a public position. Unless dozens more countries commit to a moratorium, TMC’s application — sponsored by the island nation Nauru — will almost certainly be approved, setting off an undersea gold rush. (Although some of its Pacific island peers are opposed to deep-sea mining, Nauru’s government has cultivated a close relationship with TMC executives and stands to reap royalties from its mining activities, according to a Bloomberg investigation.) — For more on deep sea mining, the risks that companies involved it face, and how the world is filling the minerals shortfall, click here. |