Rare Earths: They’re Neither Rare nor Earths. But They Could Save the Planet.
The rare earths start at lanthanum, Element 57, and run to lutetium, Element 71, and if you look them over, there’s a good chance you won’t recognize any of them. In addition to being anonymous, they’re also misnamed. Like the old joke about the Holy Roman Empire, many rare earths are not rare (cerium is as common as copper), nor are they “earths” in the common sense of being “soil.” (Earth is an archaic term for minerals that contain oxygen.)
…China has half of the world’s reserves and produces a staggering 95 percent of the ore on the world market. That’s because the Chinese government made a shrewd guess in the 1990s and invested in the infrastructure necessary to tediously separate one rare earth from another on an industrial scale.
China’s dominance wouldn’t be a huge concern except that the government has put strict quotas on exports lately. Some rare earths now fetch more than $100 a pound in the United States. (The U.S. once mined rare earths but let the industry flag and would need about 15 years to catch up.) And again, while not all rare earth elements are scarce, some of the heavier ones are, and green energy industries already struggling to prove their economic viability could be hard-pressed to produce affordable technology if these metals become prohibitively expensive.