“The dark side of the climate challenge has not finished worrying voters, in Greenland or elsewhere”

Lhe largest island in the world is also the least populated. The equivalent of the population of Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), 56,000 inhabitants, is divided into Greenland, a territory as large as half of the European Union, 80% covered with ice. One of the last preserved spaces on the planet. And yet environmental concerns have brought down the government. The ecological and left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party won the legislative elections on April 6, opposing the exploitation of a rare earth deposit located in the south of the island. A movement scrutinized as much in Washington as in Beijing or Brussels, as access to mineral resources promises to be the great challenge of the energy transition.

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Rare earths are 17 metals with exotic names (lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, promethium, etc.) whose magnetic properties make them essential for the construction of smartphones, wind turbines and electric cars, not to mention nuclear submarines and aircraft. hunt. They are not that rare, since they are found in America, Australia, Asia and even Europe. The only problem: their refining is extremely polluting. It releases toxic and even radioactive waste. Uranium is a neighbor of rare earths and it is this that worries the Inuit party.

A boulevard left to China

As a result, Westerners have lost interest in this unsavory production, leaving China and its thousands of less watchful miners a avenue to establish themselves in this market. The country holds nearly 80% of the world production of these metals. The geopolitical stake is so obvious that the information, in February, according to which Beijing had studied the effect of an embargo on the construction of American F35 fighters caused a stir in Washington.

The awareness of the need to get out of the Chinese trap is not new. The Greenlandic project is proof of this, even if the first shareholder with 10% of the operating Australian firm is none other than Shenghe Resources, one of the Chinese champions in the field. The American President, Joe Biden, and the European Commission are trying to push for more “local” solutions, at a time when the switch to the electric car will explode the demand for all these metals.

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A challenge that is not only geostrategic, but also environmental and economic. Chinese prices are so low that “clean” production elsewhere would make profitability difficult and would cause the prices of the energy transition to explode across the entire sector. will investors or states agree to finance much more costly projects? Especially if we also look at the sad fate of cobalt, silver, nickel and other metals essential for electric batteries and extracted, in Africa or Asia, in even worse conditions. The dark side of the climate challenge has not finished worrying voters, in Greenland or elsewhere.