As electric vehicle (EV) demand and manufacturing increase, companies must secure additional critical minerals and metals (CMM) for use in their batteries, creating new connections between EV automakers, mining companies, and local communities where CMMs are produced. Yet few studies examine the interaction between EV manufacturers, mineral production, and community impacts. This grant funds research that will take a dual-pronged approach to better understanding these emerging dynamics. First, the team will undertake 5-7 case studies of EV automakers to understand how these companies are responding to the reshoring of critical mineral development. The focus of these case studies will center on whether and how EV manufacturers plan to secure their own sources of mineral production. The team will then use these case studies to inform different modeling scenarios, called Mine Expansion Pathways, which visualize where and how the domestic mining industry might develop over the next 50 years to meet critical mineral demand for EV batteries. These Mine Expansion Pathways will identify when and where new mines might arise, which projects might be prioritized over others based on industry needs, and which surrounding communities could be affected. To model these alternatives, the team will combine a fleet turnover model, which forecasts future EV purchases and demand, with geospatial modeling to study the physical distribution of current and future CMM mines. The idea is that the qualitative interviews and quantitative scenario modeling efforts will build on one another: initial interviews will help provide realistic considerations for the modeling effort, which will in turn illuminate potential economic, equity, and sustainability trade-offs that can be used to inform future interviews about long-term strategic decision-making approaches within these firms. Together, this interdisciplinary approach will provide new insights into the dynamics between EV manufacturer demand for critical minerals, mining expansion, and community perspectives, and the results are expected to inform evolving economic and policy discussions.  Outputs for the work will include academic journal articles geared towards both energy engineering and business management fields, as well as shorter briefs summarizing case study findings for industry partners and managers. The team will publish their Mine Expansion Pathway scenarios in an online, interactive tool and disseminate their findings to decision-makers, through public interest articles, and via presentations at the Erb Institute’s Michigan Business Sustainability Roundtable.

Much of the research on the impacts of critical minerals and metals (CMM) tends to focus on the upstream portion of the supply chain—the mines themselves—and explores how impacts at this stage can cascade down through the energy system. Less frequently does research take the reverse view, examining how changes in end-user behavior might percolate upstream to impact CMM production and demand. This project aims to do just that by investigating how a shift towards electrified public transit might impact critical mineral development. The proposed project will assess the environmental, equity, and policy impacts of public transit electrification by conducting social life cycle assessments (SLCAs) for two high-traffic case study cities: Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA. For each city, the team will model alternative scenarios that feature different levels of personal and public electric vehicle adoption to evaluate the energy, environmental, and social impacts inherent in the SLCA framework. In addition to the expected SLCA results, the team plans to produce two particular metrics. The first is what is called an avoided critical mineral extraction index – a measure of how much critical mineral demand is reduced in each scenario associated with increased utilization of electrified public transit. The second is a combined lifecycle emissions metric, which will combine and compare measurements of upstream emissions from mining and battery production with downstream, on-road emissions. SLCA results will be paired with policy analysis to identify legal barriers and opportunities for adoption of electrified and multimodal transportation systems in the two regions to be studied. This proposed scholarship will be rooted in substantial community engagement and partnership activities. The team will work closely with multiple community-based organizations in Atlanta and Los Angeles: EVNOIRE, a non-profit organization focused on electric mobility with offices in both Los Angeles and Atlanta; Clean Cities Georgia, an Atlanta-based non-profit working to advance clean and sustainable transportation solutions; and Integrated Solutions, an Atlanta-based consultancy focused on diversity and inclusion that has expertise in conducting and organizing community engagement processes. In addition to academic journal articles and policy briefs, the team will present their findings to transportation agencies in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

A number of mining companies have proposed establishing vertically integrated operations that combine mining and refining phases. Researchers hope that such integrated supply chains will be more environmentally friendly, and acceptable to residents living near proposed mine sites. While much attention is often placed on examining the expansion of such mining in the United States, the subsequent refining component—the steps where the raw materials are transformed into usable intermediate and final products—is an often-overlooked dimension of the supply chain. This project will investigate the social and technical factors that impact the development of vertically integrated mine-refinery projects and examine how they might impact local communities and Indigenous populations. It will focus on studying vertically integrated projects for nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) refining, which are commonly mined together and are used in clean energy technologies like lithium-ion batteries. There are several planned projects to build out this refining capacity in the years ahead, many of which are expected to be located near Indigenous lands. This proposed effort will provide critical insights to understand the potential role of these refineries in supporting the equitable buildout of domestic Ni and Co production capacity. This is an interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty at the Colorado School of Mines and Fort Lewis College, a Native-American Serving Non-Tribal Institution, located in Durango, CO. In addition to academic research outputs, the team will broadly disseminate research findings through presentations at the Colorado School of Mines Payne Institute for Public Policy's annual Critical Minerals Symposium and through a Symposium on Indigenous Communities and Energy Transitions to be held at Fort Lewis College.

The mining industry is especially water intensive, creating well-documented impacts on water quality and availability. Nevertheless, many of the newly proposed critical minerals and metals (CMM) mines around the country are located in water-scarce regions, each with complex and overlapping water policy frameworks that intersect with both federal and state regulations. This grant funds a project that aims to investigate underexplored questions related to critical mineral mining and water scarcity in the Great Basin region, a hydrologic basin centered in Nevada and covering much of the western United States, which is both water-scarce and mineral-rich, particularly in lithium. The region faces substantial CMM development interest, but there is also a long history of water conflict, resource extraction, and marginalization with the region's many Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. The research team will study how different mineral extraction methods might impact local water resources, ecosystems, and communities; how overlapping water governance structures might affect the siting and permitting for CMM mines; and how affected communities might respond in different ways. Grant funds will support seven mixed-methods case studies of mining communities across the Great Basin. Case study communities will span three Nevada counties and will address different mineral types, mine status (planned, permitted, and operating, including both low- and high-conflict cases), and extraction method. Case studies will combine document analysis with semi-structured interviews with a broad range of community leaders and members, regulators, and industry representatives. In addition to producing academic papers and policy briefs, the research team will also develop an interactive, online mapping platform that depicts the location of mining projects, Indigenous territories, land management jurisdictions, and stressed groundwater aquifers to help visualize the impacts of mining development at the individual mine and regional levels. Finally, the team will host three participatory community workshops to disseminate findings back to community members and to solicit input on alternative future approaches for equitable mine siting and benefit sharing.