The grants resulting from this RFP are spread across 14 states and study the following minerals: Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, Copper, Graphite, and Rare Earth Elements.

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 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.

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.

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.

This grant funds research that aims to explore the potential for producing critical minerals and rare earth elements (CM/REE) from waste residuals produced from coal and hard rock mining, known as mine tailings. This multidisciplinary research team will evaluate the technical, environmental, social, and legal barriers and opportunities for building out a domestic supply of CM/REE from mining residuals, with a particular focus on Wyoming, a state with a long history of fossil fuel extraction and production. Through geological resource assessment and social science scholarship, the team will characterize promising types of mining residuals for CM/REE recovery, focusing on the Powder River, Greater Green River, and Wind River Basins that sit across Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado. They will also study possible legal barriers and opportunities for developing these resources in a circular CM/REE economy. The team will conduct stakeholder assessments in two Wyoming communities located near sites that could prove promising for CM/REE waste stream recovery in order to investigate community perspectives on the development of these resources for mining residuals, working in close partnership with Indigenous communities. These community engagement activities will help develop a framework for how environmental justice can be incorporated into policies for building out such reuse and recycling processes and deliver tangible benefits to local communities.

Sloan funding will support faculty research time, the time of a graduate student on the project and two new research scientist positions, an assistant law and policy research scientist and an assistant research scientist in economics. Expected outputs include academic journal articles; policy-relevant briefs for state, Tribal, and federal regulators identifying the legal barriers to CM/REE development from mining residuals; and guidance documents for local Tribes and communities on the benefits and risks of local CM/REE development from nearby waste streams.

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.

Graphite is a key element used in clean energy technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, but as of now it is completely imported into the United States, predominantly from China. Though the United States has insufficient deposits of natural graphite to meet the growing demand for its use, synthetic graphite could serve as a more sustainable source of production. One challenge is that synthetic graphite production currently relies on fossil fuel-based feedstocks, but recent advancements in production using waste biomass or plastics waste have made "green" synthetic graphite a more appealing and plausible option for building domestic supply capacity. Leveraging a combination of multiple modeling strategies, this proposal aims to evaluate the environmental, economic, and equity implications of a developing green graphite supply chain in the US. The proposed work will compare two main potential feedstocks for synthetic graphite: biochar, a carbon-rich material typically derived from partially combusted biomass, like agricultural residues or industrial paper sludge, and plastics waste. The team will use information gleaned from literature review, geospatial analysis, and material flow analysis (MFA) to characterize the current domestic availability and flows of these source materials.

They will then use life cycle assessment (LCA) and technoeconomic assessment (TEA) to evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of green graphite production processes that use these feedstocks. Finally, they will undertake regulatory analysis that will help provide policy recommendations for facilitating sustainable and equitable development of these supply chains. Sloan funds will primarily go towards faculty and student support, including support for one postdoctoral fellow and one graduate student researcher to contribute to the effort. The team will use additional funds from Yale University to hire additional graduate student researchers. Outputs are expected to include academic journal articles, conference presentations, and a project website to share key findings and resources. To broadly disseminate their findings, the team will also host a series of public webinars and a research symposium to help share results with a diverse range of stakeholders.

Lithium is the critical mineral that has attracted the greatest attention in contemporary CMM policy debates. As the push to develop a domestic lithium industry grows, there are likely to be impacts on many different stakeholder groups, especially workers that are employed at various sites and facilities situated along this supply chain. Much attention has been placed on how companies will respond to the growing demand for critical minerals, but less focus has been paid to how this transition will impact workers involved in CMM extraction, component manufacturing, and eventual installation.

This place-based, qualitative research proposal looks to fill this gap by undertaking a Critical Minerals and Metals Just Transition Listening Project (CMM JTLP). This CMM JTLP project will examine different phases of the lithium lifecycle by conducting in-depth interviews with workers and community members in at least four different case study sites. These include mining in the Salton Sea/Imperial Valley area of California, lithium battery component manufacturing sites in California and Ohio, and a battery installation site where batteries are being used as back-up power for the grid in California. Central to this research is working closely with representatives from the United Autoworkers union and the Labor Network for Sustainability in California. The main output will be a comprehensive report, along with associated journal articles, blog posts, webinars to disseminate findings, and the development of an interactive visualization tool that will allow the researchers to share data, maps, and other digital content from their research.

A common question surrounding the expansion of CMM mining operations is how to do so without exacerbating energy and environmental inequities, particularly for the many Native and Tribal communities that live near crucial critical mineral deposits. 

This proposal takes a comparative approach to better understand the social and environmental concerns of mining communities by conducting three comparative case studies of communities near existing and potential CMM mining operations. Case studies will include the Mission Mine in Arizona, the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, and the Graphite One Mine in Alaska. Each case study will use semi-structured interviews and document analysis to understand local perspectives from multiple angles. 

Next, in order to understand how decision-makers perceive these concerns, the team will conduct a second set of semi-structured interviews with a range of institutions involved in critical mineral mining governance. Overall, the goal is to better understand variations in local mining community perspectives and, importantly, whether and how decision-makers are taking these local interests into account when promulgating laws and regulations.

In addition to producing peer-reviewed publications, outputs are expected to include a white paper on case study findings and the organization of a virtual event with case study participants in order to solicit feedback that will help further refine research results and that can inform future research directions. The team will also convene representatives from government, industry, and civil society in Washington, DC to disseminate preliminary results from this effort.

As the need for critical minerals and metals (CMM) expands, there is growing consideration that these resources might increasingly be mined from the ocean. Deep-Sea Mining (DSM) raises a host of governance, policy, societal, and environmental questions. 

This proposal will support the organization of a three-day workshop that would bring together stakeholders from different sectors to discuss key challenges associated with DSM. The workshop will focus primarily on the emergence of DSM near the Hawaiian Islands and will take place at ASU’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, located in Hilo, Hawaii. 

The workshop will apply a future-oriented social, ecological and technological (SETS) framework in discussing relevant governance, societal, and environmental issues. It will bring together representatives from federal agencies, non-profit organizations, Indigenous communities, and industry. The intention will be to identify cross-cutting themes that might be relevant to other DSM regions across the United States, and findings will be shared with scholars studying DSM in these different geographies. Following the workshop, the team plans to produce a report that will be widely distributed, an associated journal article, and relevant blog posts and policy briefs.