Joe Biden’s push for green energy equals a bid to make America energy dependent on China.
His mantra is about achieving zero net CO2 emissions by 2050. Electric vehicles, solar cells, wind turbines, and practically everything else in his energy plan risk turning China into America’s new Saudi Arabia.
Just as the oil embargo of the 1970s made oil more expensive, China’s near monopoly on rare earths could make Biden’s claim that so-called renewable energy sources are “significantly cheaper” than fossil-fuel sources meaningless.
“America’s investments in green energy technology are going to reduce carbon emissions,” Biden said in a speech last month. “We used to be the center of building these solar panels. We are coming back and doing it again. America is going to lead again.”
The Biden administration’s spending spree on green energy could be a boon for China and its state-run enterprises.
China Becoming the Saudi Arabia of ‘Green Energy’
Americans saw during the 1973 Arab oil embargo what being at the mercy of an adversary could mean.
Saudi Arabia was not a military adversary. China imposed restrictions on the importing of gallium and germanium last month, two rare earth metals essential for the semiconductor industry.
The Asian giant produces 94% of the world’s gallium and 83% of the world’s germanium. China is the world’s leading producer of 30 of 50 rare earth metals that are used in domestic civilian and military markets.
“Rare earth metals are integral to the magnets key to electric vehicle motors and wind turbines. America is 95% net import reliant on such materials, which China produces 70% of globally. According to the International Energy Agency, the PRC dominates “across the [rare earth] value chain from mining to processing and magnet production,” Real Clear Investigations columnist Ben Weingarten wrote. “Other critical minerals for clean energy technologies include: copper, key to solar cells, wind turbines, and electric vehicles; cobalt, key to lithium-ion batteries; nickel, also key to such batteries and in renewable energy storage; and lithium itself. China is the world’s largest refiner of all these minerals and produces 50-70% of all lithium and cobalt globally. The U.S. has no refining capacity for many of the same materials.”
The Chinese also control 85% of the world’s rare earth refining capacity.
The U.S. has made small steps toward redeveloping the domestic refining industry in recent years. The Australian firm Lynas is building a rare-earths processing facility in Texas slated to open in 2026. Lynas is the largest refiner of rare earths outside of China.
At the same time, environmental regulations have made it difficult for the U.S. to extract domestic sources of these rare earth metals.
U.S. Outsourcing Pollution to China
U.S. environmentalists have fought against mining since the 1990s.
“By pursuing these Green New Deal-style policies the Biden administration is making us more dependent particularly on China for rare earth mining,” Biden Marc Morano told Newsmax. “We are outsourcing our pollution to China where they have lower environmental standards than the United States.”
Groups like the Sierra Club remain dead set against domestic mining elements such as lithium that are used in electric vehicle batteries.
“As the communities and states across the country continue to advance our clean energy economy, we need to address our nation’s reliance on getting critical and rare earth minerals at home and abroad,” the Sierra Club stated in a 2019 press release. “Our country and our clean energy economy need a strategy that is built around the concerns and needs of communities, Tribal Nations, and workers – not the wish lists of the mining industry.”
Morano sees a considerable irony in Biden’s policies.
“We’re making them all rich because they are buying into all of our mandates. But with China building a new coal plant a week, they have no problem with that,” Morano said.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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