A thousand feet below the earth’s surface in this stretch of northern Minnesota wetlands lie ancient mineral deposits that some believe are critical to powering America’s clean energy future.
A company called Talon Metals has been drilling here around the clock, extracting samples of nickel-rich rock in an effort to become the country’s sole source of the material used to power zero-emission vehicles.
But some local residents are fighting the mine for fear it could pollute the environment. The pushback suggests how difficult it could be to build an all-American supply chain to power the country’s transition to electric vehicles.
TAMARAC, Minn. — In this isolated town of about 100 people, dozens of employees work for Talon Metals, pulling long cylinders of rock from deep underground and analyzing their contents. They liken their work to a game of Battleship – each hole drilled allows them to better delineate where a massive and long-hidden mineral deposit lies beneath.
The company is proposing to build an underground mine near Tamarack that would produce nickel, a highly sought-after mineral used to power electric vehicles. It would be a win-win venture for Talon, which has a contract to supply nickel for Tesla’s car batteries, and a step forward in the country’s race to develop domestic supply chains to meet growing demand for electric vehicles.
But mines that extract metal from sulfide ore, like this one, have poor environmental record in the United States and an even wider global footprint. While some in the area say the mine could provide good jobs in a sparsely populated region, others are deeply concerned it could spoil local lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River. There are also concerns that it could threaten the livelihoods and culture of the Ojibwe tribes, whose members live just over a mile from Talon’s land and have harvested wild rice here for generations.
Talon says it will invest heavily to design the world’s greenest and most responsible mine yet, one it says “Joe Biden might like.” But some people in the community remain skeptical, including about the company’s promises to respect indigenous rights, such as tribal authority over lands where their members hunt and gather food. Part of this mistrust stems from the fact that Talon’s minority partner, Rio Tinto, caused outrage in 2020 by blasting a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal cave system in Australia in search of iron ore.
Kelly Applegate, natural resources commissioner for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, said he is “very concerned” about how the mine could harm the environment. “This is again an attack on the local culture, a violation of our way of being, another trauma that could potentially happen to our people,” he said.
He describes it as a “huge environmental justice issue” to mine local resources for electric cars that tribal members won’t be able to afford. Except for some wealthy homeowners who spend their summers around the lakes, the area is one of the poorest parts of Minnesota. Native Americans in Minnesota experience poverty at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group in the state. Locals say the only Tesla for miles around is Talon’s company car.
“Talon and Rio Tinto will come and go – greatly enriched by their mining activity. But we and the remains of Tamarack Mine will be here forever,” Mr Applegate said.
The project, located 50 miles west of Lake Superior, highlights some of the challenges emerging as the Biden administration tries to transition America to electric vehicles. The administration said it wants to make battery supply chains more resilient by sourcing minerals in North America. But this desire can lead to its own potential for environmental damage and violation of the rights of Native Americans. Much of the nation’s supply of battery materials is near tribal land.
The world urgently needs to switch to cleaner cars to limit the global damage of climate change, many climate activists say. Last week, California approved a plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
But current supply chains for batteries for electric vehicles — and the batteries that would be needed for the electric grid that would charge that fleet of vehicles — rely on some hostile and heavily polluting foreign countries. Much of the nickel that goes into car batteries is produced by mines that have destroyed rainforests in Indonesia and on The Philippinesreleasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide before being refined in Chinese coal-fired factories.
Another source of nickel is a massive mining operation north of the Arctic Circle in Norilsk, Russia, which has produced so much sulfur dioxide that the plume of toxic gas is large enough to be seen from space. Other minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, appear to have been mined or refined using child or forced labor.
With the expected global demand for electric vehicles to grow sixfold by 2030, the sordid origins of this otherwise promising green industry turned into a looming crisis. The Democrats’ new tax and climate bill dedicates nearly $400 billion to clean energy initiatives over the next decade, including tax credits for electric vehicles and funding for companies that make clean cars in the United States.
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New local high-tech mines and factories could make this supply chain more secure and potentially less harmful to the global environment. But skeptics say these facilities can still pose a risk to the air, soil and water that surround them, and are sparking a fierce debate over which communities can bear those costs.
Potential risks to plants and wildlife come from sulfide ores; the ores in which materials such as copper and nickel are embedded, may expire sulfuric acid and heavy metals. More than a dozen former copper mines in the United States are now Superfund sites, contaminated sites where taxpayers could be on the hook for cleanup.
In January, the Biden administration canceled leases for another copper-nickel mine near a desert area of Minnesota, saying the Trump administration improperly renewed them.
Talon Metals insists there will be no such problems. “We can produce the battery materials that are needed for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the company’s chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy. “It’s not a choice.”
The company uses high-tech equipment to map underground water flows in the area and create a 3-D model of the ore so it can mine “surgically” while leaving other parts of the ground undisturbed, Mr. Malan said. Talon also promises to use technology that will safely store the mine’s toxic byproducts and conduct its mining far underground, in deep rock where groundwater does not normally penetrate.
Talon has teamed up with the United Steelworkers union for workforce development. And Rio Tinto has Earned a $2.2 million grant from the Department of Energy to study carbon capture near the site, which could allow the mine to market its products as zero-emissions.
In a statement, Talon said it was committed to “meaningful consultation with tribal sovereign governments and tribal people” and developing a mine plan that addresses their concerns, as well as working with tribal governments interested in sharing economic benefits.
The company has held several informational meetings with staff and tribal members, but some tribal members say they still need a lot more details from Talon about its plans.
If the mine goes live in 2026 as planned, it will be positioned to feed a hungry market. The United States currently has one operating nickel mine in Michigan, but its resources will be depleted by 2026.
There is a growing bipartisan consensus in Washington that the country must reduce its reliance on risky overseas minerals. In order to limit global warming to levels agreed upon by developed countries, the International Energy Agency gradesthe world will need approximately 20 times more nickel and cobalt by 2040 than in 2020, and 40 times more lithium.
Recycling may play a larger role in supplying these materials by the end of the decade, and some new car batteries do not use nickel. Yet nickel is still in high demand for electric trucks and higher-end cars because it increases the vehicle’s mileage.
The law on infrastructure, adopted last year, dedicated 7 billion dollars to develop the domestic supply chain of critical minerals. The Climate and Taxes Act also sets ambitious thresholds to ensure that electric vehicles that receive tax incentives are partially manufactured in the US.
Talon’s proposed mine could help Tesla meet those thresholds. Tesla gets its nickel from China, Australia, New Caledonia and Canada, and its CEO, Elon Musk, has begged miners to produce more.
Some environmental and left-leaning groups, long skeptical of local mining, are correcting those positions, arguing that resources are needed for the energy transition.
Colin O’Mara, CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, said there is a growing need for responsibly sourced battery materials, and that Talon promises to use state-of-the-art techniques to minimize the mine’s footprint.
But he acknowledged that it will still take a leap of faith for locals in the new technology and Talon’s ability to implement it. “There is still no example of an existing mine that has not had an impact,” he said.
The economic potential—and the environmental risks—can extend beyond the confines of a single mine. The whole region is home to deposits of nickel, copper and cobalt that formed 1.1 billion years ago from a volcano that spewed kilometers of liquid magma.
Talon has leased 31,000 acres of land in the area, encompassing 11 miles of a geological feature deep beneath the marsh. The company has been diligently drilling and exploring underground resources along one of those 11 miles and has discovered several other potential satellite deposits.
In August, the company announced it had also acquired land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to explore for more nickel.
Talon will begin the environmental review process in Minnesota within a few months, and the company says it expects a direct review. But legal challenges to proposed mines can regularly drag on for a decade or more, and some living near the project say they will do what they can to fight the mine.
Elizabeth Skinaway and her sister, Jean Skinaway-Lawrence, members of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, are particularly concerned about the damage to the wild rice Ms. Skinaway has been harvesting in lakes a few miles from the proposed mine for 43 years.
Ms Skinaway acknowledges the need to combat climate change, which also threatens rice. But she sees no justice in using the same kind of profit-driven extractive industry that she says has long robbed local lands and damaged the global environment.
“The wild rice, the gift from the creator that will disappear, from the sulfide that will flow into the river and the lakes,” she said. “It’s just a scary thought.”
“We were here first,” her sister said. “We need to be heard.”