It’s critical that we think about critical minerals critically
So we are told:
The UK must become less dependent on China for critical minerals, an influential thinktank has concluded before a government strategy decision in the spring.
In a report on rare earth minerals, which are essential components for hi-tech products from mobile phones to missiles, Labour Together said ministers should “de-risk” supply chains and reduce reliance on China by building partnerships with other countries.
So the nation’s leading progressive newspaper is unaware that rare eaths and critical minerals are not the same thing. This is unlikely to lead us to good policy on either matter. The report itself contains this amusement:
Titanium Structural components in aerospace; nuclear energy fusion armour
This is derived, apparently, from “as identified by UK Task and Finish report”
And, umm, no.
Titanium is indeed lovely stuff but the major use is in white paint. It’s the stuff that makes it the white part of paint. Something produced by the million of tonnes a year. Even, Britain was a world leader in this - the chloride process of extraction is sometimes called the ICI method as they’re the people that pioneered it up on Teesside.
The availability of the actual Ti atoms simply isn’t something to worry about - so no, it’s not something “critical” about “minerals” in the slightest.
It is true that the process is energy intensive which is why we don’t do so much of it any more here in a country with sky high industrial electricity costs. But that’s something to have a word with MiliEd about, again not anything to do with the criticality of minerals.
What they’re really cribbing there is information about titanium metal. Which is indeed used for those things listed. But the Ti metal market is minuscule as compared with the paint one - which, as we say, is gloriously supplied with Ti atoms. It not a minerals problem at all.
Now, the conversion of Ti atoms into the metallic form in bulk is also hugely energy intensive which brings us back to MiliEd and not anything to do with minerals nor their criticality. There is a reason why so much of the Ti metal industry is in Ukraine, Russia and the US Pacific Northwest - to be near those lovely hydroelectic dams and vast amounts of lovely cheap ‘leccie.
Whether or not titanium is a problem in Britain, whether it’s a critical one if it is, it’s not a minerals problem in the slightest, it’s an energy costs one.
Now this might all sound like we’re being a bit picky, possibly even a leakage of that famed pendantry from another place. But it’s actually a crucial point about Mazzonomics and those mission-led critical plans with strict conditionality and all the rest of the buzzword bingo. Oh, sorry, the report uses “cross-cutting” as well. Fill out that card! Those making the plans don’t, in fact, know much about what they’re planning. Which is a bit of a problem, really. A critical problem even.
Using the ignorant to plan our lives and economy - that way poverty, at least if not madness, lies.
Tim Worstall