4 h. ago Brazil’s last asbestos miners are switching to rare earth minerals. Can they offer a brighter future?

The small city of Minaçu is hoping to challenge China’s dominance in servicing the global appetite for minerals key to the green energy transitionMinaçu, a small city in inland Brazil and home to the only asbestos mine in the Americas, is set to become the first operation outside Asia to produce four rare earths on a commercial scale – a group of minerals key to the energy transition at the centre of the trade dispute between China and the US.Until now, China has dominated the separation of rare earths, and accounts for 90% of the manufacture of rare-earth magnets, or super magnets, which are made with these elements and used in electric cars, wind turbines and military equipment such as jets. Continue reading...

Politics

5 h. ago How Indigenous people find themselves on the frontline of the green transition

Renewable energy and critical minerals projects often want to mine on sacred lands but minority groups are fighting back through the courtsLocated in Wikieup, Arizona, at the meeting point of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, H’a’Kamwe’ has for centuries had sacred significance for the Hualapai tribe. They regard the hot spring, fed by water naturally stored underground in volcanic rocks, as a place for healing that symbolises their connection to the land.So when an Australian mining company announced plans to begin exploratory drilling for lithium at 100 locations on Hualapai land, including as close as just 700 metres from H’a’Kamwe’, they regarded it as a potential desecration. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago World Bank grants South Africa a $1.5B loan for infrastructure upgrade and green energy transition

South Africa's National Treasury says the World Bank has granted South Africa a $1.5 billion loan to upgrade transportation infrastructure and help it transition toward a low-carbon economy

Economics

2 w. ago Is The Green Transition Financially Viable Today? A Debate At SXSW London

Is The Green Transition Financially Viable Today? A Debate At SXSW London  Forbes

Politics

3 w. ago Ministers should apologise to oil and gas workers who have lost jobs, Tories say

Andrew Bowie cites figures which suggest tens of thousands of jobs in Scotland could go as part of Labour’s green transition.

Politics

3 w. ago ‘We are just sitting here’: South African coal belt town split over green transition

The country wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions without destroying livelihoods, but progress is slow – and the residents of a small town are in the crosshairsCooling towers and smokestacks still loom over the single-storey houses of Komati, but the winter sky is clear: smoke hasn’t billowed from the vast concrete chimneys of the South African town’s power station since it stopped burning coal in 2022, 61 years after its inauguration.While the state power company Eskom didn’t fire any permanent employees, the end of coal generation and earlier job losses in nearby mines have fuelled doubts in the small town and wider coal belt that there are any benefits to South Africa’s “just energy transition” to renewable power. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago SXSW London Debates: Is The Green Transition Financially Viable?

SXSW London Debates: Is The Green Transition Financially Viable?  Forbes

Politics