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Deep-sea mining: New battleground for critical minerals
DW (English)
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4/4/2025
In the race for green technology, the deep ocean is the new battleground. Will mining critical minerals save the climate — or unleash ecological disaster? Dive in to explore what's at stake.
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Transcript
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00:00
The global economy is changing, and the race for raw materials is heating up.
00:06
Right now, everyone is talking about
00:09
Critical minerals
00:10
Critical minerals
00:11
Critical minerals
00:12
Critical minerals
00:13
And one country dominates the game.
00:16
China.
00:17
It is the undisputed leader.
00:20
The U.S. considers this a national security issue, because whoever controls these metals
00:26
controls the future.
00:29
And now there is a new battlefield.
00:32
The deep ocean.
00:34
Home to untapped sources of critical minerals.
00:37
So who is trying to mine the ocean?
00:40
How do they plan to do it?
00:42
And should we even go down that road?
00:45
Let's dive deeper.
00:50
The deep sea is like an alien world.
00:53
Ghostly creatures drifting through endless darkness.
00:57
Glowing octopuses floating past boiling vents.
01:01
And then there are these vast fields of metallic nodules.
01:07
For mining companies, this little rock is like a treasure chest.
01:11
It's packed with critical minerals, exactly what we need for EVs, batteries and wind turbines.
01:17
And there are billions of them out there, especially in this area between Mexico and
01:24
Hawaii, where there are at least 21 billion metric tons of these nodules.
01:29
Roughly 10 times the weight of all cars on earth.
01:33
And the metals inside?
01:34
Worth a jaw-dropping nine trillion dollars.
01:37
More than double the size of German economy.
01:40
The most critical minerals for the clean energy transition typically include copper, nickel,
01:47
cobalt and lithium.
01:49
Ke Wang, an expert on energy minerals at the World Resource Institute, explains why this
01:54
matters.
01:55
The International Energy Agency has projected that the demand of critical minerals by the
02:04
clean energy transition will increase by four to six times by 2040, if we're sticking to
02:11
the Paris climate goal.
02:15
This is why some governments and companies are rushing to secure these minerals for their
02:20
economies.
02:21
Leading the charge is the Metals Company, a Canadian firm that plans to be first in
02:27
line applying for mining permits from the International Seabed Authority this July.
02:34
Their plan?
02:35
Send bulldozer-like machines three to six thousand meters below the surface to vacuum
02:40
up nodules along with everything living on them.
02:46
Now the advantage with them, of course, is that they sit on the ocean floor like the
02:49
one in my hand, unattached.
02:53
This is Jared Barron, the CEO of the Metals Company.
02:57
So our job is to pick them up with the greatest efficiency and the lightest impact.
03:01
Back in 2021, the Metals Company was listed on NASDAQ and valued at 2.9 billion dollars.
03:08
But since then, the company hasn't performed so well on the stock market and its market
03:13
cap has plummeted to around 600 million dollars.
03:17
Yet it still holds three exploration licenses in the CCZ, the most of any company tied with
03:23
China's Comra.
03:25
So who actually hands out these deep sea permits?
03:28
We will get to that in a moment.
03:31
For now, deep sea mining faces growing pushback because scientists say we barely understand
03:38
the ecosystems at risk.
03:40
Dr. Beth Orcutt, a deep sea microbiologist, is one of the few people on earth who has
03:45
actually explored these depths.
03:48
One of the first things you notice is when you go below the area where the light goes
03:53
away and it becomes total darkness.
03:56
And if you keep all the lights off, you can actually see flashes of light in the water
04:00
from all the bioluminescent animals and microscopic animals that live there.
04:05
That's how they communicate.
04:06
They communicate with light and chemistry.
04:09
And that chemistry is now under threat.
04:12
The deep sea serves many functions for life on earth.
04:16
So it provides nursery ground for important animals.
04:21
It's very important for controlling the chemistry of our ocean.
04:25
The ocean stores about 25 percent of our carbon emissions every year.
04:30
It provides nutrients that impact marine life far beyond the ocean floor.
04:35
And it could hold life-saving medical treatments.
04:39
Take marizomib, a drug from deep sea bacteria now in trials for treating aggressive brain
04:44
cancer.
04:45
But here's the problem.
04:47
Mining doesn't just remove nodules.
04:49
It disturbs entire ecosystems we barely understand.
04:54
So who is competing for the deep sea?
04:58
China is leading the charge with five exploration licenses, followed by Russia and South Korea.
05:05
But what about the U.S.?
05:08
I think President Trump and the new American administration say what's on a lot of people's
05:15
minds.
05:16
And that is that critical minerals and security of supply of energy alongside critical minerals
05:23
is really important.
05:25
And so Trump being elected was very good news for us.
05:29
The ISA has 169 member states, but the U.S. isn't one of them.
05:37
Because back in the 70s, when deep sea resources were declared the common heritage of humanity,
05:43
the U.S. rejected the idea.
05:47
The International Seabed Authority, it is global socialism.
05:52
It is world government.
05:53
It is worse than the United Nations.
05:55
This is an insult.
05:57
Our American Navy can go anywhere we want on the high seas and we don't need to ask
06:01
some international authority.
06:05
This is the headquarters of the International Seabed Authority, the ISA.
06:11
And they are the ones deciding who mines the ocean's depths and how they can be exploited.
06:17
They are supposed to balance resource extraction with environmental protection.
06:22
But here's the twist.
06:23
The ISA isn't fully funded by the member states.
06:27
It relies on fees from the deep sea mining companies, the same firms hoping to profit
06:32
from the riches.
06:34
For decades, governments and corporations have been exploring declaring equilibrium
06:39
zone under ISA permits.
06:41
Now they are waiting for the ISA to finalize the mining regulations.
06:48
And there is a new startup with a novel approach.
06:51
Jason Gilham is the co-founder of Impossible Metals.
06:55
He says they have a better way to mine the deep sea, one that doesn't involve bulldozing
07:00
the ocean floor.
07:01
To test and eventually scale up their production, they already received 15 million dollars of
07:06
investment.
07:07
We're using a fleet of these autonomous underwater vehicles to pick up the nodules
07:12
from the seafloor, load them onto our vehicle while we're hovering over the seafloor.
07:17
And then that fleet of vehicles brings the nodules onto the ship at the surface to continue
07:21
to be used over and over.
07:23
Impossible Metals initially tested its robotic arms in shallow waters.
07:28
After successful trials, the company developed its Eureka 2 model.
07:33
Last year, it completed trials at depths of 2,000 meters off Florida's coast.
07:39
From an environmental standpoint, we're very focused on staying hovering over the seafloor
07:44
and selectively harvesting.
07:47
That allows us to leave a percentage of nodules undisturbed.
07:50
It allows us to see life and avoid life that we see.
07:54
Their latest robot, Eureka 3, will pack 12 robotic arms and a four-ton payload.
08:00
Instead of bulldozing the seafloor, it hovers, but the environmental impact is still a mystery.
08:07
To find out, they've teamed up with Germany's Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.
08:12
In 2026, as Jason's team tests Eureka 3, German scientists will monitor the site, track
08:18
sediment disturbance, and publish their findings.
08:23
Once we are operating with a full fleet of vehicles, which is about 200 vehicles operating
08:30
at the same time, we're collecting over 6 million tons of nodules per year.
08:35
But what does the science say can go wrong?
08:39
Dr. Orcut remains cautious.
08:41
She says once the robot moves, the stirred-up sediment will make it difficult for AI to
08:46
recognize anything.
08:48
Yes, there could be technologies that are maybe causing less disturbance, operationally
08:54
and economically, they're less proven.
08:58
But Jason believes they have found a way to keep the view clear.
09:02
The way that we'll be operating these vehicles is always into any current that is subsea.
09:07
So we will always be getting any clear, fresh water that is in front of us so that the cameras
09:13
won't have to see through sediments in order to detect nodules and detect life.
09:20
So is deep-sea mining really the better option?
09:23
Proponents claim it could reduce land-based mining, which destroys rainforests and displaces
09:30
communities.
09:31
But that argument doesn't convince Dr. Orcut.
09:35
A thing we need to remember is that land mining won't go away because we have deep-sea mining.
09:40
It will actually compete with land mining.
09:42
While land mining can be very impactful and have severe consequences, there are mitigation
09:48
strategies.
09:49
We have no evidence that we can restore or offset the impact that we cause in the deep
09:55
sea.
09:56
So the impact would be permanent.
09:59
And there is another risk, disturbing the carbon sink.
10:03
One of the most important things about carbon in the deep ocean is that it's buried and
10:08
it stays down there.
10:10
Coal mining may disturb a significant amount of carbon and remobilize it into the ocean.
10:17
So are there any alternatives to deep-sea mining?
10:22
According to a report produced for the International Seabed Authority, the amount of copper that
10:29
we are likely to be able to extract from the Central Pacific would roughly be only about
10:36
1% of global demand for the energy transition by the middle of the next decade.
10:42
Tony Dudzik, an environmental policy expert at the Frontier Group think tank, says that
10:47
for cobalt and nickel, the supply would be more significant, but battery technology is
10:52
shifting and so the future need for these metals is uncertain.
10:58
Take the iron-phosphate battery.
11:00
Its market share is growing and it doesn't need cobalt or nickel at all.
11:06
Needless to say, in three years, LFP batteries will surpass high-nickel batteries' market
11:11
share.
11:12
And we also dump so much metal that could be recycled every year.
11:18
If you look at this chart, the dark blue shows the volume of unrecycled metals we dump each
11:23
year, and the light blue is what we would get from deep-sea mining by 2035 according
11:28
to ISA's estimations.
11:31
What we know is that by taking a more conscious approach to critical metals management throughout
11:37
the economy, we can reduce the pressure for mineral extraction around the world, and we
11:43
can also ensure that we are not destroying vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems for what might
11:52
be an unnecessary reason.
11:56
So should we mine the deep seas?
11:58
With so many unknowns, there is no easy answer.
12:01
It comes down to who gets the benefit of the doubt.
12:05
Should we avoid mining and risk delaying the transition to cleaner energy?
12:10
Or start mining and risk irreversible damage to biodiversity and potentially making climate
12:16
change even worse?
12:18
Proponents argue that we will only truly know by mining on an industrial scale and observing
12:24
the consequences firsthand.
12:26
But history shows that once billions are invested, turning back becomes extremely difficult.
12:33
What do you think we should do?
12:34
Tell us in the comments.
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