Thank you very much for the
opportunity to participate in this
webinar. I'd like to talk about two
topics: critical materials in general and
then the Critical Materials Institute
more specifically, and I like to begin
discussing critical materials through
the use of three images - three images at
the top of this slide. Various
commentators have described critical
materials as the vitamins of modern
engineered materials or the salt and
pepper of these materials or spices that
add special properties to modern
materials, and used in small
quantities, these materials provide
essential properties. But critical
materials have a second characteristic
and that is that they are subject to
supply risk, so it's the combination of
providing essential properties with the
risks associated with supply chain that
makes a material critical in any
particular application. That leads then
to the question, well what to do? What
should we do to to assure supply chains?
And fundamentally there are three
solutions to supply chain risks: produce
more, use what we do produce more
efficiently - in other words waste less -
and use less by developing substitute
materials. I think just as important a
question is how should we do this
and who should be responsible? What are
roles and responsibilities for
undertaking these three types of
actions? And i should say at the outset
that these are my personal views, these
are not the views of the Department of
Energy which funds a significant portion
of the work that I'm involved in. So my
personal views are, first of all, being a
card-carrying economist I believe in
the power of market forces, so rely
largely on market forces, but recognize
there are time lags in developing additional
supplies, reducing waste, using less. Now
this is not I would say a cartoon
version of markets that we often hear
in popular discussions, but rather of the power of markets that
recognizes government has important
functions it serves, and therefore in
terms of how and who, government
initiatives should focus primarily on
efforts that serve to facilitate
well-functioning markets, and I divide
these into four types of government
activities. First of all international
trade and trade policy - when the
source of supply chain risk is our
distortions to international trade then
trade policy has an important role.
Second, development of domestic resources -
when there are opportunities for
domestic resource development, facilitate,
not incentivize, but rather facilitate
this sort of domestic resource
development. Third, information and
strategic analysis, really echoing the
comments that Steve Fortier made a few moments
ago, and Larry Meinert did as well.
Information and strategic analysis - many
of the emerging materials and
elements in the periodic table that have
not seen significant use in the past
are opaque markets - information is
scarce and it's difficult to make
rational decisions whether you're in the
public or private sector without
information, so a third important role
for government in much the same way that
government plays a crucial role
through its national income and product
accounts. Fourth and finally, research and
education throughout the entire supply
chain. Even though the private sector
carries out
significant research development
activities, it's widely recognized that
private actors by themselves are
likely to under-invest in research and
education from the perspective of
society as a whole, particular in the area of
basic research, and this then provides
the context, this fourth function
for government, the context for the
Critical Materials Institute, about which
I'd like to devote the rest of my
presentation. So the Critical Materials
Institute - a very busy slide so
let's focus attention on specific parts
of this slide - the essential purpose or
goal of the Critical Materials Institute
is to innovate, to carry out technical
research that will create technological
options for sharing supply chains, for
technologies that will allow us to
produce more, waste less, and use less of
the critical materials. A second point to
note from this slide - the Vritical
Materials Institute is one of four
Department of Energy funded energy
innovation hubs. In particular we are
funded by the Advanced Manufacturing
Office within the Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy Office of DOE. A third
important thing to note about the
Critical Materials Institute is that we
are a consortium of
companies, universities, and National
Laboratories. We are led by the
Ames Laboratory, affiliated with Iowa
State University, one of the DOE
national labs, and the idea with the
consortium is that there are skills and
talents and perspectives that
are somewhat different, from industry to
National Labs to universities, and we
want to force in some sense
these different perspectives to interact in
ways that might not occur as easily or
is naturally left to our own devices.
Here's a slide with words that says
much of what I just said. An additional
piece of information - it's a five-year
initiative with a budget of up to 120
million dollars in total over five years.
We are in the middle of the third year
of operation. Because we are funded by
the Department of Energy we are focusing
specifically on those materials that
play essential roles in selected
clean energy technologies, and
specifically we're concerned about the
supply chains for the raw materials that
are important in wind turbines, in
photovoltaic materials, in fluorescent
and LED lighting, and in advanced
vehicles, and in turn what that means is
that we are focusing primarily at the
moment on certain of the rare earth
elements that provide important
functionality to magnets and to
phosphors and lighting, and we're
focusing on lithium because of its
essential role in at least what are now
state-of-the-art lithium
batteries. We follow a three-pillared
research strategy that mirrors
the strategy articulated in the DOE
2011 Critical Material Strategy. It's
essentially the three "What to do" answers
that I presented at the beginning of my
presentation: innovation to diversify our
sources of supply, to make better use of
existing supplies through recycling and
reuse, and to develop substitute
materials that either do not use
the materials at risk or at least use
less of them. The Critical Materials
Institute has a number of goals, but at
the highest level and most fundamentally,
we are committed to developing at least
one technology adopted by US companies
in each of our three major areas of
research,
so technology to diversify and expand
production, develop substitutes, and reduce
waste. At present, in the middle of our third year
of operation, we have 40 invention
disclosures that in turn have led to 13
patent applications that in turn have
led to one licensed technology, a
technology that involves membrane
solvent extraction applied to rare earth
elements. I have a couple of slides here that
I'm not going to go through in detail,
they simply list our invention
disclosures. I will say that all three of
the areas of research - process
engineering for primary production,
process engineering for recycling and
reuse, and materials science and
engineering for developing substitutes
are represented in our invention
disclosures, so here are the first ten,
here are the second ten, the third ten, and
the fourth set of ten invention
disclosures, the starting point for
licensing and commercializing technologies.
So that's a little bit about critical
materials, it's a little bit about the
Critical Materials Institute, the
Department of Energy funded energy
innovation hub. I would say the key story
line that I hope everyone would remember
from this presentation is the idea of
innovation to create technological
options for assuring material supply
chains. And with that I will stop and I
think all three of us are happy to
entertain questions.
