When it comes to minerals for clean energy, the United States can control much of its own fate 

“Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife.” This was President Jimmy Carter quoting an American he met as part of a speech during the energy crisis in 1979. Carter’s statements were dubbed the “Crisis of Confidence” speech, and were delivered in July, when oil prices were $13 per barrel, (49 percent higher than the year prior).

Americans had already experienced oil price shocks earlier in the ’70s and were suffering from the return of gasoline rationing, and Carter’s presidency was on the line. By November 1980 oil prices had reached $24 per barrel, and President Carter had lost his reelection bid. The series of events highlighted more than anything the risk to Americans’ economic wellbeing and way of life due to dependency on foreign energy suppliers.

Today, these events have gained renewed relevance in debates over minerals for clean energy. Part of the argument for more electric vehicles and renewable energy is that these resources reduce foreign dependence, which is especially important if those foreign suppliers are adversarial. When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Europe was getting half of its natural gas from them. There was a quick realization of the vulnerability that comes from having your economy’s energy supply rely on Russian cooperation, and Europe has since heavily shifted to other sources of natural gas as well as more renewable energy.

The United States enjoys a somewhat mitigated risk from foreign dependency because it is the world’s largest oil and gas producer. But with a big push for clean energy, there is growing concern that one vulnerability could be traded for another since there is no escaping the fact that one country dominates minerals and clean energy markets: China.

For the global mineral processing needed for clean energy, China and its state-owned enterprises control 40 percent of copper, 35 percent of nickel, 65 percent of cobalt, 58 percent of lithium and 87 percent of rare earth elements. While minerals are important in today’s economy, that relevance is dwarfed compared to reality in a clean energy economy, which would require global production to increase 40-fold.

The idea of China being part of a minerals oligopoly, or even monopoly for some resources, is not appealing for a few reasons. One is China’s increasing hostility to the United States, with aggressive intercepts of U.S. aircraft in international airspace and even using lasers to blind American pilots in Africa. Another reason is China’s poor environmental record associated with its mining industry; one of its rare earth mines has a waste pond three times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park.

Even more concerning is China’s deteriorating human rights record. Chinese-funded cobalt mines use 40,000 child workers, and the Chinese have been accused of using slave labor in the production of solar panels. The United States has attempted to adopt policies that tariff and restrict the import of some of these products — namely solar panels produced with slave labor — but the Biden administration has consistently rejected such efforts, indicating that clean energy targets are a higher priority.

Complicating matters further, China has a history of embargoing mineral exports to countries with which they have disputes. And China has just implemented trade restrictions on gallium and germanium, two minerals utilized in clean energy and predominantly supplied by China. So it is reasonable to expect that if the United States is dependent upon China for minerals, it could attempt to use embargoes to influence U.S. policy.

The way to avoid such dependencies and risks is to focus on the opportunities that the free market brings — the first and most obvious being domestic mines. With mineral demand up, and prices increasing, there is substantial opportunity in the United States. Two of the biggest lithium mines in North America ––Thacker Pass and Rhyolite Ridge –– are expected to open in Nevada, and one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world is expected to be tapped in Arizona as Resolution Copper.

My research has found that if the United States wanted to fully transition to clean energy, the proposed mines could close its gap on foreign reliance considerably for lithium and copper, with import reliance falling from 100 percent to 51 percent for lithium and 74 percent to 41 percent for copper.

But even if the United States opens every mine it can to reduce the market role of Chinese suppliers, it can’t escape that there are still minerals that just aren’t present in enough quantities in the United States to meet some of the proposed clean energy scenarios, especially cobalt and nickel. If policymakers want to cover those vulnerabilities, they need to ensure that consumption of those minerals even today is focused on “friend-shoring,” where the United States tries to source minerals from nations with which there are trade and security agreements. It is also crucial that the United States buys from suppliers that comply with U.S. trade rules, and enforces its trade rules across the board. If America doesn’t do this, potential suppliers may think they don’t need to follow the rules to access U.S. buyers.

The risks of foreign dependency on minerals for clean energy can also be mitigated by understanding that the potential price shocks are not quite what it has been for oil and gasoline. The effect of OPEC embargoes and supply disruptions on gasoline prices are practically immediate, but for lithium embargoes disrupting EVs the scarcity effects would be felt more gradually, with prices rising as vehicles would need replacing. Additionally, opportunities for recycling mean that the more we import the more material will be available within our borders to recycle, and that could mean less potential future imports may be required.

All in all, policymakers are right to see parallels between past vulnerability to OPEC, and a future clean energy vulnerability to China. But the good news is that these risks can be mitigated with good policy that is focused on domestic production, friendly foreign trading partners and long-term recycling policies. Americans might not have their necks over a fence for clean energy, but they still need to watch out for the quicksand.

Philip Rossetti is a resident senior fellow for energy policy at the R Street Institute