Industry innovators are tapping  coal and its waste streams to extract rare earths, 17 essential elements  to realizing an electrified economy.

The company has drilled over 5,500 metres in 18 holes this year as part of the Wicheeda resource delineation and pit geotechnical program.

Robert Bosch plans to use more than twenty of IBM’s quantum computers to help identify alternatives to the metals and rare earth elements currently used in EVs.

New report says China now imports half its heavy rare earths while demand from EVs, renewable energy is absorbing higher prices.

“That’s a country that has seen this need coming and made the most of it,” Resources Minister Madeleine King told Bloomberg News in an interview.

The government intends to start developing the methods necessary to extract the elements near the Ogasawara islands, according to the Yomiuri newspaper.

It could be possible to produce tetrataenite, an iron-nickel alloy, at scale by adding the common element phosphorous, researchers found.