In her Oct. 15 “Local View” column in the News Tribune (“No need to sacrifice clean water for clean energy”), environmental advocate Abby Rogerson questioned whether the mining of copper, nickel, and cobalt “has a place in the transition to renewable energy.”Rogerson and the Twin Cities-based group she represents face a growing dilemma: They advocate for renewable technologies such as wind and solar to replace fossil-fuel generation and electric vehicles to replace gas burners, but they also face the uncomfortable reality that the massive volumes of raw materials needed to manufacture these technologies have to come out of the ground — out of Minnesota, no less — unless we want to continue our dependence on foreign sources such as China, Russia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Minnesota holds an astounding 95% of U.S. mineral reserves for nickel,…
In Response: US transition to clean energy depends on Minnesota mining – Duluth News Tribune
