Kobold Metals, a mineral exploration company and California-based startup has partnered with Bluejay Mining to find in Greenland the rare and precious metals that are necessary to build electric vehicles and massive batteries to store renewable energy. A team of thirty geologists, geophysicists, cooks, pilots and mechanics are camped at the site where Kobold and Blujay are searching for the buried treasure: they are taking soil samples, flying drones and helicopters with transmitters to measure the electromagnetic field of the subsurface and map the layers of rock below, using artificial intelligence to analyze the data to pinpoint exactly where to drill as early as next summer. The bet is that below the surface of Greenland’s Disko Island and Nuussuaq Peninsula there are enough critical minerals to power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles. Bluejay Mining CEO Bo Møller Stensgaard said that because climate change is making ice-free periods in the sea longer, teams are able to ship in heavy equipment and ship metals out to the global market more easily. Melting land ice is exposing land that has been buried under ice for centuries to millennia and could now become a potential site for mineral exploration. “We are looking for a deposit that will be the first- or second-largest most significant nickel and cobalt deposit in the world,” Kurt House, CEO of Kobold Metals, told CNN. According to the ‘Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland’, the latter could be a hot spot for coal, copper, gold, rare-earth elements and zinc: the government of Greenland, according to the agency, has done several “resource assessments throughout the ice-free land” and it “recognizes the country’s potential to diversify the national economy through mineral extraction.” “The government of Greenland supports the responsible, sustainable, and economically viable development of their natural resources to include mining of a broad range of minerals,” Mike Sfraga, the chair of the ‘United States Arctic Research Commission’, told CNN. The paradox is that climate crisis is melting Greenland down at an unprecedented rate, which is creating an opportunity for investors and mining companies who are searching for a trove of critical minerals capable of powering the green energy transition. According to Steensgaard, these critical minerals will “provide part of the solution to meet these challenges” that the climate crisis presents. Some of the world’s richest men, possibly the likes of Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, might be among those who are funding the massive ‘treasure hunt’ on the west coast of Greenland. Read more on CNN.com
