Greenland’s rare earth element deposits may be among the largest in the world by volume. And this is already enough to understand why Donald Trump wants to get his hands on it (but if we also want Russia and China, eh).
Greenland, the largest and sparsely inhabited island on Earth, has some of the richest reserves of natural resources in the world. Among these, there are above all critical raw materials, i.e. non-food and non-energy ones but essential for the development of strategic sectors such as renewable energy, electric mobility, digital technologies.
Only those? Of course not. Those who see Greenland as a treasure chest of gold are actually right: there are other minerals and precious metals here, as well as a succulent volume of hydrocarbons including oil and gas.
And voilà. Trumpian longings are served.
What the ice of Greenland (which is melting) hides
Greenland’s ice-free area, almost double the size of the UK, makes up less than a fifth of the island’s total surface area, raising the possibility that there are huge reserves of unexplored natural resources beneath the ice.
Starting from this assumption, this is precisely the point: Trump’s is a real climate profiteer that is just waiting to prey on that land, starting from the three of the deposits containing REEs (rare earths), deep under the ice, which could be among the largest in the world by volume, with great potential for the production of batteries and electrical components essential for the global energy transition.
Not bad on the hydrocarbon potential and mineral wealth front of Greenland, either: According to the US Geological Survey, the portion of Earth’s northeastern island (including ice-covered areas) contains about 31 billion barrels of hydrocarbon oil equivalents – similar to the entire volume of proven crude oil reserves of the United States.
Why is Greenland so rich in natural resources?
Because it has an extremely varied geological history over the last 4 billion years. Some of the oldest rocks on Earth are found here, as well as truck-sized blocks of native (non-meteorite) iron. Pipes kimberlite containing diamonds were discovered in the 1970s but have not yet been exploited, mainly due to the logistical difficulties of extraction.
Greenland has been shaped by numerous and long periods of orogeny, compressive forces that have fractured the earth’s crust, creating faults and fractures in which gold, gems such as rubies and graphite have been deposited. The latter is a key material for the production of lithium batteries but, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenlandis still “little explored” compared to large global producers such as China and South Korea.
The largest share of Greenland’s natural resources, however, comes from the phases of riftingor separation of the continental crust. The most recent event is the formation of the Atlantic Ocean, which began in the Jurassic, just over 200 million years ago.
Emerged sedimentary basins, such as the Jameson Land Basin, appear to have the greatest potential for oil and gas reserves, similar to the hydrocarbon-rich Norwegian continental shelf. However, extremely high costs have so far held back commercial development. At the same time, the number of studies hypothesizing the presence of oil systems potentially extending along the entire offshore perimeter of Greenland is growing.
In the internal sedimentary basins, largely free from ice, there are also metals such as lead, copper, iron and zinc, exploited locally and on a small scale since 1780.
Rare earths difficult to find
While not as closely linked to volcanic activity as neighboring Iceland, many of Greenland’s critical raw materials owe their existence to its volcanic history. Rare earth elements (REEs) such as niobium, tantalum and ytterbium have been identified in layers of igneous rocks, similar to what happened in south-west England, where silver and zinc were deposited by the circulation of hot hydrothermal waters at the margins of large volcanic intrusions.
In particular, it is expected that under the ice Greenland holds reserves of dysprosium and neodymium sufficient to cover over a quarter of the expected future global demand: almost 40 million tonnes in total.
These elements are considered among the most important from an economic point of view and, at the same time, among the most difficult to find, because they are indispensable for wind energy, electric motors of low-emission vehicles and magnets used in high-temperature environments, such as nuclear reactors.
So will the energy transition lead us to power wars?
This seems to be the natural question to ask ourselves. If on the one hand the global energy transition was born from the growing awareness of the multiple risks linked to the combustion of fossil fuels, on the other the supply of resources cannot fail to have effects on the availability of many natural resources, starting with those in Greenland, probably still covered for a short time by kilometers of ice. A dog chasing its tail.
An area of ice the size of Albania has melted since 1995, and the trend is set to accelerate if global carbon emissions do not fall dramatically in the short term.
Recent advances in detection techniques, such as the use of ground-penetrating radar, now allow us to observe more precisely what lies beneath the ice sheet. Despite this, exploration under the ice remains slow, and sustainable extraction is increasingly looking like a gamble.
In the short term, in any case, an inevitable dilemma could arise: decisively exploit the growing availability of resources to support and accelerate the energy transition, or give up, knowing that extraction would aggravate the effects of climate change on Greenland and the rest of the planet, disfiguring a largely pristine environment?
Donald already has the answer.
