Federal scientists are using recon flights and field research to track down key metals for green energy
In a remote and heavily forested region of northern Maine, a critical resource in the fight against climate change has been hiding beneath the trees. In November, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, announced the discovery of rocks that are rich in rare earth elements near Pennington Mountain. A category of metals that play an essential role in technologies ranging from smartphones to wind turbines to electric vehicle motors, rare earths are currently mined only at a single site in the United States. Now, researchers say a place that's been geologically overlooked for decades could be sitting on the next big deposit of them — although a more thorough survey would be needed to confirm that. While the U.S. government frets over shortages of the metals and minerals needed to transition off fossil fuels, it also lacks the basic geological knowledge needed to say where many of those resources are. Less than 40 percent of the nation has been mapped in enough detail to support the discovery of new mineral deposits, hampering the Biden administration's plan to boost domestic mining of energy transition metals like rare earths and lithium, an essential ingredient in electric vehicle batteries. But the administration and Congress are now attempting to fill the maps in, by ramping up funding for the USGS's Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, or Earth MRI. Geologists Chunzeng Wang and Preston Bass in the field near Pennington Mountain. Bass carries a tool called a portable gamma spectrometer. United States Geological Survey A partnership between the federal government and state geological surveys, Earth MRI was established in 2019 with the goal of improving America's knowledge of its "critical mineral" resources, a list of dozens of minerals considered vital for energy, defense, and other sectors. The initiative was quietly humming along to the tune of about $11 million per year in funding until 2022, when Earth MRI received an additional influx of $320…