In this aerial photo, melting icebergs crowd the Ilulissat Fjord on July 16, 2024, near Ilulissat, Greenland.
Sean Gallup | News from Getty Images | Getty Images
Severe ice loss from Greenland has exposed the island's natural resources, leaving some of the world's greatest untapped critical mineral resources more available.
Greenland, a vast but sparsely populated island located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic, has been transformed by climate crisis in recent decades.
Detailed analysis of historical satellite images, published last year, scientists from the British University of Leeds showed that the autonomous territory of Denmark is becoming greener man-made global warming.
The changing environment has resulted in parts of Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers being replaced by wetlands, areas covered with shrubs and barren rocks.
Scientists repeatedly raised the alarm over the melting snow and ice on the island, warning that the risk of ice loss has increased greenhouse gas emissions AND rising sea levels.
For mining companies, the retreat of ice in Greenland could facilitate the start of a mineral “gold rush.”
Landscape on the Drygal Peninsula, with icebergs in the Uummannaq fjord system in the northwestern part of Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle.
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“What's happening now is interesting because the waters around Greenland are opening earlier and earlier each year and closing later and later. And the ability to get to these remote places is much easier than it was 20, 30, 40 or 70 years ago,” Roderick McIllree, chief executive of British mining company 80 Mile, told CNBC via video call.
“Currently, ice in northern latitudes probably only takes three or four months to form, and the rest of the country is seeing the ice caps retreat, exposing rocks and potential mineral deposits that have not been seen before,” he added.
80 Mile is currently actively developing three projects in Greenland, including a large oil concession on the island's east coast, a titanium project near the US Pituffik space base in the northwest, and the Disko-Nuussuaq project in the southwest.
Highlighting the island's strategic potential as a global mining hub, McIllree said the company's Disko project could be one of the largest nickel-copper deposits in the world.
Geopolitical storm
Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals Corporation, which is developing one of the world's largest rare earth resources in Greenland, said the melting ice on the island had done the mining company a “huge favor” from a logistical point of view.
Sage said the company had managed to bring large ships directly from the North Atlantic “right to the edge of the ore deposits” at Tanbreez in southern Greenland, adding that the creation of 80-meter-deep fjords meant the team managed to use a floating dock instead of a port.
A boat carrying tourists maneuvers among icebergs floating in Disko Bay, Ilulissat, western Greenland, June 30, 2022.
Strange Andersen | Af | Getty Images
“You can imagine it's easier to do things like this now. “If you go to Russia, for example Siberia, it's under a lot of permafrost and ice, and yet they extract a lot of minerals and also oil and gas. So yes, there will be a little gold rush coming to Greenland,” Sage said in a video call. for CNBC.
In addition to Greenland's harsh climate, remote landscape and small population, Sage highlighted the lack of infrastructure as a barrier for mining companies to overcome.
“It's just logistics. The Danes never built a railway or) built any roads,” Sage said.
“Once you leave these small towns and cities, there are no roads. So if you want to get from, for example, Qaqortoq, where we are, to Nuuk, you have to go by helicopter. that's a problem you're going to have with the gold rush,” he added.
Greenland, which has long touted itself as the Western alternative to China close to monopoly on rare earth elements, was thrown into the center of a geopolitical storm in recent weeks.
US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to take control of the territory, describing the prospect as “an absolute necessity“for national security purposes.
Speaking at a press conference earlier this month, Trump did not rule out the possibility of using military force to incorporate Greenland into the U.S.
Prime Minister of Greenland Mute Egede he said On Monday, the island is open to closer relations with the US, especially in areas such as mining. Egede has previously insisted that Greenland is “not for sale” and called on the international community to respect the island's aspirations for independence.
Early stages
Jakob Kløve Keiding, senior consultant at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), said that in 2023 questionnaire Greenland's resource potential estimated a total of 38 resources on the island, the vast majority of which have relatively high or moderate potential.
These materials include graphite, rare earths, niobium, platinum group metals, molybdenum, tantalum and titanium. It is also known that Greenland has significant deposits of lithium, hafnium, uranium and gold.
Critical minerals refer to a subset of materials considered essential to the energy transition. The end uses of these materials, which typically involve a high risk of supply chain disruption, are broad and include: electric vehicle batteries, energy storage technologies and national security applications.
A woman looks out from a tour boat leaving a glacier between Maniitsoq and Sisimiut on the west coast of Greenland, September 4, 2024.
James Brooks | Af | Getty Images
“There's a lot of potential (in Greenland), but there's not really much mining there at the moment,” Keiding told CNBC by phone.
“Greenland is what we would call a greenfield exploration area. So (it is) in the early stages of exploration where for many deposits we don't have much data. However, there are several large and well-established deposits with known resources.”
When asked about the prospect of a gold rush, Keiding expressed caution, stating that while retreating ice in Greenland could remove some logistical hurdles, progress in mining would likely take “quite a long time.”