Tour of Rare Earths in the Energy Transition

Rare earth elements sit quietly behind the energy transition — enabling electric vehicles, wind turbines, power electronics, and advanced grids — yet their supply chains are among the most concentrated, strategic, and misunderstood in the world.

In this 40-minute virtual tour, Andy Calitz, Mary Hemmingsen and Jared Manz take you country by country through the rare earth ecosystem that underpins the modern energy system. We focus on the few elements that matter most for electrification: neodymium and praseodymium (the core of high-performance permanent magnets), plus dysprosium and terbium (small but crucial additions that help magnets keep strength at high temperatures). We also touch briefly on cerium and lanthanum as high-volume “basket” rare earths that shape mine economics, even if they’re less critical to magnets.

The tour begins in China, the dominant force across mining, separation, and magnet production, before moving to Australia, home to the most important non-Chinese rare earth mine. We then examine the United States and Canada, where strategic rebuilding of separation and magnet capacity is underway. India features for monazite resources and state-linked processing ambitions, Brazil for emerging non-China supply options, and Myanmar as a critical—yet opaque—source influencing heavy rare earth availability.

Using satellite imagery of mines, processing plants, and industrial clusters, this tour explains why rare earths are not interchangeable commodities, why processing matters more than geology, and why a small set of countries will shape the pace and resilience of the energy transition.