.’s lobby in San Marcos, CEO Scott Dunn stood before a table as he handled small glass bulbs filled with powdered forms of rare earth minerals that are key to the future of clean energy technologies.
The U.S. government and private sector is hungry for the magnets, which are essential to making air conditioners, washing machines and cooling fan motors in computers and microwaves. They’re also used in MRI machines, wind turbines, robots, fighter jets and missiles. She said extracting rare earth minerals without creating pollution is very difficult and that the U.S lacks the type of large-scale production seen in China, mostly because of regulations to control pollution.After China drove up rare earth mineral prices by choking supply in 2010, companies started to build such businesses in the United States. But China quickly reversed its position, causing prices to drop and undercutting efforts to build an American mining industry.
Magnets “make electrical process more efficient,” Nash said, which results in the high demand for them.