A mineral exploration company, backed by billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, is conducting a “treasure hunt” off Greenland’s west coast, searching for critical minerals that will be enough to build electric vehicles and batteries to store renewable energy. energy, reveals CNN.
The melting of the ice in Greenland, which is causing sea levels to rise, remains a major concern for scientists studying the Arctic. Even so, the climate crisis will be seen as an opportunity for various investors and companies to look for minerals in this place that are capable of driving the transition to green energy.
Therefore, the group believes that beneath the surface of the hills and valleys of Greenland’s Disko Island and the Nuussuaq Peninsula there are enough minerals to supply hundreds of millions of electric vehicles.
“We’re looking at a deposit that could be the first or second largest nickel and cobalt deposit in the world,” Kurt House, CEO of KoBold Metals, explained in an interview with CNN.
The billionaire group financially supports this California-based company that uses Artificial Intelligence to search for raw materials. According to Reuters, the company will invest 15 million dollars (about 14 million euros) in the project.
This “treasure hunt” features a team of 30 geologists, geophysicists, cooks, pilots and mechanicswho are camped at the site where these minerals are sought.
The team, he tells CNN, is taking soil samples and using drones and helicopters with transmitters to measure the electromagnetic field of the subsurface and map the rock layers, using Artificial Intelligence to analyze the data and identify exactly where it can be carried out. exploration as early as the summer of next year.
Despite admitting that it is “a concern to observe the consequences and impacts of climate change in Greenland”, the director of Bluejay Mining, a partner of KoBold Metals in this project, says that these climate changes, “in general, have made exploration and mining in Greenland easier and more accessible”, since, for example, the melting of the ice is revealing land that disappeared thousands of years ago and that can now be a potential site for mineral exploration.
According to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, the Greenland government has already carried out several “ice-free land resource assessments” and “recognizes the country’s potential to diversify the national economy through mineral extraction.” .
Source: Observadora
