As the United States seeks to reduce its reliance on foreign entities for rare earths and critical minerals, an unexpected solution may lie in coal plants’ landfills.

The U.S. imports nearly all its critical minerals and rare earths, relying particularly on China. Other countries boast lower-cost production, greater mineral abundance, and fewer permitting challenges.

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However, many officials worry about relying on other countries and adversaries for critical minerals and rare earths because they are used in various products in the energy and national security sectors.

The solution could lie in the byproducts of burning coal, also known as coal ash.

For over a century, the U.S. has burned coal to produce energy, leaving piles of toxic coal ash residue in the environment and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Coal has been supplanted by natural gas and renewable energy in recent years, but the Trump administration has sought ways to revitalize the coal industry on the basis that coal power is reliable. Last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to increase coal power production.

As part of the administration’s effort to promote coal, the Energy Department announced it would patent new technology for extracting minerals from coal ash.

Researchers have found that the byproduct of burning coal could be a viable source of critical minerals and rare earths.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin said last year that U.S. coal ash contains nearly 11 million tons of rare earth elements, eight times the country’s domestic reserves. The researchers estimate that $8.4 billion worth of rare earth elements could be extracted from the accessible coal ash supply.

Historically, the byproduct of burning coal has been used in construction markets to make concrete or steel, University of Texas associate professor Brent Elliott said.

“There’s a huge opportunity for taking advantage of that waste that would normally go in a big pile somewhere,” Elliott said.

After burning coal, a toxic byproduct called coal ash or fly ash is left over and either buried or piled up in places where it could contaminate groundwater, waterways, and soil. The amount of critical minerals or rare earth elements in coal ash depends on its origin.

Still, extracting critical minerals and rare earths from coal ash is not an easy task.

Processing rare earth elements involves two parts. The first is extracting the rare earth elements from the coal ash using a chemical extraction method to dissolve them. The result is a rare earth concentration, a mixture of all 17 different rare earth elements.

The second part is refining, which turns the concentrate into a type of metal or material to create magnets and microelectronic components used to build various products, such as wind turbines or defense applications.

Although there are some U.S. companies that can perform the refining process, they cannot produce on the same scale as Chinese competitors. Mineral and coal companies have called for government incentives and policies to support domestic investment in coal ash as a source of rare earths and critical minerals.

Elliott said companies do not want to invest in processing coal ash if China is going to dump material in the market and drop the price, making the company worthless. China has been accused of selling goods in foreign markets at prices far below market value, also known as “dumping.” The U.S. and European Union have imposed anti-dumping measures on China to ensure a fair playing field.

“You either have to subsidize it, or you have to figure out some way of creating a floor for the price so that companies that do invest in this extraction process are guaranteed to either break even or make a profit out of it,” Elliott said.

Nick Myers, the CEO of Phoenix Tailings, a mining company that purchases coal ash concentrate to process it into fine metal, said that there is an opportunity to extract a rare earth concentrate from coal ash but warned that companies would still need to send the concentrate to China to be refined.

“It defeats the entire purpose,” Myers said. “A lot of these companies that are building these mining operations or building a coal fly ash recovery operation really will not get private investors because they’re ultimately reliant on the Chinese Communist Party.”

China is a major player in the critical minerals sector. China controls most of the supply chain with 60% of global critical minerals production and 85% of global processing capacity, according to Reuters.

Paul Baruya, the director of strategy and sustainability at the nonprofit organization FutureCoal, said the government must adopt various strategies to encourage investments in coal ash.

“To accelerate investment, the industry must shift its view of waste from liability to opportunity—supported by favourable government policies, dedicated research funding for universities, and public-private collaboration to scale and commercialise technologies,” Baruya said in a statement.

Baruya said it is essential that coal companies continue to collaborate with universities to research how to utilize coal ash to extract critical minerals. Several universities, including West Virginia University, the University of Wyoming, the University of Kansas, and others, are researching coal ash.

“America has some fantastic solutions, and I think they are ahead of the game in this respect,” Baruya said. “It’s been technically proven. … The question is getting it out.”

However, environmentalists are concerned that the coal industry will begin utilizing coal ash as a reason to burn more coal, as coal plants across the U.S. have been steadily declining or transitioning into other energy sources for several years.

About 780 coal-fired power plants have retired in the U.S. since 2000, the New York Times reported in February.

“This industry has certainly a track record of doing everything it can to cut corners and certainly not prioritize the health and well-being of the communities located nearby,” Sierra Club attorney Bridget Lee said.

“But if the extraction of these minerals is paired with a proper cleanup, I think that could be a good thing for communities,” she added.

WEST VIRGINIANS HESITANT ABOUT COAL REVIVAL SAY THEY’VE BEEN BURNED BEFORE

Lee said investments in utilizing coal ash should not justify burning more coal.

“Of course, for existing ponds, we would love to see those cleaned,” Lee said. “If this use of the minerals leads to some of that waste being excavated and then used for this purpose, that’s great, but we definitely want to be cautious of anyone you know using this as an excuse to continue burning coal.”