Gerard Barron, CEO of the Canadian The Metals Company, knows at the beginning of November that he is in an extremely important place when he enters a warehouse in the North Brabant village of Heijningen. He spends most of his time in Canada or the United States, at corporate headquarters or visiting investors. Earlier that year, he oversaw the New York IPO that gave his company a valuation of $3 billion. But Heijningen – that is perhaps the actual heart of The Metals Company.
In the shed, Barron examines crucial technology. It is a complicated machine that can extract rare metals on the seabed: manganese, nickel, cobalt. These raw materials are relatively rare and are badly needed for batteries for electric cars, for example – a huge growth market.
Barron is happy with what he sees. According to him, the entire construction testifies to the great ‘inventiveness’ of the engineers at Allseas in Delft, he will say afterwards.
In recent years, interest in deep-sea mining has grown enormously. Start-ups such as The Metals Company see a lot of potential in this industry, which can contribute to the greening of the world. The Dutch company Allseas is closely involved in this. It already cooperates extensively with The Metals Company, of which it is a co-shareholder.
Only: the plans of these companies lead to a lot of unrest worldwide. Searching for metals in one of the few ecosystems that humans have barely affected yet has come under criticism from environmentalists, governments and even potential buyers like BMW. Is it really such a good idea to make the world greener with metals from the seabed?
golf balls
Gerard Barron, with his long hair and beard the clichéd image of a surfer, likes to hold up a piece of stone during presentations. This is a polymetallic nodulehe then says. “And they lie on the seabed like golf balls on a golf course.”
The Metals Company wants to fish these manganese nodules, which are miles deep in some stretches of sea. Now the metals it contains are still mined on land. There are concerns about this: children are said to be working in the Congolese mines and rainforests are being cut down for some mines.
There are also concerns about the future availability of many of the metals. Out a recent study by the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft shows that shortages of raw materials such as nickel can pose a problem in the energy transition. Nickel is not only needed for batteries, but also for hydrogen generation. It is also exciting with cobalt.
The Metals Company believes that the seabed offers a good alternative to current extraction and is well advanced with plans for this. In 2024, the company aims to start commercially in the eastern Pacific Ocean, in the Clarion Clipperton Zone. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body, is conducting a procedure – the first ever – to be allowed to extract the metals in international waters. The application was submitted via the island state of Nauru (10,000 inhabitants), because only countries can submit such a request to the ISA.
A lot of Dutch help is involved in the realization. The vessel that The Metals Company intends to use is a used drillship, the Hidden Gem, purchased by Allseas. In Rotterdam, it was recently converted by more than two hundred people into the world’s first deep-sea mining vessel.
Maritime high-tech network
Allseas (2,500 employees) is a big name in the Dutch maritime world. Founder is Edward Heerema, who comes from the offshore entrepreneurial family of the same name. Together with shipbuilders such as Damen and IHC, the company forms the core of a network of maritime high-tech companies that supply technology and ships worldwide. Allseas has grown especially large with the laying of pipelines on the seabed and the installation and removal of oil rigs. For that work, it has the largest ship in the world, the Pioneering Spirit.
Allseas is strongly committed to deep-sea mining: the company – formally based in Switzerland – not only provides services to The Metals Company, it is also a major shareholder with a stake of 7.5 percent. And so it develops and builds such a collecting machine in Heijningen.
“We believe that this is necessary for the energy transition,” explains Allseas spokesman Jeroen Hagelstein of the close involvement. “You don’t have to dig out the tubers, like with traditional mines.” According to Allseas, deep-sea mining is more sustainable than onshore mining. „The CO2footprint and socio-economic impact are much smaller.”
As beautiful as it may sound, deep-sea mining has also become a very controversial practice in the past year. For example, Greenpeace activists climbed the Hidden Gem in the port of Rotterdam in December. Raw material extraction on the seabed is harmful to the special ecosystems that you can find at a depth of kilometers, was their motivation. It is one of the last places where humans have not disturbed things – and it should stay that way, according to the environmental organization.
Deep Sea Mining Opponents
Greenpeace finds various parties on its side. A number of countries, including Belgium, have spoken out against deep-sea mining. And a petition not to allow deep-sea mining for the time being has been signed by 622 marine scientists. They fear irreparable damage to ecosystems due to lack of knowledge and too much haste to start deep-sea mining.
Very little is indeed known about the extraction of raw materials from the seabed – just like about the deep sea in general, says Sabine Gollner. As a senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, she studies the deep sea. This research is new: what exactly happens, how quickly does the seabed recover after metals have been sucked away, can you restore these ecosystems? But in a year and a half, when The Metals Company wants to start mining, “we don’t know yet,” Gollner says.
She studied the organisms that live in and on the tubers. There turned out to be quite a few. “What is certain is that life on such a tuber is gone for a million years.” A tuber grows at a rate of only a few millimeters per million years. And without a tuber there would be no tubers, such as corals and sponges, which in turn have an impact on the food chain on the seabed.
Rudy Helmons, assistant professor of Offshore and Dredging Engineering in Delft, also knows that the extraction will have an effect no matter what. He is now investigating how the ‘dust clouds’ created by deep-sea mining behave – and how to limit them. According to him, the question is whether you can reduce the impact to acceptable proportions. But he also emphasizes that more time is needed for this. “You have to monitor closely what the actual environmental impact is at every step in the process. Based on that, you can decide: are we going to continue or not?”
Helmons does not rule out the possibility that the balance may eventually tip in favor of deep-sea mining, because mining on land is also not without an impact. “At the same time, we are already doing that kind of mining.” In theory, that could be an ethical argument to leave the deep-sea bottom alone.
Some potential buyers of deep-sea metals have already decided not to use it for the time being. This applies to Volkswagen, Renault, Volvo and BMW, among others. Claudia Becker, responsible for sustainable materials procurement at BMW in Munich: “We have looked at this for a long time and talked to many parties. But we see major risks for biodiversity.”
In addition, BMW claims that it cannot gain enough insight into the extraction conditions, says Becker. “Yes, opencast mines are often criticized, but you can go there and see what happens.” Becker himself has been to Congo – BMW says it does not use Congolese cobalt – and will soon be looking at mines in Chile.
Is BMW sure it will have enough metals soon if it excludes the deep-sea option? That is a challenge, admits Becker. But she has great expectations of batteries with less or even no cobalt, and of battery recycling. “There is almost no capacity for that at the moment.”
Also read this interview about resource scarcity with expert Theo Henckens: ‘The EU’s raw materials policy is too short-term focused’
Waiting is for VN
Does the criticism help? Awaiting the UN decision on Nauru’s license application. The mini-state is struggling economically and is emphatically profiling itself as a sponsor of deep-sea mining. The general expectation is that The Metals Company will be allowed to start in 2024. The British daily The Guardian last year found out that the International Seabed Authority has an unclear decision-making process aimed at enabling extraction. The handful of experts that attend mainly come from the oil and gas industry.
The criticism already seems to have caused The Metals Company financial setback. All the commotion surrounding deep-sea mining is hurting investor confidence. The share price initially fluctuated around USD 10, and is now around 1.50. One major lender failed to go public with the IPO, causing the company to miss out on about $200 million. CEO Barron mentioned it to the Financial Times a setback, but not crucial.
At Allseas they also take the criticism and the difficult IPO for information. In Delft they are working resolutely on the systems to raise the tubers via kilometers long pipes. Jeroen Hagelstein: “It is a major challenge from a technical point of view.”
The Dutch company sees nothing in a (temporary) ban on deep-sea mining. “That’s when the investigations stop,” says Hagelstein. “You can’t just look at the situation from the seabed. It is also about how mining is happening now, and what the need for metals is in the energy transition.” Allseas finds it striking that some automakers have already dropped out. It expects that really gigantic amounts of metals will be needed in the coming years.
The renovation of The Hidden Gem is almost finished. The first tests of the systems in the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean will follow later this year.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 21, 2022