In Real Clear Energy

Are Clean Energy Ambitions Unavoidably Linked to the Middle East and Africa?

To witness a key feature of how the Biden Administration intends to implement the goals of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) we need to look to Riyadh, not Washington D.C. Agreements signed at the Saudi Future Minerals Forum in January reveal a deeply complex, almost neo-colonial path for achieving the IRA’s green energy transition goals.

A central feature of the IRA as originally promoted—a feature reportedly critical to Senator Manchin’s decision to cast a bill-passing vote––was to stimulate domestic industries to supply critical “energy minerals” needed to build green hardware, from batteries for EVs to solar modules. What we’re seeing instead, however, is a creative repurposing of the IRA’s language, and funds, to source critical minerals from Africa, backed by Saudis and refined for export in Morocco.