Welcome to Energy Evolution, where we explore the forces transforming how we power fuel and electrify our future. I'm your host, Ekala Vya Guppe and in this episode we're taking you on a journey to one of the most remote yet strategically crucial places on our planet, Greenland, the world's largest island that has suddenly found itself thrust into the global spotlight. Now, when you think about energy, resources and critical minerals, Greenland might not be the first place that comes to mind. After all, 80% of this vast territory remains locked under ice. But what lies beneath could be one of the most significant mineral treasure troves on Earth. We're talking about 24 of the 34 critical raw materials on the EU's priority list, rare Earth elements that rival US reserves, deposits of graphite copper, nickel and other rare Earth minerals that are absolutely essential for everything from the wind turbines powering our energy future to the sophisticated military technologies. Greenland has now become this unexpected focal point in what's essentially a new grade game for resource security. Add to that, President Trump's recent declarations about American control over the territory, and you've got a story that's part geology, part geopolitics, and entirely fascinating. Now, Greenland's energy riches may extend well beyond its mineral deposits. Scientists estimate that territory sits atop enormous offshore oil and gas reserves, a prospect that has lowered energy companies to its icy waters since the 1970s. Yet, despite decades of exploration and significant investment, these Arctic drilling campaigns haven't quite delivered. Another sober reminder of just how challenging it can be to unlock the Earth's most remote energy resources. But it's not just about the minerals on the ground, it's the extraordinary challenges of actually getting them out. We're talking about building infrastructure in one of Earth's harshest environments, navigating complex international relationships. Now, to help us unpack this incredibly complex story, we are lucky to be joined by three experts who sort of bring a unique perspective to Greenland. First, we're joined by Kip Keen, a senior reporter at S&P Global Energy, who has been following developments around Greenland's mineral sector. Kip walks us through the investment realities, both the opportunities and the sobering challenges that many companies that are brave enough to operate in Greenland face. Kip, welcome to the Energy Evolution podcast. Great to have you here. Yeah, nice to join you, Claudia. Thanks for having me. I mean, I think a lot of this comes down to certainly the national security aspect. That's what the Trump administration has been signaling. Trump has said multiple times I want to own Greenland, and that is important for national security. But another part of it, as you mentioned, is the minerals and the hydrocarbons, the natural resources that Greenland does have. Trump has, as recently as January 21st said, when they're dealing with NATO that they're working on in terms of figuring out their issues over Greenland, that minerals were part of it, that national security and minerals are part of that agreement. And it's really at least a dual focus in terms of what's in play. Maybe can you give us a little bit of info on really what are some of these mineral resources and where are we at? The first thing to remark about Greenland is that 80% of it is covered in ice. But that said about 20% of the island is ice free. So the glaciers are melting because the climate changed. And that means that new rounds of being exposed. That's exciting for explorers, perhaps not for the climate, but certainly exciting from the point of view of discovery. Greenland is known to hold some pretty strong reserves of rare earth. It almost has as much land penides a series of rare earth that has almost as much as the US. But there's a big caveat here. Greenland not only is it covered a ton of ice, but most of it has to be accessed by air or by water. It doesn't have roads. It doesn't have typical supply chains. It's extremely cold. It doesn't have a mature mining sector. So that makes trying to develop any of those known resources. Very difficult, far more expensive than say in a more mature jurisdiction. And then secondly, a lot of sources have told us industry participants and experts that at least in terms of the rare earth resources. They're bound up in a silicate mineral that makes them pretty difficult to extract. Some would go so far as to say that would require novel ways of extracting it. It's certainly more perhaps more expensive, unproven technology, unproven flow sheets. So while the rare earths are there, it's still an open question is whether or not they can easily be extracted, at least in some of the deposits that are there. That said, the US has moved forward to try to get some of those out of the ground, I think last year, the XM bank, which is a state back bank in the US signed a $120 million letter of interest to get one rare earth project potentially moving forward. So there are tons of interest, but there's also a ton of skepticism about whether or not some of the deposits can ever be moved forward. And just to put it in perspective, like on the money side, in terms of exploration budgets last year or this year, the exploration budgets are estimated in Greenland. This is a measure of how much money smaller companies, bigger companies are putting into exploration for minerals, specifically non-ferrous minerals in Greenland. The amount spent was $14.1 million. That compares to 12.4 billion globally, and star behind number one, two, and three, which is Canada, Australia, the US. Thank you for giving some numbers there and also sort of show some of the, you know, the disconnect maybe between the potential and the reality currently on the ground. But one follow up question was there are some companies currently active there if you could give some color on which are some of these companies that are involved. Yeah, I have spoken to some of the operators in Greenland, and certainly one of the things that they point out is it's in some ways nice to have Greenland in the headlines because it quits its mineral potential in the spotlight and that generates interest. And a lot of the exploration sector, not all of it, but much of it is funded by venture capital is their non-cash producing companies they rely on basically start up funding to get that exploration. But yeah, there are some bigger and smaller companies, the whole range. There's even cobald cobald is one of the companies that's backed by some big names like Bill Gates. The major mining companies have on and off done exploration in Greenland, and there's a handful of advanced staged junior exploration companies moving forward known projects that have existing resources. So one of those would be critical metals core, which has the 10 breeze a rare earth deposit. So there's no question that there's lots of interest, lots of companies operating there. I think that just the message both from the mining sector in Greenland, which is very small. And the exploration sector is that everything is very early stage things we're going to take many years to develop in terms of new minds. And that's remember that, you know, whether when you find a deposit that take can take years to flush it out to a full reserve and then it can take many years to go through permitting and it also can take many years to find the funding or the backers to build your mind, you know, these things don't happen for night. But have there been any big developments there or more interest leading up to what we're seeing now. I think that interest in Greenland has been fairly consistent. There's dozens and dozens of prospects, zinc, base metals, the rare earths and also the whole hydrocarbon industry. But it's difficult to say if this is going to derive a ton more money into the sector. The exploration and mining is very competitive, keeping in mind last I checked, I think there are only two small mines operating in Greenland on a north to site mine, which is an industrial mineral and relatively small gold mine. So the industry truly is in its infancy there. And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Everything you do in Greenland is going to be more expensive. So whatever kind of deposit you find there is going to have to make it worthwhile to make up for that expense. Thank you. And I wanted to ask you from a business perspective. So, you know, the companies that are presently in Greenland or are thinking about looking at Greenland. What's the opportunity there from a sort of fiscal point of view is the ministry or is Greenland giving quite a few incentives for companies to invest? Yeah, I think certainly the fact that you do have a number of public-evisted companies operating in Greenland and Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, strong rule of law, good property rights. So those are kind of like simple important things for mining companies and exploration companies. So it has that going for it. Certainly.
The companies that I have spoken with say that it is entirely possible to permit and get a mine up and running in Greenland. That said, it's like anywhere in the world. It's not necessarily a slam dunk. There have been some opposition to some mines in Greenland, and this is nothing unique to Greenland, but certainly there are areas and communities that don't necessarily want mining in their backyard. Greenland has rejected the permitting for at least one mine that I'm aware of, a rare earth mine that had some radioactive material tied to some of the mineralization, and they later banned uranium mining. So you have to proceed with caution like anywhere in the world, I think. But I would say the companies that I've spoken with have said it's a good place to operate, and there's a lot of potential to expand there. That's what I've heard. Okay, great. Is there any bits that I've missed out on or any other things that you would like to add that adds even more color and also shows why Greenland is important not only from a geopolitical point of view, but also from a resource perspective? Yeah, I think it goes back to what we started out talking about. There's no question that Greenland is a really interesting place to explore, and people are excited about its mineral potential, and there's no question that mineral potential exists, they're fresh, ground open. But when I talk to people about rare earths, for example, because those have certainly been in the headline, or certainly tied to Greenland in particular, most of the industry participants or experts that I've spoken with say it's interesting to have those resources, but those are not going to be the next resources or the important or significant resources to be developed. It will be the rarest deposits in Brazil or other places where it will be much easier to develop those more cheaply. And so they would say if the US really wants to secure from a critical mineral supply chain point of view, it's really a matter of them working with countries like Brazil and so forth in which they are. And that Greenland is this gem that will be super critical to US critical mineral supply chains. But that said, I think at the same time, and you've got the question over national security and geopolitics, many experts would agree that it's an increasingly important area, the Arctic in general in terms of national security. So from that point of view, many highs are pointed to the Arctic, not just the US. Thank you, Kip. That's fascinating. And you know, it'll be interesting to see how this story develops. Now we have something really special. We have an exclusive interview with Jorgine T. Hammocken Hohm, who serves as permanent secretary and deputy minister at Greenland's Ministry of Business Mineral Resources and Energy. Senior editor from S&P Global Energy, you and Sadden spoke to Jorgine, let's go straight to that conversation. Jorgine, thank you for joining the Energy Evolution podcast today. Yeah, first of all, we really wanted to try and understand how the current controversy involved in the US is affecting the investment climate within Greenland, particularly around sort of natural resources. Well, that's not very easy to answer because we haven't heard that much from the investors directly. Also because that the investment market in Mineral is something that takes time and it's not something that you just cut off and put on. So it's very difficult to say we haven't had a situation where the licensees are running away. They still here but we have some feedbacks that are concerned about the taxes and what Trump eventually can do in relation to importing stuff at United States. But in other sectors here in Greenland, we actually have some feedbacks that people are waiting. They put the legs on the feet on the brakes and just wait to see if this is going over for a short time. But they're just looking and trying to evaluate what is going on but not running away. Yep, yes. And I know that Greenland has quite a large number of junior mining projects and mining properties at various stages of development right now. Could you just clarify the government's approach to foreign investment in its natural resources? Well, we certainly depended on foreign investment in this sector because it's a very special sector and it is not normal that something that a government does or if they do, then they have a lot of money and a big pocket but we don't. But we know that we have some potentials and the only way that we can benefit from that is to try to attract foreign investment. And that is we have done that for many years and there's no barriers or we're not saying no to anybody. Everybody is welcome and we have done a lot of effort to try to attract foreign investment and every year we are touring around the world to try to attract foreign investment. And can you just elaborate on an in your adjustment to the regulatory framework that government mining activities in Greenland? And how these are going to support investment with the mining energy sectors in the future? Yeah, even though that we don't have that many activities, we have two mines in place. They are small but we have a very modern framework around the acts and the regulations. So we don't think that is the struggle here to move on and if anybody wants to invest in Greenland. You're going to just want to clarify that there are no major restrictions on US investment in Greenland at this point. No, not at all. Country, we have the drive to attract US investment for many years also in cooperation with the government. So they have absolutely not been any restrictions or anything else in that direction. And the other thing I wanted to ask we it's kind of related to the independence movement. I mean, what is Greenland's long-term vision for its mineral and energy resources and how does this align with its border goals of governance and independence? The mining sector is one of the pillows in the government's strategy of trying to have a decent income and a decent welfare system as we have today. We know that this area is slow but this is what we have. We see a potential and we are trying to develop it as good and as fast as possible but it is very slow and it's very costly. But there are other areas in comparison with the minerals and that is for example tourism that is under a very big development here in Greenland and we also have the fishery. But we're trying to use what we have to create income and that is the first step for being at least economically independent. And you know, I just wanted to ask you as well. We hear that Greenland's a very harsh environment, very high capital cost for companies coming into the start projects. Could you just describe some of the constraints in terms of environment and the sort of challenges for setting up projects? What's needed to get these sort of projects off the ground? Almost everything. Normally when you have a trying to build a mind it's in the middle of nowhere and you have to build everything on site. You have to build a runway, you have to build houses and all the stuff like a mini city. It doesn't concern me that much because it is doable. We do see other places for example in Alaska and Canada. Same issue, same environment and there you have very big minds in place and that is doable. So you need to have another planning of course like on the logistic side of it but it is absolutely doable. It also concerns on of course you cannot do this on a mining situation where the surplus is not that good. You of course need to have a decent good world class deposit in place to run these sites so far away. And we do also think that we have the possibility to have the big mining sites in place. For example we have South of Greenland, we have the two biggest deposit of rare minerals so there are some good possibilities. I wanted to ask as well around permitting. Is there anything new from the government in recent months around accelerating that process around mine permitting or any changes to the existing regulations? Two years ago we made a new act, a mineral act trying to accelerate the process and actually the government have made three new exploitation licenses. We're stating that you can have an exploitation license within a year so we are actually very fast compared to other countries and especially if you compare to Scandinavia or Europe. Jürgen thank you thank you very much for your time it's been a very informative. And finally to help us understand the broader strategic implications of all of this, you will also spoke with Nicholas Joan, a defense and security analyst at Rand which is an American nonprofit global policy think tank. Nicholas tells us why this sparsely populated Arctic territory has become such a strategic focal point in what many are calling a new era of great power competition. Nicholas welcome to the Energy Evolution podcast. Could you please provide a brief overview of the Greenlands Historical significance to the US and its international partners? Yes of course so the main thing to say is that Greenland matters despite the
fact that it's an island a bit far away from everything that we're not so used to hear from. It actually matters a lot. And it matters since, well, for the whole modern history period since World War II, when the US took responsibility for the defense of Greenlands in 1941, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, obviously. So since this time, the US has been involved in Greenlands security, because this definitely is a strategic waypoint for the North Atlantic, basically, for air and sea routes. I want to come back to something very simple with which is geography. You take a map and you realize immediately what it means, especially if you take a map from the top of our planet, right? Instead of the usual mecha tour, you look from the North and you quickly realize that the Arctic is basically an ocean that is surrounded by Eurasia, North America, all the big powers, basically, that are like structuring the geopolitical environment nowadays. And it is on the Greenland is quite literally on the way between Russia, Europe, Western Europe, and North America, the US and Canada. So from a NATO perspective, from a security architecture in the North Atlantic perspective, it's is really an important piece of territory. And so obviously, historical significance to the US then during the Cold War. I mean, it's very straightforward, right? It was like a way for the US to monitor the airspace, because any attack from the Soviet Union would have gone through this airspace. So obviously, you wanted a way to monitor it. This is why from 1951 and the agreement on the defense of Greenland between the US and Denmark, there was an agreement for the US to have permanent bases there and installation. And obviously, the defense of Greenland is handled with Denmark, the Soviet Authority there, but in close cooperation with the US. We do hear talk about Greenland's economic importance as well. Could you take into some of those economic factors for us as well? There is definitely an economic and resources aspect to Greenland that is more like a prospective one, I would say, because in actual terms, if you look at the figures, like the GDP of Greenland and like the economic output of it is really small right now, so it's not like we're speaking of like an asset to be seized and that would bring immediately lots of wealth. We're speaking more of the perspective over time to get access to a lot of natural resources, because we know that the territory of Greenland is extremely rich in rare earth minerals, is rich in uranium, lots of critical materials that are just central to modern technologies, and industry manufacturing, not least for defense, but many other advanced manufacturing and technology and innovation parts of the industry. Something to mention as well is that it's rich in fish stocks, and Greenland is such a huge island and it's extremely economic zone in the Arctic, it's quite expensive. It's not nothing because it feeds quite a large part of the world population, obviously, and with the plating resources elsewhere in the world, it's not something we should totally ignore. And of course, probably the last big one are shipping lanes. So again, it's prospective, it's in the future because for now there are not that many activities, but we speak a lot about the perspective of using the northern searuts at the northwest passage to reduce time, the time the tanker's take to go from East Asia to Europe or North America. And so it will reduce it by weeks basically. It's still quite difficult despite the fact that obviously climate change and global warming have are making the Arctic more accessible. It's still quite difficult to navigate over there, costly, like a lot not watching infrastructures. However, we think that long-term, if we follow this trend, there is a possibility of using those shipping lanes more. And Greenland again, geography, Greenland is literally the middle of it, is this huge landmass that is at the arrival point of those shipping lanes. And you would imagine that whoever controls it, whoever has the ability to monitor, to patrol those waters, would be well positioned to benefit from shipping activities over there. So yeah, military economy, I think those things intertwine and probably where they intertwine the most and where it's probably the most evident to understand what's happening currently in terms of geopolitical tension is it's quite clear that there is the need to occupy the space in order for others to not. And there is this kind of fear that well, if we don't move there, others will. However, it seems to be such a strategy asset for the long-term future, the control of natural resources, shipping lanes, that is definitely motivating factor. That's why we put it. We've heard from Donald Trump a bit about how Greenland is at under threat from Russia and China. Could you give us an idea whether this is true? Has there been ever time a big presence or investment from China and Russia in recent years? So not so much from Russia. China has tried and to be fair, to be clear, in total legality and transparency, to invest to develop projects in Greenland and it often got derailed by high cost, not being very economically viable for now. And again, to be fair, not only China was getting this wall, American companies as well have looked at drilling oil, you know, and that such kind of project and it was always conceiving the price of the barrel, not interesting because too difficult to costly. A severe lack of infrastructures, the upfront cost of making those operations viable would be enormous and at the very moment, it would probably not be very economic irrational to do this. Nicholas, we've just come out of a fairly tumultuous week at Davos. I think we started with the US administration saying all cards were on the table with respect to Greenland and we've come out with a what we're being told by Donald Trump as an agreement around a framework. Based on what you've observed, I mean, how do you feel this issue is going to develop going forward? So the way it is portrayed and framed is definitely more the strategic military side than on the economic side. I would say first of all, and this is how European countries then then mark first and it's European Union partners. And so it's on those terms that the US wants to be sure that Greenland is defended and integrated in the security architecture of the North Atlantic. And I think there is a push to keep that within the framework of NATO and of cooperation, meaning that what we have seen was a huge push from the US to bring that front and center now. And what we have seen is that, well, European countries pushing to work within the existing framework, but potentially committing much more. And when I say existing framework, I'm speaking obviously of NATO, but also the 1951 agreements that is by the way quite open in terms of what the United States could do in Greenland. So it's a nice framework to work with because you can actually give quite a lot and you remain within the existing framework. The only constraint of this 1951 agreement is that it needs to be whatever is decided needs to be decided in coordination, cooperation in agreement with Denmark and within the framework of NATO obviously. So the partners are going to have to discuss and decide how to make it acceptable, let's say, for everyone. It's easy to bring back the economic and natural resources argument to this, but I want to insist on the fact that we're speaking of things that would take years, if not decades, to be convivable. I do think that the current conversations are far more structured by the military at the strategic aspect. Nicholas, thank you very much for your time today. Now, as these conversations reveal, Greenland really embodies all the complexities and contradictions of our current moment. Here's the statutory blessed with extraordinary mineral resources, but constrained by some of the most challenging geography and climate conditions on the planet. And you have global superpowers, eyeing its strategic value and mineral riches. And this is what strikes me most about this story is how it captures the broader tensions we're seeing everywhere in the energy markets. So that's all for this episode. We hope you found it useful and thank you all for listening. Now, I'd like to give a quick shout out to the Energy Evolution Podcast team, including Dan Tester, Andrew Englum, Camilla Nashert, and Karen Willenbrecht. And a big thank you to our agency partner, the 199 and the S&P Global Energy Digital Content team. Also, please don't forget to subscribe to Energy Evolution on your favourite podcast platform. And if you have any ideas for future podcasts or topics or guests, please email us at
[email protected]. Until next time, thank you for listening.
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