{"id":208930,"date":"2025-03-17T12:30:01","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T17:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/8-4-billion-enormous-cache-of-rare-earth-elements-discovered-in-america"},"modified":"2025-03-17T12:30:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T17:30:01","slug":"8-4-billion-enormous-cache-of-rare-earth-elements-discovered-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/8-4-billion-enormous-cache-of-rare-earth-elements-discovered-in-america","title":{"rendered":"$8.4 Billion: Enormous Cache of Rare Earth Elements Discovered in America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/8-4-billion-enormous-cache-of-rare-earth-elements-discovered-in-america.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Coal ash in the U.S. holds substantial rare earth elements, potentially reducing dependence on imports, with ongoing research and pilot projects working to make extraction economically viable.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Coal ash, the powdery residue left after burning coal for fuel, has accumulated across the United States for decades. New research from the <a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/tag\/university-of-texas-at-austin\/\">University of Texas at Austin<\/a> reveals that this vast supply contains enough rare earth elements to significantly strengthen the nation\u2019s reserves without the need for additional mining.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis really exemplifies the \u2018trash to treasure\u2019 mantra,\u201d said co-lead author Bridget Scanlon, a research professor at UT\u2019s Bureau of Economic Geology at the Jackson School of Geosciences. \u201cWe\u2019re basically trying to close the cycle and use waste and recover resources in the waste, while at the same time reducing environmental impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coal ash in the U.S. holds substantial rare earth elements, potentially reducing dependence on imports, with ongoing research and pilot projects working to make extraction economically viable. Coal ash, the powdery residue left after burning coal for fuel, has accumulated across the United States for decades. New research from the University of Texas at Austin [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}