Clash on Dodd-Frank ‘conflict minerals’
Faith leaders and business groups are colliding over a coming SEC ruling on little-known provisions of Dodd-Frank which require companies to track the use of “conflict minerals” in their production of certain consumer products.
One section of Dodd-Frank requires businesses to track - but not halt – the use of so-called conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including a private sector audit of tracking methods. Another requires those involved in the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals to disclose payments made to governments.
“It’s terrible what we’ve allowed to go on over the last few years without the world paying more attention to it,” said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), on a conference call Wednesday with faith leaders. “As many as 7 million people have been killed… this is a mechanism by which we could cut off the flow of money to the rebels [in the Democratic Republic of the Congo]. The rebels are controlling the mines, and selling minerals on the black market.”
The SEC will soon make a decision on how to interpret the law, and certain business groups are suggesting that the sections would needlessly increase compliance costs.
“We’re concerned that industry pressure on the SEC will be so intense that they’ll water down the law and it’ll become ineffective,”said Corinna Gilfillan, the head of Global Witness, a human rights group.
Conflict minerals are found in all sorts of consumer products, and are widely used in electronics. The four main minerals mined in the Congo are tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. Tin is used in circuit boards, tantalum in electronic capacitors, tungsten to allow mobile phones to vibrate, and gold as a coating for wires.
Heavyweights like the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers have expressed concerns about the provisions.
On the other end, religious figures have stepped up to join human rights groups in urging for a full enactment of the conflict mineral provisions.
“There is broad consensus in the religious community that transparency of minerals coming from conflict regions is a vital responsibility… we’re all concerned with trying to get conflict minerals out of the system,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, on the conference call.
The faith leaders emphasized that their religions called them to treat other human beings with respect, which compelled them to support the Dodd-Frank provisions.
“What would it mean for us to be a neighbor to everybody in the supply chain used to make the clothes we wear, the computers we type on, and the cars that we drive? Our call to love is not defined by geographical proximity,” said Lisa Sharon Harper, director of mobilizing for the Christian group Sojourners. “We are all responsible for being good neighbors. It doesn’t matter if we have a good excuse… the people in the Congo are made in the image of God.”
“In the Jewish tradition, according to the Talmud, it was absolutely clear that there has to be transparency in the way that businesses went about selling their products. There were explicit prohibitions against deception, against watering down wine, against claiming something was something that it was not,” added Saperstein, also an appointee to the White House Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
By: Tim Mak
Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72002.html
Conflict-Free Minerals Reform In The Congo: What You Can Do
The Democratic Republic of the Congo: a region marked by violent conflict since 1996 in which torture, mass rape, forced displacement, and mass murder have been going on for years without much relief. It is a region in which armed groups are able to propagate the violence through the sale of the Congo’s mineral resources.
According to the Enough Project’s Raise Hope for Congo Campaign,
“Armed groups earn hundreds of millions of dollars per year by trading four main minerals: the ores that produce tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold. This money enables the militias to purchase large numbers of weapons and continue their campaign of brutal violence against civilians, with some of the worst abuses occurring in mining areas.”
Most of these “conflict minerals” are used in the production of electronic devices in a process involving supply chains marked by a disturbing lack of transparency, so that by the time products such as cell phones or laptops end up in the hands of consumers, there is no way to know whether the purchase of those products contributed to the income of armed groups in the Congo.
The goals of many concerned activists are to find a way to ensure transparency in companies’ supply chains and to pressure companies found to be using conflict minerals to discontinue purchasing those minerals. The market for conflict minerals then, ideally, would be limited in terms of profit, reducing resources available to the armed groups, and thus pushing the armed groups toward peaceful resolution of the conflict which could open the region to other reforms.
There have been arguments that the initial attempts toward conflict-free policies have actually been detrimental to the Congo, by driving companies to search for minerals elsewhere, therefore crippling the economy and reducing the income of the general population. However, the UN Group of Experts recently issued a report stating that a conflict-free resolution proves to be an “important catalyst for traceability and certification initiatives and due diligence implementation in the minerals sector regionally and internationally,” and serves to reduce “the level of conflict financing provided by these minerals” in regions that have begun to comply to the due diligence guidelines. So, it seems that passing and implementing conflict-free resolutions are the first steps toward true reform and peace in the Congo.
Why not focus the fight for conflict-free reform on college campuses, which house a “particularly coveted demographic of electronics companies,” namely, students?
The Enough Project’s Raise Hope for Congo Campaign and STAND, a Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, have created the Conflict-Free Campus Initiative, a “nation-wide campaign to build the consumer voice for conflict-free electronics, such as cell phones, laptops, and other devices that will not finance war in eastern Congo.” By focusing on college campuses, the initiative “draws on the power of student leadership and activism to encourage university officials and stakeholders, both of whom are large purchasers of electronics and powerful spokespersons, to commit to measures that pressure electronics companies to take responsibility for the minerals in their supply chains.”
Organizing the student voice at the university level not only expresses the collective desire of individuals to ensure that they and their university do not participate in the perpetuation of the conflict in the Congo, but it also sends a powerful message to both political and corporate entities that consumers care about policies of those entities that may support the conflict. The Conflict-Free Campus Initiative explains:
“Universities are also a large client for most electronics companies and represent a large section of the buyers’ market for consumer electronics. By raising our collective voice as consumers, we can actually bring about a shift in corporate and government policy and help bring peace to Congo.”
Eight universities have issued conflict-free resolutions, including Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke University; more than sixty other colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada have begun campaigns to do the same (including Yale University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Brown University, UC Davis, UCLA, UCSB, UCSC, Notre Dame, and Georgetown University).
The activism geared toward passing these conflict-free initiatives on college campuses has been successful in inspiring activity at the government level. California passed a bill prohibiting “state agencies from signing contracts with companies that fail to comply with federal regulations aimed at deterring business with armed groups in eastern Congo,” the first state bill to be passed regarding conflict minerals. Massachusetts is now also considering a conflict-free bill. Two cities, Pittsburgh, PA and St. Petersburg, FL, have also passed conflict-free resolutions.
If enough colleges, universities, towns, cities and states take the initiative in decisively acting to prevent the perpetuation of the conflict in the Congo by taking steps toward becoming conflict-free, perhaps the income of the armed groups committing mass rape and murder will be decreased sufficiently to prompt the beginnings of an end to the conflict.
Once the fighting ends, addressing the root causes of the conflict – including ethnic tensions – can be addressed through effective institutional reforms. But the fighting has to end before that can happen, and the fighting cannot end unless the actors in the conflict cannot afford to fight.
By: Cara Palmer
Source: http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/01/conflict-free-minerals-congo-reform
Buy Gold and Store Offshore
It is a new year and we can breathe a sigh of relief or can we? 2011 was a very rough year for the world as a whole. Governments are tightening the nooses on their citizens. People are feeling like their money is not buying them as much as it used to. Wages are stagnant for most of the working class. Many people who were once considered middle class who gave to help the poor are now in the position of asking for assistance.
What is happening to the world as we know it? The European Union is struggling to stay together. The USA is turning into a police state. The Middle East and North Africa is destabilized. Asia is struggling with natural disasters and a weakening China. Central and South America are emerging as commodity power houses. Russia seems to be reawakening. All this and we have more rumors of war. What can we do?
In times of uncertainty Gold has always been the money of choice. Gold offers you many benefits.
- Retaining Purchasing Power when governments print their fiat currency. Gold always retains a value to protect the holder. For Americans Gold has proven to consistently protect against Dollar weakness. Governments will try to hide the devaluation of their currencies.
- Diversification is key, have a portion of your portfolio in a hard asset such as Gold Bullion. I do not recommend all of your assets be tied to the US stock market. So this means if you buy Gold make sure to buy bullion, 100% allocated.
- As a Safe Haven, Gold is the asset that is considered safe. In volatile and uncertain times do you want your money exposed to a volatile stock market?
Alan Greenspan (Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve) once said,
“An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense that gold and economic freedom are inseparable”.
Gold has risen for 11 years straight. Some speculate that Gold is in a bubble similar to the early 1980’s. One thing that I see that is much different today than 30 years ago is the size of the market today. In 1980 the Gold bubble was primarily a Western phenomena. Today we see people from all nations participating. The Chinese have Gold fever, as well as the Indians, Russians, Arabian nations etc. Everyone can sense that it is time to put their money in a hard asset until the storm clouds pass.
How do we store the Gold that we purchase? Most people who start out with Gold ownership buy a few coins and store them at home or in a safety deposit box. The only reservation I have concerning this is the uncertainty of government. In the USA there is already a precedent set that the government can ask its citizens to turn in their Gold. This happened under President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Confiscation of the peoples Gold recently happened in South Korea and Thailand during the Asian financial crisis of 1998.
The other option outside of paper assets is to buy physical Gold Bullion and have it stored offshore in a safe secure facility. What are some benefits to offshore storage?
- Asset Protection
- Privacy
- Security
One program that can give a person of peace of mind is offered by Swiss Metal Assets. The benefits of partnering with Swiss Metal Assets include.
- Your Gold is stored safely and securely in the Zurcher Freilager in Switzerland.
- 100% insured by AXA Insurance.
- Your Gold will never be leased by bullion banks unlike many ETF’s
- The vaults are audited regularly by Swiss customs.
- Rapid liquidity of your metals
- Individual Retirement Account (IRA) eligible
This spring Swiss Metal Assets is opening another storage facility in Panama. This state of the art facility will be located in the Panama Pacifico Free Zone. This Free Zone is the old Howard Air Force base. This facility will have the benefits of an airfield to bring your holdings securely into the country.
Gold gives a person peace of mind like very few assets can. Let us hope that 2012 will be a safe and prosperous year for all of us.
By: Randy Hilarski - The Rare Metals Guy
Supply Threats Persist For Thin-Film Solar Materials Due To Competition
One year ago, a report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on the global supply of essential PV module materials predicted possible disruptions for thin-film manufacturing.
The availability of indium, gallium and tellurium was examined in the context of current and future production needs, and the DOE found cause for concern. Indium and tellurium were pegged as especially vulnerable to supply tightness and price volatility, according to both the report and several market analysts at the time.
Now, the DOE has released the latest edition of its Critical Materials Strategy. Have the worries over thin-film PV materials supply eased? According to the DOE, the general supply-demand picture for indium, gallium and tellurium has “improved slightly,” but the situation is not entirely reassuring. The three metals are still highlighted (alongside neodymium and dysprosium) as clean-energy materials that face a “significant risk of supply chain bottlenecks in the next two decades.”
The report attributes the slight improvement primarily to decreased demand for the three thin-film materials: Although PV deployment is expected to grow, the requirements of the materials per module are expected to shrink.
For copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) modules, manufacturers are shifting to compositions with higher proportions of gallium and lower concentrations of indium, the DOE says. The result is a “partial trade-off in the potential for supply risk between the two elements.” At the same time, CIGS’ market share assumption has been reduced under the DOE’s new calculations, lowering projected demand for both indium and gallium.
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film modules currently account for approximately 10% of the PV market, according to the report. Declining silicon prices may threaten this slice of the market, but high tellurium costs and the increasing need for CdTe manufacturers to compete for supply with non-PV companies requiring tellurium continue to cause supply headaches.
“The cost of tellurium is a critical issue for CdTe solar cell makers, and the industry is working to lower material use and increasing recovery of new scrap to reduce reliance on primary tellurium,” the DOE says in the report.
Although short-term supply of tellurium appears adequate, future capacity increases may be insufficient to supply both CdTe manufacturing and the multitude of other manufacturing sectors that use tellurium. Under one scenario modeled in the report, tellurium supply would need to increase 50% more than its projected 2015 total in order to meet expected demand.
Indium and gallium have also experienced increased popularity in non-PV manufacturing uses, such as semiconductor applications, flat-panel displays, and coatings for smartphones and tablet computers. The DOE forecasts that as a result, supplies may run short by 2015 unless production of these materials is increased - or non-PV demand lessens.
Of the two metals, gallium poses more cause for concern, as the DOE has adjusted its assumptions of future gallium use under CIGS manufacturers’ expected manufacturing modifications.
“These higher estimates [of gallium requirements] are driven largely by the assumption that gallium will increasingly be substituted for indium in CIGS composition,” the DOE explains. This change points to the benefits of reducing material intensity in other aspects of PV manufacturing, such as reducing cell thickness and improving processing efficiency.
Overall, indium, gallium and tellurium all receive moderate scores (2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 4) from the DOE with regard to both their importance to clean energy and short- and medium-term supply risk.
In order to help mitigate possible supply disruptions that could threaten the manufacturing and deployment of PV, as well as other types of clean energy, the agency has developed a three-pronged approach.
“First, diversified global supply chains are essential,” the DOE stresses in the report. “To manage supply risk, multiple sources of materials are required. This means taking steps to facilitate extraction, processing and manufacturing here in the United States, as well as encouraging other nations to expedite alternative supplies.”
The second strategy relies on developing alternatives to materials whose supply may be constrained. For PV, one DOE research program focuses on advancements in thin-film formulations such as copper-zinc-tin and sulfide-selenide. Another initiative funds research and development into PV inks based on earth-abundant materials such as zinc, sulfur and copper.
“Several projects also seek to use iron pyrite - also known as fool’s gold - to develop prototype solar cells,” the DOE notes in the report. “Pyrite is non-toxic, inexpensive, and is the most abundant sulfide mineral in the Earth’s crust.”
Finally, improving recycling and reuse mechanisms can reduce demand for new materials, the DOE says, adding that these strategies also can help improve the sustainability of manufacturing processes.
By: SI Staff
Source: http://www.aer-online.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.9408
Photo: Enbridge Inc.’s 5 MW Tilbury solar project in Ontario uses First Solar’s cadmium telluride thin-film modules. Photo credit: Enbridge
Cracking Down on Conflict Minerals
In the jungles and mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, battles are raging, part of a 13-year-long civil war. Most of the world has paid little attention to the murder and rape that still dominates life in the DRC’s eastern provinces. But U.S. electronics companies like HP, Intel, and Apple recently became deeply interested, thanks to a provision on “conflict minerals” that was slipped into a 2010 financial reform law, the Dodd-Frank Act.
The minerals provision is intended to deprive the Congo’s warlords of funds by cutting off sales from the mines they control. It focuses on the ores that produce the “three Ts”: tin, tantalum, and tungsten, as well as gold. Public companies that use these metals in their products will be required to investigate their supply chains, determine if they use metals that were mined in the DRC, and disclose their findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in their annual reports, and on their websites. If its minerals did originate in the DRC, a company must submit a larger report on whether the purchase of these minerals financed or benefited armed groups in that part of Africa. The SEC is expected to issue final rules for implementing the law before the end of the year, and companies are scrambling to get ready.
While the conflict minerals law applies only to companies that are required to file annual reports in the United States, it’s expected to have an international impact. Since mineral suppliers sell to electronics companies around the world, any change in operations they make for the U.S. market will have ripple effects elsewhere.
The law doesn’t only affect the electronics industry. But the conflict mineral issue has been linked in the public mind to electronics because the three Ts play crucial roles in smartphones, TVs, and laptops. Tin is used in solder and thus found on every circuit board, tantalum is used in capacitors, and tungsten is used in the vibrating motors of many phones.
Electronics companies had been warned that they’d eventually have to account for their use of these minerals. So firms like HP and Intel asked the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, two trade groups, to investigate the industry’s options.
The groups found that it’s extremely difficult to determine the origin of the tantalum used in a certain batch of smartphones. But they also realized that only about 45 smelters worldwide deal with the three Ts, buying the ores from suppliers and turning them into pure metals. After several years of research, the industry groups came up with the Conflict-Free Smelter Program, which is currently in the pilot phase for its first metal, tantalum.
The program asks each smelter to allow an annual independent audit of its mineral procurement process. If the auditors are convinced that no minerals are sourced from the Congo’s conflict mines, that smelter is certified as “conflict free,” allowing companies to buy its metals without worry. While the program is voluntary, EICC spokeswoman Wendy Dittmer says many smelting firms believe it’s in their interest to participate.
“Electronics companies are starting to ask questions all the way down their supply chains,” she says. “That certainly makes the buyers of the minerals very interested in being able to talk about their own due diligence.”
There are concerns that the law may backfire. By making the reporting requirements more onerous for companies that source minerals from the DRC, the law may reduce demand from all DRC mines, even those that aren’t in conflict regions and don’t finance armed groups.
These concerns about such a de facto ban led Motorola Solutions to initiate the Solutions for Hope Project, in which Motorola and several other companies formed a relationship with a conflict-free tantalum mine in the DRC’s Katanga province.
To establish the program, Michael Loch, Motorola’s director of supply-chain corporate responsibility, visited the mine and accompanied a shipment of ore along its export route. “This pilot allows our industry to stay engaged in the area,” says Loch. “We didn’t want to abandon the region.” But he acknowledges that it took a lot of effort to get the process in place for one mine and says it may be difficult to scale up the program.
The pilot programs should provide a framework to make compliance easier. Still, companies around the world are waiting for the SEC’s final rules with some anxiety. And there may be some efforts to block the rules’ enforcement through U.S. courts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for one, has discussed the possibility of a lawsuit. The chamber disagrees with the SEC’s initial compliance cost estimate of US $71 million, saying that costs will instead be counted in the billions of dollars.
One thing is already certain about the SEC rules: There will be no fines for using conflict minerals. Even so, activists think it will have its intended effect, because companies will want to avoid bad publicity.
“For years we have been unknowing consumers of these minerals because companies have turned a blind eye,” says Sasha Lezhnev, a policy consultant on conflict minerals with the human rights group Enough. “This will enable consumers to make choices on whether or not to buy products from companies that are sourcing from these mines.”
By: ELIZA STRICKLAND
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/materials/cracking-down-on-conflict-minerals