U.S.-Japan Conference: Securing Critical Resources in a New Green and Industrial Era

Wednesday, November 30, 2016
8:45 AM - 3:45 PM
(Pacific)

Image
Click here to register

For more information contact Mr. Brian Graf

Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, 202-296-6694, bgraf@spfusa.org

This event is free and open to the public.

Innovative new technologies, from components like batteries to systems such as airplanes, demand the specific properties of a growing number of rare metals used in complex combinations and in increasingly refined amounts. Technology now relies on an entirely new set of critical materials, namely rare metals, for products manufactured today that are very different from those produced just twenty years ago.

While the world is not running out of rare metals, developing new supply lines can take a decade or more. Advanced economies are approaching a point where the speed of development and number of new devices will outpace the ability to secure the materials this new industrial age requires. As new devices proliferate, advanced countries like the United States and Japan are linking their economic futures to rare metals, with production often dominated by one mine or one country.

On November 30, Sasakawa USA will partner with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Cetner at Stanford University to hold a conference to discuss and lay out the challenges, opportunities, and limitations of creating resilient supplies of critical materials. This will be the first conference to bring together companies from the entire the rare metal supply chain, including experts and officials from both Japan and the United States, countries that both rely on the entire spectrum of these resources for manufacturing. 

 

Image