Deep-sea miners are ready to get down to work

Mining in the deep is an arresting prospect. It involves robotic vacuums the size of combine harvesters lowered thousands of metres onto the abyssal plains of the Pacific ocean. They rumble along the seabed, sucking up nodules of manganese, copper, cobalt and nickel—metals whose supply is crucial to efforts to electrify the global economy. These nodules sit unattached on the seabed thanks to millions of years of accretion of metal particles in one of the stillest places on the planet. A patch of the Pacific ocean seabed called the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) holds nodules containing quantities of these metals that are roughly equivalent to all terrestrial reserves.

Collecting this metal means going through the International Seabed Authority (isa), a UN body set up in 1994. But it has been mulling mining rules for three decades. In 2024 one of two things is likely to happen: either the ISA will publish its rules, most likely at a meeting in July, or companies will decide to go ahead without it.

One firm in particular, The Metals Company (tmc), says it is ready to start. In tests, it has already gathered thousands of tons of nodules. It has had the right to file an application to mine its CCZ concession since July 2023, after the ISA failed to meet a two-year deadline to finalise its rules. If those rules are not put in place in 2024 then TMC’s hand may be forced. Without a flow of nodules, and the resulting revenues, it will run out of money.

TMC says it will submit an application to mine after the July meeting, new rules or not. Either outcome will create conflict. Environmental groups want deep-sea mining to be banned entirely, arguing that access to green metals does not justify damage to deep-sea ecosystems. But mining metals on land also causes damage, for example in the Indonesian rainforest. As it considers mining’s impact on the ocean, the ISA would do well to weigh the harms of sourcing metals on land, too.■

Hal Hodson, Special projects writer, The Economist