In this episode of Minerals Matter, Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, former U.S. Deputy Director for Batteries and Critical Materials, sits down with Pascale Massot, Co-Founder of APF Canada's Canada-Indo-Pacific Critical Minerals Hub and an Associate Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, to discuss the United States’ critical minerals strategy and its mining project investment landscape.
Ashley, a petroleum engineer with 14 years of experience in natural resources projects, details the financing side of critical minerals innovation, exploring why critical minerals projects outside China so often fail to pencil out and what it would take to build supply chains that private capital will finance without a government standing behind every deal.
Now a Principal at Smoketree Resources, a critical minerals-focused family office based in Austin, Texas, and a Non-Resident Fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, Ashley also draws on her expertise to explain how a lack of vertical integration in the West and unique demand-side industry incentives are impacting critical minerals supply. Finally, she underscores the need for a multi-nation co-ordinated approach to rare-earth supply chains, such as through proposed allied reference pricing for non-adversarial material.
