For the first time, a company is asking to comb the depths in search of minerals needed for the energy transition
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Gerard Barron in San Diego, California, June 2021. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times.Getty Images)
The devastation of the deep has never been so imminent. Taking advantage of the door opened by Donald Trump, the Canadian company The Metals Company (TMC) announced on Tuesday, April 29, that it had filed an application for a mining permit in international waters, despite the fight of ocean defenders to prevent this new industry.
The request, filed with the American authorities by the subsidiary TMC USA, concerns plots totaling more than 25,000 km² in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the North Pacific. The company wants to collect "polymetallic nodules" from the deep seabed, potato-sized pebbles rich in strategic minerals for the energy transition, such as nickel used to make batteries or
Libération
