Grantee Spotlight: Shining a light on the “Green Mineral Rush”

A reporting project by Northern Journal, in partnership with Inside Climate News, examined Alaska’s position in the worldwide market for metals necessary for many renewable energy sources and electric vehicle batteries. The project was supported by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism through the Impact Reporting grant program. Two pieces were published in the summer of 2025, with a third article in progress.

In the first story, “In Canada’s ‘Silicon Valley’ of mining, speculators power a hunt for Alaska’s minerals,” the publications examine ‘the previously underreported links between financiers in British Columbia and Alaskan mining companies.’ Reporter Max Graham traveled to Vancouver, B.C., for Roundup, a North American mining convention, and discussed both Alaska’s mining prospects, and the proximity of more than a dozen Alaska-staked mining companies’ offices to downtown Vancouver.

Attendees of the Roundup mining conference in Vancouver, B.C. in 2025 inspect core samples. (Courtesy Northern Journal)

The second piece, “A national quest for uranium comes to remote Western Alaska, raising fears in a nearby village,” looked at exploration for the radioactive metal near Elim, Alaska, on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. Reporting of the story in the remote village revealed additional mining interests in the area that local residents did not know about before the Northern Journal and ICN’s reporting. One Canada-based company involved in the primary prospect nearby has since pulled out of the project.

A still from video captured by reporter Max Graham, while riding a snowmachine on the Tubutulik River to gather fish near Elim, Alaska. (Courtesy Northern Journal)

ACEJ funds enabled the reporting team to travel to the community in-person, rather than reporting by phone. Elim is a small, Alaska Native village of just over 300 people. Community members gather fish from the Tubutulik River, which flows into Norton Bay, on the Bering Sea. The community is only accessible by air, or in the winter — for nearby communities and the very persistent — snowmachine (or dogsled, as it’s a checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race). The reporting visit included riding to locals’ subsistence ice fishing grounds by snowmachine, on-the-ground reporting that can’t be replicated from afar.

A community member featured in the story thanked the reporting team for making people “aware of how important our lifestyle is and how much we depend on foods out there rather than the little store we have.”

The Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism highly encourages collaboration between news outlets in reporting projects. This story was published in Northern Journal, Inside Climate News, and in the Anchorage Daily News, the state’s largest newspaper.

We’ll add a link to Part 3 of the series once it’s published.

Do you have an Alaska story or series idea that needs funding to achieve? Check out our Grants opening, through Oct. 1, 2025. We offer grants for Impact Reporting, like this series, and Arts and Culture reporting. See other examples of reporting we’ve supported on our Impact page.