Electric car batteries. iPhones. Wiring for electricity-intensive data centers. Ammunition for U.S. military campaigns. Minerals like cobalt, copper, gold and antimony are key ingredients for products like these, for which demand is ever-growing.
And Idaho is feeling the effects. The state has seen a “massive influx” of mining projects, said Cally Younger, the administrator of the newly consolidated state Office of Species, Minerals, and Energy Coordination, at an Idaho Energy Freedom event in May. She didn’t respond to questions from the Idaho Statesman, but Shannon Chollett, a division administrator with the Idaho Department of Lands, confirmed that the state has seen an uptick in both exploration of what minerals are in the ground, and in actual mining to remove them.
Between 2023 and 2025, his department has approved nearly 30% more reclamation plans, he said, which mining companies must submit to the state before they can begin extracting minerals. These plans share the companies’ approach to rehabilitating the land after their project is complete.
The state has also seen an increase in applications for permits for exploratory drilling over the last decade. Historically, there has been silver mining in North Idaho and phosphate mining in the southeastern part of the state. Some companies have sought to reestablish mining in those sectors, while others have shown new interest in other minerals, like cobalt, of which Idaho has the largest deposit in the country, said Claudio Berti, the director and state geologist of the Idaho Geological Survey.
Seeking independence from foreign mineral production Federal and state government actions have been a key driver of the uptick in interest, Berti and Chollett said. With demand for certain minerals on the rise, ensuring access to them has increasingly become a government priority — especially for minerals used in weapons, Berti told the Statesman.
China is a key source of many of these minerals, and the U.S. doesn’t want to rely on an adversary for its own access. There has been bipartisan support in recent years for increasing the domestic supply of these minerals to make sure the U.S. has ready access, Berti said. “There has been a very strong push to try to restore the production of a number of minerals and a number of elements to reduce dependency from the U.S. on a foreign country,” he said. “That has spurred a lot of interest in Idaho, which has a pretty strong endowment of mineral deposits — some with known potential, some that have been produced in the past.”
The federal government has sought to streamline permitting and regulation of mining in order to increase U.S. production. In 2025, Gov. Brad Little signed the Strategic Permitting, Efficiency, and Economic Development, or “SPEED,” Act to streamline the state’s own permitting on “big projects that promote energy independence, support national security, and drive our economy,” he said in a news release.
Idaho’s mineral production has been “on the low end” compared with that of other western states but has been trending up since 2019 amid a “revitalized focus” on expanding the state’s mineral production, according to a 2026 report by the state’s Office of Energy and Mineral Resources. Berti noted that not all mining exploration leads to actual production: Projects often get bogged down by the permitting process, or struggle to justify operations amid fluctuating global costs for the minerals they’re producing.
A cobalt mine near Salmon planned to open in 2022 but shut down before opening because of market volatility, according to the Energy and Mineral Resources report. Still, “as emphasis grows on mining in the United States, Idaho will be a major contributor to American mineral production,” the Office of Energy and Mineral Resources predicted. “With a mining history nearly as rich as its mineral reserves, Idaho is in an excellent position to capitalize on a market emphasizing domestic mineral production.”