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NUUK, Greenland – Beneath Greenland’s icy surface lies a wealth of untapped minerals crucial for the green transition – and for the island’s push toward financial independence from Denmark.
Much has been made of renewed American interest in Greenland since Donald Trump suggested the US should buy it for “economic security” – or seize it with force.
Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance, is also convinced Greenlanders have “an incredibly bountiful country” but points fingers at the Danes. “They aren’t letting Greenlanders develop and explore.”
But he is mistaken. Greenland, not Denmark, controls its mineral resources. Since gaining self-rule in 2009, the island’s government has owned everything beneath the surface.
And it hasn’t just sat on that wealth. It has been laying the groundwork to grow its mining industry, issuing permits to help diversify an economy still heavily reliant on fishing, tourism, and construction.
In this sense, nothing stops US firms from investing in the island’s mining industry. The US and Greenland already signed a Memorandum of Understanding during Trump’s first administration.
“Trump is trying to kick in an open door,” Greenland’s Minister for Mineral Resources Naaja Nathanielsen told Euractiv in her office in Nuuk.
Whether US firms take the opportunity is another question.
“Currently, there is only one American-owned exploration licence. Canada and the UK hold 28 combined,” she added.
Nathanielsen holds no grudges against the Trump administration, and as the MoU nears its end, she looks forward to continued cooperation.
While she doesn’t love the idea of Greenland being treated like a commodity, the message is clear: the island is open for business.
The same goes for the EU. “It’s up to you guys,” Nathanielsen said, encouraging states and Brussels to make investors’ lives easier.
In 2023, she signed a MoU with the Commission to help minerals in the Greenlandic subsoil reach European shores, but so far, little has materialised.
“We have the minerals, but it’s up to the mineral-importing countries to ensure their companies have access to the minerals they need.”
Sixteen years in the making
Even supposing investors are ready, few projects make it off the ground. Why is it so difficult?
Opening a mine takes 16 years, she explained. In Greenland, companies aren’t just digging – they must build everything from scratch, like roads and a harbour, as there’s no existing infrastructure to rely on.
“Perhaps policymakers have yet to grasp the scale of risk in the early stages of this process,” Nathanielsen continued.
Take Greenland Anorthosite Mining, for example. The company is working on a new anorthosite mine about 100 km south of Nuuk. The company has to bring everything to the mining site 15 kilometres from the fjord’s shore and build everything from the ground up.
“Over the past 20-25 years, surprisingly few mining projects have been established in Greenland,” the company’s CEO Claus Stoltenberg told Euractiv during an event in the capital, though he’s optimistic that the site will finally be up and running in 2027.
For investors, 16 years is a long time to wait. They face years of upfront costs with no guaranteed buyers – and, as Australian Energy Transition Minerals found out, one political decision can shut down a project overnight.
The company had big plans to mine minerals used in batteries, which have uranium, fluorite, and zinc as byproducts, at Kvanefjeld. It has invested over €140 million since 2007 in developing the site. It also hired a local business mogul and former cabinet chief for the country’s premier, Svend Hardenberg, to be the company’s boots on the ground.
Hardenberg is a familiar face to people outside the Inuit nation. In the fourth season of the international Danish hit series Borgen, Hardenberg plays the enigmatic Greenlandic Foreign Minister, Hans Eliassen.
Euractiv met him in his office. He did not share Nathanielsen’s notion that Greenland is open for business – at least not with the current government.
When Greenland’s socialist and environmentalist IA party won the 2021 election, Premier Múte B. Egede shut down the project, following through on his campaign promise to oppose uranium mining.
The company is demanding €10 billion in damages, although Hardenberg said his first priority is still to get the project back on track.
On the phone from Narsaq near the prospect mine, Hardenberg’s boss and CEO of Energy Transition Minerals, Daniel Mamadou-Blanco, similarly said he was fed up with the island’s government changing rules retroactively.
While he said his private company had no political stake in the 11 March election, he is convinced his mine could foster the independence Greenlanders so long for.
“The ability of a country to choose its direction is inextricably linked to its economic power. I can say that with certainty. And it’s the same whether we’re talking about Greenland, Denmark, the United States, Spain or Europe in general.”
It’s hard to see how the island’s vast subsoil will transform its economy anytime soon, Minik Rosing, a Greenlandic professor of geology at the University of Copenhagen, told Euractiv his stone-adorned office in Copenhagen.
Greenland is home to just 57,000 people, most of them living around Nuuk. Its mining sector employs only 100 – just 0.4% of the workforce. And while the government is eager to develop the industry, “resources alone aren’t enough,” he added.
Right now, a third of Greenland’s public budget comes from Denmark. Even if the new anorthosite mine generates its promised €13.4 million in annual tax revenue, that’s still less than 1% of the budget.
The same is true for increasing the number of large-scale projects. It will “not be sufficient to replace the block grant, and the revenues from these projects will not stabilise the economy in the long term,” the report co-authored by Rosing stated.
Then there’s the market reality. Unlike gold, which holds an intrinsic market value, metals and rare earths require extraction and a buyer willing to take the risk. And 16 years of patience.
“If you dig up metal, you have to find someone foolish enough to buy it. Then you negotiate for six months, only to be disappointed with the price,” he explained.
Its minerals may shape the world’s future, but what will shape Greenland’s?
With the election coming on 11 March, Rosing questions whether independence has been fully thought through. “It is not whether Greenland can be independent,” Rosing says.
“It’s whether Greenlanders have fully considered what independence actually looks like.”
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