Due to a quirk of geology, the purest quartz in all the world comes from the picturesque town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The mineral, created deep within the Earth when silicon-rich magmas cooled and crystallized some 370 million years ago, is essential to the production of computer chips and solar panels.
China, India, and Russia provide high-purity quartz as well, but what’s mined there does not match the quality or quantity of what lies beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains. With Spruce Pine among the scores of Appalachian communities reeling from Hurricane Helene, the sudden closure of quartz mines that have supplied chip manufacturers for decades has rattled the global tech industry. But this quartz is vital to the solar industry, too. And while industry experts expect companies to withstand the temporary closure of the town’s two mines, it highlights the precariousness of a clean energy economy that relies on materials produced at a single location — especially in a world of increasingly ferocious natural disasters.
Helene’s impact on Spruce Pine “absolutely... Read more
