Critical Minerals

A critical mineral is a mineral input whose supply disruption could seriously affect the economy, national security or essential technologies. It combines high economic or strategic importance with significant supply risk and limited possibilities for substitution. Criticality reflects vulnerability, not merely geological rarity, price or production volume.

How criticality is assessed

A mineral becomes critical when disruption would have large consequences and alternative supplies or materials cannot be secured easily.

• Its economic importance arises from its role in major industries, infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, energy technologies or defence.
• Its substitutability is low when alternatives are unavailable, costly or reduce technological performance.
• Production or processing may be geographically concentrated, exposing users to geopolitical, trade or logistical disruptions.
• High import dependence, long mine-development periods, by-product recovery and technical barriers can make supply slow to respond.

Strategic importance for clean energy

Modern clean-energy systems depend on minerals for their electrochemical, conductive and magnetic properties. Solar power, wind turbines, electricity networks, batteries, electric vehicles and hydrogen technologies therefore require reliable mineral value chains.

• Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite are important inputs for several battery technologies.
• Rare earth elements are used in permanent magnets required by some wind turbines and electric motors.
• Supply disruption can increase technology costs, delay energy infrastructure and replace dependence on imported fossil fuels with new mineral and processing dependencies.
• Recycling can recover materials and reduce pressure on primary supply, but cannot immediately meet rapidly expanding demand.

Why criticality changes and policy response

Criticality is country-specific because economies differ in industrial structure, resource endowments, import dependence and security priorities. It is also dynamic, changing with technology, demand, discoveries, processing capacity, recycling, substitution and trade relations.

• A scarce mineral is not necessarily critical if demand is limited or substitutes are readily available.
• A geologically abundant mineral can become critical if processing is concentrated or demand rises faster than supply.
• Identification guides diversification, exploration, domestic processing, recycling, stockpiling and research into substitutes.