Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Supply Chains

An oil economy runs on a fuel that is burned and bought again; a clean-energy economy runs on equipment that is built once from metals, and the metals are the new chokepoint. An EV uses roughly six times the minerals of a conventional car and an onshore wind farm several times the minerals of a gas plant of the same capacity (IEA, 2021). The metals that matter are lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese for batteries; copper and aluminium for every wire and grid; rare earths for the permanent magnets in EV motors and many wind turbines; silicon and silver for solar; and uranium for reactors. Their mining is spread across Australia, Chile, Argentina, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Indonesia and others, but their processing is concentrated in China, which refines ~60–70% of lithium, ~75% of cobalt, over 90% of battery-grade graphite and ~90% of separated rare earths (IEA, 2024–25, reported). The 2021–22 boom took Chinese lithium carbonate to ~CNY 600,000/t (~$80,000/t) in November 2022, and the 2023–25 bust took it below CNY 80,000/t (~$10,000/t) by mid-2025, bankrupting or idling Western projects before a 2026 rebound to ~CNY 200,000/t in May 2026 (reported). Indonesia used an ore-export ban to become over half of world nickel supply; the DRC halted cobalt exports in 2025 to push prices up; China imposed and then partly suspended export controls on rare earths and battery materials. The US and EU responded with tax credits, price floors, equity stakes, tariffs and minerals deals. This section explains the minerals one by one, the price cycle, why processing rather than mining is the bottleneck, the policy responses, and how an experienced buyer, investor or developer reads mineral risk. Prices are given with their benchmark and date: lithium carbonate in CNY or $ per tonne (China spot or Guangzhou Futures Exchange), nickel and copper in $/t on the LME, cobalt in $/lb, uranium U3O8 in $/lb, NdPr oxide in $/kg.