Critical minerals

Critical minerals are materials judged important to society and exposed to unusually high disruption risk. Governments assess factors such as economic value, national-security relevance, import dependence, producer concentration, political instability, processing bottlenecks, and the availability of substitutes.¹ Lists consequently differ by country and change as technologies, trade patterns, and industrial priorities change. The United States listed 50 mineral commodities in its 2022 assessment, while the European Union distinguishes between 34 critical raw materials and a smaller group of strategic raw materials targeted for especially rapid capacity-building.²

The category includes metals, industrial minerals, and some mineral-derived materials. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, manganese, copper, rare earth elements, gallium, germanium, platinum-group metals, and tungsten appear on various national lists. “Critical” does not mean scarce in the Earth’s crust: a plentiful mineral can be critical if extraction, refining, or transport is concentrated in a few locations.

Critical minerals underpin electrification, digital infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, defense systems, and renewable-energy technologies. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite are used in many rechargeable batteries; copper is central to electrical networks; rare earth elements support permanent magnets used in motors and wind turbines; and gallium, germanium, and indium have specialized roles in semiconductors, fiber optics, and photovoltaics.³

Demand is shaped not only by consumer electronics but also by grid expansion, electric vehicles, data centers, aerospace, medical devices, and military equipment. The energy transition can therefore reduce dependence on coal, oil, and gas while increasing dependence on particular mineral supply chains. Mineral intensity varies by technology, and innovation can change the balance: battery chemistries may reduce cobalt use, while larger electric grids can increase demand for copper and aluminum.

Supply risk often lies in processing rather than mining. A mineral may be extracted in one country, chemically refined in another, converted into a specialized powder or alloy elsewhere, and incorporated into products through several additional manufacturing stages. Concentration at any link can make the whole chain vulnerable to export restrictions, conflict, accidents, trade disputes, sanctions, energy shortages, or sudden demand surges.¹

China is a major processor of several critical materials, including rare earths and graphite, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo has long been central to mined cobalt supply and Australia and Chile are major sources of lithium. These examples do not imply that any single country controls every stage or that supply is fixed; they illustrate why mine output alone is an incomplete measure of resilience.⁴ Recycling capacity, stockpiles, transport routes, permitting, and skilled labor also affect security of supply.

Governments seek resilience through diversified imports, domestic mining and refining, strategic stockpiles, recycling, substitution, research, and agreements with trusted suppliers. The European Union’s Critical Raw Materials Act sets benchmarks for extraction, processing, recycling, and reduced dependence on any single non-EU country.² The United States uses geological surveys, grants, tax incentives, defense authorities, and industrial policy to strengthen selected supply chains.⁵

Each response has limits. New mines can take many years to permit and build; refining can be more environmentally intensive than extraction; recycling is constrained by product lifetimes and collection systems; and substitution may reduce performance or shift pressure to another material. Responsible policy therefore weighs resilience against water use, habitat disruption, labor conditions, greenhouse-gas emissions, community consent, and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Criticality is dynamic and can emerge from a narrow industrial bottleneck rather than from a dramatic shortage of ore. Helium, for example, is obtained largely as a by-product of natural-gas production and has specialized uses in cryogenics, research, medicine, and semiconductor manufacturing. Tellurium and selenium are often recovered as by-products of copper refining, which means their availability depends partly on demand for another metal. Platinum-group metals illustrate a different issue: high-value recycling can be significant, but dispersed uses and technical recovery challenges still matter.

Lists also reveal political priorities. Defense agencies may emphasize materials needed for sensors, missiles, or aerospace alloys, whereas energy ministries may emphasize batteries, grids, and low-carbon technologies. The same material can be critical in one jurisdiction and absent from another’s list. International organizations increasingly frame the issue around producer diversification, transparent markets, local value addition, and fairer distribution of mining benefits rather than simply securing more raw tonnage.⁴⁶

Criticality

A combined assessment of how important a material is and how exposed its supply is to disruption.

Rare earth elements

A group of 17 chemically related elements used in magnets, catalysts, electronics, and other applications; they are not synonymous with critical minerals.

By-product

A material recovered incidentally during the production of another mineral, such as tellurium from copper refining.

Supply-chain concentration

Dependence on a small number of countries, companies, facilities, routes, or processing stages.