Elements such as rare-earth metals are crucial for the clean-energy transition. Sustainability, equity and security are all at risk in the rush to break China’s dominance over their production.
Countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where critical minerals are being mined, are at risk of being exploited.It’s an all-too-familiar statement: in a zero-carbon world, certain chemical elements will be as important as oil and gas are to a fossil-fuel-powered world. These include the nickel, lithium and cobalt used in batteries, as well as rare-earth elements such as neodymium and samarium, which are essential to the magnets of wind turbines and electric motors.
An abundance of critical minerals is so far being mined in only a small number of countries. Most cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and most nickel from Indonesia. China dominates in graphite and rare-earth elements . In this sense, the situation is not dissimilar to that of fossil fuels, for which a few countries have tended to dominate supply.
China, Europe, the United States and others are all investing billions of dollars to acquire access to critical minerals in Africa and South America. This is potentially exploitative. The countries in which the minerals are being mined know it, and are sensibly refusing to be used solely to provide raw materials for other people’s batteries, insisting that the processing of minerals into higher-value products happens within their borders, too.
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