The Slowly Mounting Mineral Shock

By Portia Roberts Peter Bryant

Note: You’re Invited: NCEA’s Critique of IEA’s Critical Minerals Outlook

China’s latest squeeze on mineral exports––and Washington’s threat of retaliation––ends any illusion that critical minerals are a niche matter. They are the scaffolding of modern society. A nearly bewildering array of minerals are essential for everything from defense technologies to EV dreams to the great race for “dominance” in artificial intelligence. Neither America, nor our allies, extract and refine enough key minerals.

The United States depends on imports for most (in some cases all) key minerals including copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and especially the 17 vital rare earth elements. Without foreign suppliers, we face a shock of varying degrees, from serious to catastrophic, across all industries and services. COVID-driven supply chain disruptions provided a glimpse of what could come. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is one of a handful of non-aligned entities that looks at and advises about global critical minerals. Unfortunately, it appears that the IEA either ignores or is naïve about market-shaping realities, including those put in play last week by China. This matters because IEA’s genesis was the 1970s oil shock, tasked with brokering facts to anticipate, if not prevent another such catastrophic event in the future. Instead, IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 should earn a Pollyanna award; it assumes the kinds of needed cooperation, innovation, and capital flows are happening or will. If policymakers mistake that analysis as a blueprint, or as a rationale for inaction or action––as was done by the Biden Administration to justify the LNG-export pause—we could well learn what mineral scarcity looks like. 

China is, as is now well-known, the dominant energy minerals market-shaper. It doesn’t merely mine and refine; it finances, secures offtakes, standardizes chemistries, and wields export controls. It commands a variety of chokepoints that differ for each mineral. In other words, it wields a monopolistic-like ability to manipulate markets. Dominance in the activities that make minerals useful neutralizes efforts to diversify the sources of various minerals. It doesn’t matter if a new mine opens in the US, or a different hemisphere or continent if one country’s investment can control a significant proportion of supply. And as a result China can “dump” so much supply, long enough, into the market to collapse prices that bankrupt competition, cause unprofitable mines to be mothballed, or make planned projects infeasible. 

Nonetheless, new mines, smelters, and refineries are needed. But all face a steep uphill battle for multiple reasons, including what the IEA correctly calls “above-ground risks”—what the mining industry terms “the social license to operate” (SLO). These issues are really opportunities rather than risks, and their importance cannot be overstated. (Although the IEA Outlook understates them). If not properly engaged, dealings with local communities can stall or prevent permitting, or even slow or stop development. This ultimately adds costs, further advantaging China’s producers. 

Another overlooked aspect is that it often takes decades for new sites to begin operations. Refining is an inherently energy-intensive and chemical-centric industry, a frankly dirty business. Western firms, and regulations, have long exercised due caution. But it will likely take a great deal of innovation and intense investment for new facilities to meet ever-more stringent environmental standards and costs that don’t again advantage China.

On top of that, an in-the-weeds nuance that is utterly critical: the IEA underplays the long-run decline in ore grades, i.e., the share of the rock that contains the mineral. Existing mines, particularly copper, will require ever more energy and water per ton of metal, creating more tailings waste to manage, more capital expenditure, and thus more delays. Efficiency and recycling can’t come close to doing enough to bridge the looming gap between supply and demand. 

Oil shocks cause price leaps, lines at gas stations, political fallout. Mineral shocks are slow burns, until they’re not. They might initially surface as longer delivery times, stalled grid projects, costlier products––or some with missing features. But if mineral shortages continue, if (limited) stockpiles are exhausted, markets unavoidably face price shocks.

For the United States, the solution has long been known and remains urgent: rebuild end-to-end capability at home and simultaneously, vital for velocity, work with allies (and other friendly resource-endowed countries) on such key areas as geology, mining, refining, and component manufacturing. Streamline permitting without diluting environmental standards. Use different tools such as targeted offtakes, public-private finance and defense authorities to anchor new refineries and processing hubs. And level with voters: everything starts with mining (or farming). If we won’t mine at home or overseas with trusted partners, we will continue to face economic and security fragility—on terms set elsewhere.

The IEA was founded to help prevent energy shocks, not promote policies that make them more likely. In minerals, models that minimize or ignore chokepoints and social license realities will steer the world into the very emergencies we want to avoid. We don’t need aspirational scenarios. We need mineral realism.

Portia Roberts is Policy Director for the National Center for Energy Analytics. 

Peter Bryant is Chairman of Clareo and Key Minerals Forum. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.