The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare earths and copper are essential to batteries, electricity networks, electronics and defence, and their mining and especially processing are concentrated in few countries. Demand is rising with the energy transition. This page sets out what makes a mineral critical, how supply concentration and disruption are assessed, and what evidence serves the governments and firms that plan supply.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Critical minerals are minerals essential to energy, digital and defence technologies whose supply is at risk, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare earths and copper. Processing is more concentrated than mining, new supply takes years, and export policies can shift access quickly. Each government assesses criticality with its own method.
For critical minerals, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on the Strait of Malacca; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For critical minerals, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on the Strait of Malacca; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Critical minerals · Assembly cluster · Bill of materials BOM-129
| Rare earth magnet | 80 | 5604 | None qualified | High |
| Gallium | 68 | 4520 | Recycling pilot | High |
| Copper wire | 38 | 943 | Two qualified | Low |
| Lithium cells | 52 | 3065 | One qualified | Medium |
Mining, refining, demand and resource security. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Ore may be mined in many countries, but refining and processing are often concentrated in one or two. The processing stage is where supply chains are most exposed.
Exploration, permitting, financing and construction of mines and refineries take many years. Supply cannot respond quickly to demand surges or disruptions.
Export restrictions, resource nationalism and investment screening change who can buy and process minerals. Policy shifts can move markets faster than geology.
Recycling depends on products reaching end of life and collection systems; substitution depends on research and redesign. Both reduce dependence over years, not months.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Criticality assessment | An evaluation combining a material's economic importance with its supply risk. |
| Refining | Processing ore or concentrate into a material pure enough for manufacturing. |
| Import reliance | The share of a country's consumption of a material met by imports. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share of global mine production by top producing country | percent | annual | Geological survey statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Share of global refining by top country | percent | annual | Industry and agency analysis | ESTIMATED |
| Supply concentration | Herfindahl-Hirschman index | annual | Production statistics | ESTIMATED |
| Import reliance | percent of apparent consumption imported | annual | Trade and production data | ESTIMATED |
| Export restrictions in force | count by mineral | annual | Trade policy inventories | OFFICIAL |
| End-of-life recycling rate | percent | per assessment | Material flow studies | ESTIMATED |
| Projected demand under stated scenarios | tonnes | per outlook | Agency outlooks | FORECAST |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries | Production, reserves and import reliance by mineral | Public domain, US government data |
| British Geological Survey World Mineral Statistics | Production and trade of minerals by country | Licence to check |
| IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook and data explorer | Supply, demand and processing concentration scenarios | Licence per dataset (to check) |
| OECD Inventory of Export Restrictions on Industrial Raw Materials | Export restrictions by mineral and country | Public, OECD terms |
| European Commission critical raw materials assessments | Criticality methodology and results for the EU | Public, EU reuse policy |
| EITI data portal | Extractive sector disclosures by country | Open, EITI terms |
Trade and Strategic Resources prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Ministries of industry, energy and mines | Which minerals to treat as critical and which supply options to support | Criticality profiles; diversification scenarios |
| Manufacturers | How to diversify sourcing and invest in recycling or substitution | Concentration maps; recycling evidence |
| Producer country governments | How to capture value and manage mining risks | Value chain and EITI evidence |
Geology sets the starting point: economically viable deposits of some minerals occur in few places. But concentration is often greater in processing than in mining. Refining and chemical processing require specialised plants, know-how and reagents, and capacity has tended to cluster where costs, policy support and industrial ecosystems favoured it.
New supply is slow. Developing a mine typically takes many years from discovery to production, and refining capacity also needs time to build and qualify. Meanwhile, demand can grow quickly with energy and digital transitions. This mismatch produces price volatility, which in turn discourages investment, creating cycles.
Some minerals are by-products, recovered only when another metal is mined, so their supply depends on demand for the main product. Policy matters too: export restrictions, resource nationalism and trade measures can change availability quickly.
Frameworks combining economic importance with supply risk. Results depend on chosen indicators and weights, and differ between assessments.
Tracking materials through extraction, processing, use and recycling. Data on intermediate trade and stocks are incomplete.
Research on substitution, reduced intensity and recycling routes using materials science and chemistry. Laboratory advances may take years to reach industrial scale.
Measures of supplier concentration at each stage using network science. Ownership and control can differ from location.
Demand projections for transition minerals vary widely with assumptions about technology and policy, and are presented as scenarios, not predictions.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.