Critical Minerals: Understanding Supply Risks and Strategic Importance
Critical minerals underpin the technologies that define modern life, from smartphones and electric vehicles to wind turbines and advanced defense systems. Understanding their supply risks, economic importance, and geopolitical dimensions is essential for navigating the energy transition and securing industrial resilience.
The term "critical mineral" has moved from the vocabulary of geologists and trade policy experts into mainstream economic discourse. Governments around the world now maintain official lists of minerals deemed critical to national security, economic competitiveness, and the clean energy transition. These lists reflect growing awareness that the raw materials powering next-generation technologies are subject to concentrated supply chains, geopolitical risks, and environmental constraints that could disrupt entire industries.
Critical minerals include elements such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, gallium, germanium, and dozens of others. What unites them is not their geological rarity per se but rather a combination of factors: high economic importance, limited substitutability, concentrated production in a small number of countries, and vulnerability to supply disruption. A single mine closure, export restriction, or political crisis in a producing nation can send shockwaves through global supply chains.
This section of the Critical and Strategic Metals Hub provides a comprehensive guide to understanding critical minerals. Whether you are a policy analyst, investor, engineer, or student, the resources below will help you grasp the frameworks used to assess criticality, the differences between related concepts, and the real-world bottlenecks that shape mineral supply chains today.
Foundations
Start here to build a solid understanding of what critical minerals are, why they matter, and how governments classify them.
What Are Critical Minerals?
A comprehensive overview of critical minerals, including definitions, key examples, and why they have become central to energy and industrial policy worldwide.
What Makes a Mineral Critical?
Explore the criteria governments and researchers use to determine whether a mineral qualifies as critical, from supply risk to economic vulnerability.
Critical Minerals vs Rare Earths
Understand the relationship and key differences between critical minerals as a broad category and rare earth elements as a specific group within it.
Critical Minerals vs Strategic Minerals
Learn how critical minerals differ from strategic minerals, and why the distinction matters for defense, trade, and industrial policy.
Criticality Frameworks
Dive into the specific dimensions that criticality assessments examine, from supply concentration to recycling feasibility.
Criticality Frameworks Overview
How nations and institutions assess mineral criticality using multi-dimensional frameworks that balance economic, geopolitical, and environmental factors.
Supply Risk
Examine how geographic concentration, political instability, and trade restrictions create supply vulnerabilities for critical minerals.
Economic Importance
Learn how the economic value and industrial dependence on specific minerals determines their criticality rating.
Demand Growth
Understand how surging demand from clean energy, electronics, and defense is reshaping mineral criticality assessments.
Substitutability
Explore why the lack of viable substitutes for certain minerals in key applications amplifies their criticality.
Recycling Potential
Assess how end-of-life recycling rates and urban mining prospects influence the long-term criticality of minerals.
Byproduct Risk
Discover why minerals produced only as byproducts of other metals face unique supply constraints and higher criticality.
Supply Chain Challenges
Explore the real-world bottlenecks and vulnerabilities that constrain the flow of critical minerals from mine to manufacturer.
Supply Chain Bottlenecks
Identify the major chokepoints in critical mineral supply chains, from mining permits and infrastructure to logistics and trade policy barriers.
Processing & Refining Bottlenecks
Understand why the concentration of mineral processing and refining capacity in a handful of countries poses systemic risks to global supply.
Recycling & Circularity
Explore how circular economy principles, urban mining, and advanced recycling technologies can help reduce dependence on primary mineral extraction.