From Minerals to Megawatts: Building Resilience for EVs, Data Centres and Power Grids

The report highlights that the energy and digital transitions rely on overlapping minerals—particularly copper, aluminium, and rare earth elements—processed through highly concentrated refining hubs, primarily in China. It argues that a structural mismatch between long upstream lead times (up to 20 years for mines) and short downstream cycles creates systemic vulnerabilities. To mitigate these risks, the authors propose a roadmap based on distributed coordination, shared risk visibility, and parallel management of supply expansion and demand reduction.

• Electric vehicles, data centres, and electricity transmission and distribution (ET&D) systems share critical material dependencies, with copper, aluminium, and rare earth elements being common to all three. By 2035, EVs are expected to drive 86% of lithium demand, 55% of cobalt, and 33% of rare-earth consumption.
• Mineral refining and processing are extremely concentrated geographically, far more so than mining. China holds a market share of at least 5% for all 19 tracked minerals and exceeds 75% for gallium, graphite, REEs, magnesium, germanium, and cobalt.
• A structural timing mismatch exists between supply tiers: mining projects can take 10-20 years from discovery to production, refining facilities take 3-8 years, and manufacturing plants can be commissioned in 1-5 years. This disparity means downstream segments can scale faster than upstream supply can adjust.
• Current operating bases for several minerals are insufficient for 2035 projections. Today's supply of lithium and graphite covers only approximately 35-45% of forecasted 2035 demand, necessitating a near-doubling of output within a decade.
• Upstream shocks in concentrated hubs rapidly cascade into downstream delivery risks. For example, limited global capacity of grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), exacerbated by Russia/Ukraine trade restrictions, has increased transformer prices by 50-80% and extended lead times to 18-36 months.
• Risk perspectives vary by value chain tier, but three dominant vectors are geopolitics and trade, market and financing, and infrastructure. EV manufacturers are currently more advanced in managing these risks than data centre or ET&D players due to lessons learned from the semiconductor shortage.
• Resilience requires parallel action on both supply and demand. Supply levers include long-term offtakes, public co-financing, and streamlined permitting, while demand levers include mineral-intensity reduction, fit-for-purpose substitution (e.g., LFP batteries), and scaling circularity.
• The report proposes a four-step roadmap for collective action: strengthening coordination capacity through distributed hubs, building shared visibility via joint risk maps, defining collective resilience strategies, and creating enablers such as convening platforms and harmonized standards.

APA

World Economic Forum (2025). From Minerals to Megawatts: Building Resilience for EVs, Data Centres and Power Grids. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_From_Minerals_to_Megawatts_2025.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. From Minerals to Megawatts: Building Resilience for EVs, Data Centres and Power Grids. 2025. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_From_Minerals_to_Megawatts_2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=From Minerals to Megawatts: Building Resilience for EVs, Data Centres and Power Grids |date=December 2025 |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_From_Minerals_to_Megawatts_2025.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2025from, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{From Minerals to Megawatts: Building Resilience for EVs, Data Centres and Power Grids}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2025}, month = dec, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_From_Minerals_to_Megawatts_2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }