Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition

The report warns that critical minerals essential for decarbonization may be in short supply by 2030 due to historical underinvestment and long production lead times. It identifies ten risk management strategies and emphasizes the need for global collaboration to avoid supply chain fragmentation and ensure the energy transition's security, equity, and sustainability.

• Critical minerals required for clean energy technologies are projected to face a supply-demand gap by 2030, which could jeopardize short-term climate goals and increase price volatility. Specifically, under the IEA's Announced Pledges Scenario, demand for these minerals is expected to grow more than two-fold by 2030.
• The current supply shortage is driven by a decade of underinvestment in mining and exploration, where the ratio of global capital expenditure to revenue dropped from 15% in the previous decade to less than 10% in the last 10 years. Other contributing factors include complex orebodies, decreasing ore grades, and long lead times between exploration and production.
• The SMET initiative identifies two primary categories of risk: those stemming from the inability to close the supply-demand gap and those arising from the efforts to close that gap. These risks span political, economic, social, technological, and environmental dimensions, with high-impact risks including the delay of the energy transition, market volatility, and geopolitical disruptions to value chains.
• Ten high-priority risk management strategies are proposed to create a resilient mining industry. These include reducing resource intensity through circularity and urban mining, mobilizing private and institutional investment, leveraging alternative financing like green bonds, increasing data transparency, addressing price uncertainty via long-term contracts, increasing local community value-add, fostering policy dialogue, accelerating innovation, harmonizing ESG standards, and streamlining project approval processes.
• Global collaboration is deemed essential because isolated efforts by governments or the private sector are insufficient to address the challenge. The report highlights five key themes for collaborative action: facilitating policy dialogue, supporting investment mobilization, accelerating innovation, evaluating gaps in ESG standards, and building skills across the value chain.
• To bridge the supply-demand gap, the report suggests specific innovation paths: reducing demand through mineral substitution (e.g., using lithium-iron-phosphate batteries instead of nickel-cobalt-aluminum) and increasing supply by investing in technologies to extract more minerals from existing assets.

APA

World Economic Forum (2023). Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2023.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition. 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition |date=December 2023 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2023securing, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2023}, month = dec, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }