Critical Minerals Prices

Critical minerals are the foundational materials of the clean energy transition. Unlike conventional commodities, these metals have been elevated to matters of national security by governments worldwide — the US, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the UK have all published critical minerals lists and launched major policy initiatives to secure supply chains.

The energy transition is fundamentally a materials story. Replacing fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives requires enormous quantities of specific metals: lithium, cobalt, and nickel for EV batteries; neodymium and dysprosium for permanent magnet motors and wind turbines; uranium for nuclear power; vanadium for grid storage; and tungsten and molybdenum for the high-performance alloys needed in clean energy infrastructure.

The defining challenge is supply concentration. China dominates processing for virtually every critical mineral on this page. The Democratic Republic of Congo controls 70% of cobalt mining. Kazakhstan controls 45% of uranium supply. This geographic concentration creates geopolitical vulnerability that governments and corporations are racing to address through supply diversification, domestic production incentives, and circular economy investment.