Critical minerals, essential for a range of clean energy technologies, have risen up the policy and business agenda in recent years. Rapid growth in demand is providing new opportunities for the industry, but a combination of volatile price movements, supply chain bottlenecks and geopolitical concerns has created a potent mix of risks for secure and rapid energy transitions. This has triggered an array of new policy actions in different jurisdictions to enhance the diversity and reliability of critical mineral supplies. 

Since the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) landmark analysis on the Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions and the new ministerial mandates in March 2022, the Agency has expanded its work on critical minerals to help policymakers address these emerging challenges and ensure reliable and sustainable supplies of critical minerals. These efforts include a commitment to regular market monitoring, which aims to provide a clear understanding of today’s demand and supply dynamics and what they mean for the future. In this inaugural piece of analysis, we review the latest price, investment and production trends in the critical minerals sector. The first chapter provides a snapshot of industry developments in 2022 and early 2023. The second chapter reviews key trends in the battery sector given its importance in driving demand growth for critical minerals. The third chapter presents a concise review of key trends for each individual commodity. In the final chapter, we present implications for policy and industry stakeholders.

Critical minerals have been fully integrated into the IEA’s Global Energy and Climate Model, which means that the projections for critical minerals demand and supply are regularly updated in line with latest policy and technology trends in the IEA energy scenarios, notably in the World Energy Outlook and the Global EV Outlook. The updated projections are available through the IEA Critical Minerals Data Explorer, an online tool that intends to allow users to easily access and navigate the latest data. This is part of the efforts to enhance market transparency through making more data publicly available.

Our report considers a wide range of minerals used in clean energy technologies, as indicated in the Annex of the special report. For energy transition minerals, we focus on copper, major battery metals (lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite) and rare earth elements. We also discuss trends for other important minerals and metals such as aluminium, manganese, platinum group metals and uranium as relevant.

This report focuses on today’s state of play. It will be complemented by a forthcoming piece of analysis that will provide full demand and supply projections for key materials and a number of deep-dives on key issues. This will respond directly to the request in the G7 Five-Point Plan for critical minerals security, where the Group of Seven ministers asked the IEA to produce medium- and long-term outlooks for critical minerals demand and supply to help inform decision making.