That four million tonnes of the mineral is currently valued on the LME at $133bn, but locals in the capital of Kinshasa will be hesitant to celebrate that potential windfall as they have yet to see the benefits of their abundant diamond reserves – a widespread phenomenon in many commodity-rich developing countries known as the ‘resource curse’. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is by far the largest global supplier of cobalt, possessing almost half of all cobalt reserves in global mines today. Efforts are under way to find more sustainable materials to replace the cobalt in batteries, but for the time being the mineral will remain fundamental to the growth of EVs and battery energy storage systems around the world. The cobalt supply chain, however, is riddled with ethical and environmental issues such as the widespread use of modern slavery and child labour in the artisanal mines of sub-Saharan African countries. These resources sit in an adjoining area, covered by salt deserts, that has been coined the ‘lithium triangle’, which could eventually see energy transition minerals transform South America into an economic powerhouse in the way oil has elevated economies in the Middle East.Ĭobalt: Cobalt is another key ingredient in Li-ion batteries, supporting their stability and performance by preventing overheating and extending their lifespans. These include a vast 21 million tonnes in Boliva, 20 million tonnes in Argentina and 11 million tonnes in Chile. According to the USGS, the world’s ‘identified’ lithium resources (where economic extraction is potentially feasible) total around 98 million tonnes. However, that is just the reserves of the world’s existing mines. Argentina (2.7 million tonnes), China (two million tonnes), the US (one million tonnes) and Canada (930,000 tonnes) are also equipped with substantial holdings of their own. Based on today’s prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME), those reserves of 9.3 million and 6.2 million tonnes, respectively, are valued at a whopping $324bn and $216bn. Keep up with Energy Monitor: Subscribe to our weekly newsletterĪccording to the US Geological Survey (USGS), Australia and Chile boast the largest reserves of lithium available in mines around the world today. Nonetheless, considering their widespread use and impact on core clean energy technologies, there are four main critical minerals earmarked by the likes of the International Energy Agency to play a particularly pivotal role: lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel. It is tricky to definitively rank the most important critical minerals for the energy transition, as their significance will depend on the development of specific technologies and supply chains. They will be the ones that own and manage all the value chains, and that is unlikely to change even if new reserves are discovered.” Four minerals critical to net zero “Probably the ones that are producing the most right now will be the ones with the highest reserves by net zero in 2050. “It is always difficult to judge reserves as new mines are opened every year, but China, Australia and Indonesia have most of the optimised production right now,” says Barbara Monterrubio, energy managing analyst at GlobalData, Energy Monitor’s parent company. However, with change comes opportunity – and a select few lucky countries are sitting on proverbial gold mines of so-called ‘ critical minerals’ that they hope will make them winners of the same natural resource lottery in which petrostates like the UAE have basked since the dawn of the ‘Age of Oil’. The discovery of vast reserves of oil beneath that unforgiving desert has transformed the lives of its inhabitants. The reason for this remarkable economic metamorphosis: black gold. Lifestyles were largely geared at enduring the hardships of the desert.īut all that was to change in the second half of the 20th century, and today cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi rise proudly out of the desert as glittering glass and metal symbols of modernity, with the UAE boasting the world’s fifth-largest gross domestic product per capita (just pipping the Swiss).

Education and healthcare were basic, reliant on local teachers and traditional healers. Communities were close-knit and dependent on strong tribal ties. Its subsistence economy was based on fishing, pearling and nomadic herding. Credit: Freedom_wanted via Shutterstock.īefore the 1960s, life in the Middle Eastern region now known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would have looked very much like it had for many hundreds of years. Lithium fields in the Atacama desert in Chile.

Cobalt mines in ukraine