Securing Minerals for Energy and Technologies

Advancing Latin America's Critical Minerals Potential

Global demand for critical minerals is rising faster than supply, which remains highly concentrated. This creates a strategic opportunity for Latin America, which holds some of the world’s largest reserves of copper, lithium and other critical minerals, backed by decades of mining expertise and industrial capabilities.

The report, developed in coordination with the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, sets out six priority areas and 15 case studies showing how regional collaboration can strengthen value chains and unlock greater value creation from the region's minerals endowment.

Making Critical Minerals Bankable: Policy Tools to Unlock Investment

Demand is rising, yet minerals investment and capacity remain uneven. The report, in collaboration with Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia SIPA (CGEP), provides a practical framework and sets out a forward-looking pathway to move projects from risk to resilience and ensure supply can keep pace with the technologies shaping the future.

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

This report blends market data with insights from over 65 leaders across mining, processing, OEMs, utilities and operators, it articulates each value chain segment’s risks priorities, maps interdependencies and flags early-warning signals in markets.

Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa

This report identifies financing barriers and practical solutions to scale critical minerals value chains in Southern Africa. It highlights replicable case studies that can de-risk investment, build infrastructure, support local value addition, and position Southern Africa as a key player in the global clean energy economy.

Unlocking the Value Chain through Policy, Investment and Innovation

This paper explores various approaches for unlocking critical minerals supply. It identifies barriers to investment and innovation in critical minerals and associated solutions for addressing them.

AI Dependence on Critical Minerals

The growing link between AI and minerals emphasizes that behind every data centre is a significant demand for materials such as copper, lithium and aluminum. As AI scales rapidly, the mining sector faces the challenge of keeping pace, particularly given the long timelines required to develop new mines responsibly and sustainably.

From Minerals to Megawatts: Building Resilience for EVs, Data Centres and Power Grids, explores how to shore up the supply chains behind the AI revolution.

Africa’s mineral deposits can power the energy transition

Africa is home to extensive reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium, and other critical minerals. These minerals are poised to become the "building blocks of a new era," according to the UN Trade and Development Secretary-General.

However, it is essential to move beyond extractive models that funnel profits to developed nations and instead focus on African development and empowerment.

Electric cars, solar panels and batteries rely on these 5 critical minerals

Globally, renewable energy capacity needs to triple by 2030, according to the UAE Consensus, agreed at COP28. As clean energy technologies use large quantities of minerals, demand for them is likely to soar.

To power the energy transition, the world needs to secure a reliable supply of critical minerals while avoiding the threats of irresponsible practices, geopolitical tensions and price inflations. All while avoiding a delay in the adoption of clean technologies.

Watch to learn more about these five critical minerals.

Mining and Metals: Trends, Challenges and the Way Forward

Africa’s mineral deposits can power the energy transition

Insights on minerals for energy and advanced technologies

Advancing Latin America's Critical Minerals Potential

Explore our report series

Making Critical Minerals Bankable: Policy Tools to Unlock Investment

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

Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa

Unlocking the Value Chain through Policy, Investment and Innovation

Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition

AI Dependence on Critical Minerals

Africa's iron ore production is booming but it needs a parallel steel strategy

Learn more about how minerals power energy and technologies

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Revitalizing the future economy: Critical mineral derivatives could bring stability

Why recycling metal is an opportunity too good to waste

Why the mining sector must dig deep to explain its move towards net zero

The mining industry must be ambitious in its support of the net zero transition

Securing critical minerals for energy transition requires collective action

Why partnerships are critical to accelerating energy transition

Why understanding mineral associations is key to managing the critical minerals supply gap

Why we need international data sharing on critical minerals

Why supply chain resilience is key to the energy transition

What are critical minerals - and why are they key to a greener future?

Lithium is not oil: A critical minerals perspective on what makes a resilient energy transition

How Japan solved its rare earth minerals dependency issue

Why we need global cooperation on critical mineral supplies

The great minerals scramble: materials for the energy transition

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Electric cars, solar panels and batteries rely on these 5 critical minerals