Publications

Recent geopolitical actions regarding the supply of critical minerals have highlighted both the threats posed by countries dominating a critical mineral supply chain, and the potential mitigations served by alternative supplier countries. However, no systematic quantification exists for the intranational factors that determine such threats or mitigations. This study outlines a...

No abstract available.

Given the rapid expansion in the demand for mineral commodities that underpin worldwide economic growth and technological advancement, information regarding expected country-level mine production and production capacity is becoming increasingly important to industry stakeholders, end users, and policymakers. Production capacity can limit future supply, depending on how rapidly that...

Recently, there has been considerable recent controversy whether current and new lithium mines will be able to supply the rapidly growing needs of the electromobility transition. Mineral exploration projects are typically active for many years, and only some become operational mines. From exploration to production, the projects go through several stages of characterisation and evaluation...

China’s export controls on gallium and germanium exemplify concerns regarding the reliability of supplies of mineral commodities that are essential to economic development, national security, and transition to renewable energy. This report presents a new model that quantifies the potential effects of mineral commodity supply disruptions on the U.S. economy. After calculating...

Earthquakes have the potential to substantially affect mining operations, potentially leading to supply chain disruptions and adversely affecting the global economy. This study explores the quantification of earthquake risk to copper and rhenium commodity supply by examining the spatial concentration of high earthquake hazard areas and the commodity-specific mining, smelting, and...

The low-carbon energy transition requires significant increases in production for many mineral commodities. Understanding demand, technological requirements, and prices associated with this production increase requires understanding the supply chain dynamics of many minerals simultaneously, and via a consistent framework. A generalized economics-informed material flow method, global...

While previous resource conflicts have often been linked to fuel minerals such as oil, future resource conflict may revolve around nonfuel minerals that enable strategic emerging technologies. During a 2010 diplomatic dispute, China reportedly blocked exports of rare earth elements to Japan, thereby leveraging China’s near-monopoly to threaten Japanese manufacturers of advanced...