Colorado School of Mines Calls for Critical-Mineral Trading Markets - Price Transparency Moves Center Stage

Highlights

• The Payne Institute's State of Critical Minerals Report 2026 outlines six priorities, including building transparent markets for critical minerals.
• 62 federally supported critical-mineral projects worth $27.3 billion have been identified, but 65% of that value rests on conditional commitments.
• Opaque pricing discourages long-term contracts, which in turn blocks project financing—creating a circular barrier to supply-chain development.
• The report proposes product standards, provenance rules, price discovery tools, and digital marketplaces without advocating government-set prices.
• DARPA's OPEN program is developing cost-based reference-price and supply-demand forecasting tools to support market transparency.