Highlights
- The WEF and McKinsey report reveals China’s overwhelming control of critical mineral refining and production.
- There are potential risks to global energy transition goals due to China’s dominance.
- Western industrial sovereignty is now directly linked to raw material access.
- Significant challenges exist in developing competitive mineral supply chains.
- Urgent public-private collaboration is needed to counter China’s state-backed mineral market dominance.
- Strategic partnerships and innovative approaches are essential to address these challenges.
The World Economic Forum (opens in a new tab) (WEF), in partnership with McKinsey & Co (opens in a new tab)., has released a white paper, Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition (opens in a new tab), outlining a sober, detailed, and highly strategic framework for reshaping the global critical minerals supply chain. Their message is clear: the future of energy security, industrial competitiveness, and climate progress depends on an end-to-end value chain transformation—from upstream exploration to downstream refining and circular recycling.
While the paper is replete with polished analysis and compelling charts, one uncomfortable truth echoes between the lines: the West remains dangerously unprepared to outmaneuver China’s dominance without urgent, aligned, and bold intervention.
WEF’s intelligence rightly emphasizes the geographic concentration of refining and production—China controls 95% of global gallium, over 70% of rare earth element refining, and upwards of 75% of refined cobalt. Lead times for new mines can stretch to 20 years, making 2030 energy goals increasingly fragile.
The Forum highlights the rising urgency of resilient supply chains for materials like lithium, graphite, nickel, and NdPr. Yet while the report’s tone is measured, the stakes it outlines are anything but: industrial sovereignty in the West is now linked directly to raw material access. While the Forum calls for public-private collaboration, ESG harmonization, and innovation, it largely sidesteps the central geopolitical dilemma—China’s dominance is not just market-based but state-backed and mission-driven.
Some Missing Points
Rare Earth Exchanges commends the WEF’s thorough framework, but raises a critical challenge: Who will implement it? The U.S. and EU have moved to fast-track mine permits, fund strategic partnerships, and court allies like Australia and Ukraine.
But Western capital markets remain slow, fragmented, and risk-averse to the space, particularly the integration of the upstream, midstream, and downstream. Bureaucracy, litigation, and public ambivalence continue to stall project timelines. Unlike China’s state-capital fusion, Western systems depend on investor trust, transparent incentives, and timely, accurate intelligence.
That’s where Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) comes in. As the only AI-native platform tracking supply chain risks, geopolitical dynamics, and capital flows in real-time, we are arming investors, policymakers, and producers with the one asset WEF cannot deliver: early, actionable signals in a volatile world. The time for polite white papers is over. Execution now determines whether the West leads or lags in the next industrial era.
Source: World Economic Forum & McKinsey, Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition (opens in a new tab)
If you can’t mine it, refine it, or move it, you don’t own the future. Discuss at the Rare Earth Exchanges Forum. (opens in a new tab)
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