确保能源转型的矿产安全：通过政策、投资和创新解锁价值链（英）

Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Unlocking the Value Chain through Policy, Investment and Innovation

Foreword

Securing the critical materials needed for the net-zero transition is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement's goals. Despite recent progress in boosting certain material production, supply shortages are still anticipated for many critical minerals necessary for lower-carbon technologies. Global leaders recognize the need to secure the critical materials supply chain, as inaction could extend beyond the low-carbon transition to geopolitical, economic, and environmental considerations.

The World Economic Forum’s Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition (SMET) initiative, launched in 2023 with McKinsey & Company’s support, aims to raise awareness and encourage collaboration on innovative and enabling solutions to address the supply-demand gap. This paper explores various approaches for unlocking critical materials supply, identifying barriers to investment and innovation and highlighting the need for global multistakeholder collaboration.

Executive Summary

More collaboration and innovation are needed to ensure critical mineral supply meets clean energy demands. For the energy transition to progress at the required pace and scale, the materials supply chain must develop in parallel with the energy transition. Demand for critical minerals continues to increase, but supply has not kept up, potentially leading to acute risks if left unchecked. Public-private collaboration is essential to ensure an available, affordable, and sustainable global critical minerals supply-demand balance.

Policy, investment, and innovation can facilitate increases in primary and secondary supply and promote decreases in demand without compromising equity in access to clean energy technologies and energy system decarbonization. Barriers to investment and innovation in critical minerals can hinder progress in transitioning to clean energy systems:

1. Financial Barriers: High and uncertain capital expenditures for mining projects, insufficient business cases for scaling innovations, and financial risks of investing in early-stage innovation.
2. Enabling Environment Barriers: Lengthy permitting timelines, policy complexity, perceptions of the mining industry, lack of supporting infrastructure and skilled labor, and insufficient clarity in demand-side signals and prioritized innovation needs.
3. Cross-Cutting Barriers: Lack of ESG standardization, risks related to an evolving external environment, commercial risks of scaling and deploying innovations, and lack of transparency on minerals supply and demand data.

Solutions to overcome these barriers include:

1. Direct and Indirect Financial Support: Supporting new mining projects, innovation scale-up, and early-stage innovation.
2. Favourable Enabling Environment: Streamlining permitting processes, reducing policy complexities, engaging with communities, provisioning supporting infrastructure, supporting mining education, and communicating demand-side signals and innovation priorities.
3. Collaborative Action: Harmonizing ESG standards, encouraging trade and cooperation, reducing commercial risks of scaling and deploying innovations, and improving data transparency.

Introduction

Critical minerals are essential to the energy transition, but there is a risk that supply will fall short of increasing demand for some minerals. Clean energy technologies rely on these minerals, either directly or in processed form. Demand for these minerals may grow by 250% by 2030 according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) scenario. Despite recent progress in mining investments, the supply pipeline for many minerals may not meet this demand. Significant volatility in commodity prices further reduces the appetite for large multi-year capital investment programs.

Market tightness resulting from supply-demand imbalances could jeopardize the pace of the energy transition. Continued imbalance in supply and demand could cause a disorderly transition characterized by price volatility, geopolitical risks, and environmental pressures.

Key Barriers and Solutions

1. Financial Barriers:

   • High and uncertain capital expenditures for mining projects.
   • Insufficient business cases for scaling innovations.
   • Financial risks of investing in early-stage innovation.

2. Enabling Environment Barriers:

   • Lengthy permitting timelines.
   • Policy complexity.
   • Perceptions of the mining industry.
   • Lack of supporting infrastructure and skilled labor.
   • Insufficient clarity in demand-side signals and prioritized innovation needs.

3. Cross-Cutting Barriers:

   • Lack of ESG standardization.
   • Risks related to an evolving external environment.
   • Commercial risks of scaling and deploying innovations.
   • Lack of transparency on minerals supply and demand data.

4. Solutions:

   • Direct and Indirect Financial Support: Provide funding for new mining projects, innovation scale-up, and early-stage innovation.
   • Favourable Enabling Environment: Streamline permitting processes, reduce policy complexities, engage with communities, provision supporting infrastructure, support mining education, and communicate demand-side signals and innovation priorities.
   • Collaborative Action: Harmonize ESG standards, encourage trade and cooperation, reduce commercial risks of scaling and deploying innovations, and improve data transparency.

Next Steps

To enable investment and innovation, public sector players should engage with industry players and other public entities (e.g., state-owned enterprises). International and multilateral organizations could convene and