Protecting the supply of critical minerals that are vital to the renewables market is an emerging threat to energy security, the head of the International Energy Agency warned on Thursday.
Dr Fatih Birol told a high-level conference on global energy security that while the threat to fossil fuel supplies – either through wars, environmental disasters or sabotage – remained a major risk to global trade, there were also concerns over the concentration of critical minerals to just a few countries.
Hosted by the British government and the International Energy Agency, the two-day summit brings together government ministers from 60 countries, senior European Union officials, energy sector CEOs and heads of international organisations to assess risks to the global energy system and figure out solutions.
Dr Birol stressed the crucial role of critical minerals in the “remarkable story of the very strong expansion of clean advanced energy technologies” in recent years, which meant that 85 per cent of all new power plants in 2024 were either solar, wind or hydropower, with another five per cent nuclear.
Furthermore, one in four cars sold in the world were electric and that figure was only going to grow. But that in itself was creating a “problem”, he said.
“To manufacture this new clean energy technologies, you need critical minerals,” he said. “We look at where the critical minerals are produced, where they are refined and where they are manufactured, that is a huge concentration, and this is something that we think is risky.”
The world’s top critical mineral producers are China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia, Chile, Indonesia, and to a lesser extent America.
On Thursday, Australia announced an initial investment of $763 million to set up a strategic reserve of critical minerals as it looks to create a separate supply chain in a market dominated by China.
With the threat of conflict or climate change, this concentration of the raw materials in a handful of countries was a “risky business”, said Dr Birol, and one that the IEA considered “a new emerging energy security challenge”. It was also the reason why it had set up a critical minerals programme.
Therefore global powers had “to be frank to ourselves” and recognise there were now two energy security risks with the minerals but also oil and gas, that “will remain as part of the energy mix for years to come”.
Tommy Joyce, US acting assistant secretary of energy for international affairs, told participants they should be “honest about the world’s growing energy needs, not focused on net-zero politics”.
He called policies that push for clean power over fossil fuels "harmful and dangerous," and claimed building wind turbines requires "concessions to or coercion from China" because it supplies necessary rare minerals.
The conference, that has representatives from 60 countries attending, was opened by UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who shared a surprise message from King Charles III that the monarch had asked him to read out.
“As we all navigate the transition to cleaner energy for our planet and energy security for our citizens, summits such as these are vital for facilitating shared learning between nations, particularly those in the global south and across the Commonwealth,” the king said.
Likely referring to the energy shock from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he stated that “events in recent years” had demonstrated that sustainable energy could lead to “more resilient and secure energy systems”.
With Britain leading the way in wind energy – it has three of the world’s top five largest wind farms – Mr Miliband emphasised that the push for renewables meant that clean power was “about energy security as much as fighting climate change”.
“As long as energy can be weaponised against us, our countries and our citizens are vulnerable and exposed,” he said. Britain’s approach to becoming a low carbon power was “a route to energy security”.
“Low carbon energy can play a critical role in delivering energy security for many countries around the world, and it presents a solution to the issue of energy security that simply wasn’t true a decade-and-a-half ago,” he added.
