Semi-quantitative representation of raw material flows and their current supply risks in nine technologies and three selected sectors A raw material is critical when it is of high importance to a country’s economy, but also when it has a high risk associated with its supply.įigure 1. However, they have become a vector of dependency, geopolitical risk and a hugely important trade weapon. Raw materials are the basic resources indispensable for producing key technologies of the green transition –such as wind turbines, solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles– and the digital transition. The remaining 10.9% is unevenly distributed. They are followed by Russia, with 10% of the world’s total rare earths, and India, which supplies 5.8%. Brazil and Vietnam, the next countries on the list, together stockpile as much as China does alone (18.3% each). Rare earths, and critical raw materials in general, have been the great forgotten commodities in the geopolitical competition of recent years, which has largely focused on which country dominates certain technologies –artificial intelligence, semiconductors and so many others– and not so much on what means were necessary to achieve dominance.Ĭhina controls 36.7% of global rare earth reserves. In 1992 the father of China’s economic revolution, Deng Xiaoping, said that ‘the Middle East has the oil, but China has the rare earths’. Raw materials are the great overlooked in the global technological competition.
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