A looming metals bottleneck for the clean-energy transition
The global push toward clean energy is colliding with a hard physical reality: it takes a lot of metal to electrify everything. Industry forecasts increasingly point to a steep rise in demand for critical minerals—including copper, nickel, lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite, and rare earth elements—needed for EV batteries, power grids, wind turbines, and solar infrastructure. Several analyses suggest that, by 2040, the world may need roughly five times today’s volumes of certain transition metals to meet climate and electrification targets.
That mismatch between ambition and supply is often described as “Mining’s 2040 crisis”: a scenario in which permitting delays, limited refining capacity, and insufficient recycling lead to shortages, volatile prices, and slower deployment of low-carbon technologies. Yet the same period could also become a story of innovation—where new tools across exploration, extraction, processing, and circular supply chains help close the gap.
Dailyza examines why the metals crunch is emerging, what is most constrained, and which technologies could realistically change the supply equation.