David Farrar: Critical minerals

Newsroom reports:

In a Cabinet paper about the critical minerals list and broader strategy, publicly released last week, Jones said the development of a critical minerals list was an important part of work to “secure access to essential minerals needed for our economic functions”.

“The clean energy transition is driving a global demand for minerals production, and countries are developing their resources on the back of this demand. Projections by the International Energy Agency suggest the demand for each of the five most important critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and neodymium) will likely increase between 1.5 and 7 times by 2030,” Jones’ Cabinet paper said.

This is more vital than people realise. If we want clean energy, we need more mining of minerals that are used in solar panels, electric cars, batteries etc.

The work has been a long time coming: in 2019, the Labour-led government committed to a list of critical minerals as part of a 10-year strategy, although a spokesperson in 2021 said the work was still “in its conceptual stages”.

LOL – another Labour delivery triumph. Conceptual stages is code for we forgot about it.

Across the Atlantic, the European Union’s new Critical Raw Materials Act has set a range of targets, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the bloc is not dependent on any single non-EU country for more than 65 percent of its strategic raw materials.

This is sensible, and should be applied in any area of critically important imports. If you are totally reliant on just one country, then you reduce your ability to independently disagree with them on issues.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.