Every clean technology rests on a handful of critical minerals. The reserves sit in the South; the refining, the components and the patents sit elsewhere. This is where the green industrial question begins.
Instituto de Relações Internacionais / PUC-Rio
Reserves, mine production and refining are three different geographies. A country can hold the ore, another can dig it, and a third can turn it into a usable material. Select a mineral to read the gap between where it is found and where it becomes industrial.
For each mineral: the share of world reserves, of 2024 mine production and of refining capacity held by the leading countries. The distance between the first bar and the last is the measure of the problem.
A country can sit on the world's largest reserve of a mineral and still import the finished component that mineral becomes. Ownership of the rock is not ownership of the value.— On reserves and refining
The same minerals of Part I reappear as components in the six green value chains. For each chain: which minerals it draws on, the component or technology each one enables, and an indicative reading of how much of the chain's material value the minerals carry. Value shares are order-of-magnitude estimates — see Methods.
The same evidence, read three ways.
Between the mine and the module lie the two stages where value concentrates: refining and component manufacture. Both are the thinnest on the map of the South.— On the geography of capture
Each chain runs across four stages: extraction of the critical mineral, refining, component manufacture, and the final product. Choose a chain and a stage to see where each one physically happens. Hubs are illustrative leading centres — see Methods for sources.
Follow a chain from the mine to the finished technology. Somewhere along the way it passes through a single stage that one country controls — the chokepoint. Press play, or pick a chain, to watch where each one narrows.
Since 2023 the chokepoints have become instruments. China restricts the supply side — export licences on the stages it controls; the United States and the European Union work the demand side — content rules, tariffs, stockpiles and targets. Press play to watch the measures accumulate.