Cleodie Rickard is trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now, a UK-based organisation working for a global economy where people come before profit.
“Critical minerals” is a buzzword in discussions about the green transition. But across industry reports, NGO communications and the media, the same claim is repeated: achieving net zero “inevitably means more mining”. Rarely is it backed with evidence.
In this context, campaigners opposing extractive harm – mostly in the Global South, often on Indigenous lands – are frequently misconstrued as opposing climate action. Meanwhile, mining companies claim a social licence to ramp up mining, framing themselves as planetary saviours.
Amid rising geopolitical tensions, the fog of war is clearing the greenwash: governments are increasingly justifying their scramble for minerals in terms of defence and ‘national security’. This lays bare how “critical minerals” is a political rather than a scientific term, defined differently relative to countries’ interests. It can therefore be contested.
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To cut through the noise, we need a clearer picture of the specific industries different minerals serve – and in what amounts. And, crucially, the public must decide what kind of transition we are needing to resource.
Critical for whom?
Our new research at Global Justice Now examines the UK’s list of 33 minerals defined as “critical”. Using International Energy Agency (IEA) data, we analysed how much of each mineral’s current production is used for green technologies – or other ends – and how much is needed to meet the IEA’s 2040 transition scenario.
We found that one in five of these minerals play no role in the IEA’s green pathway. Another 15 – almost half – would require only a small proportion of current global production by 2040, suggesting their ‘criticality’ is not driven by green goals.
Only seven minerals require significant uplifts – and mostly for electric vehicles (EVs), not energy generation. The defence and aerospace sector is after five of the UK’s non-transition minerals and eight transition-relevant ones.
This raises important questions. Do we need a mining boom? Should the military sector be getting priority access to those minerals that are in high demand for green goals? Should the transition rely on a model of private EV ownership?
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Political choices shape material needs. Our research suggests renewable goals can largely be met within existing mineral production, if we make small reallocations of supply across sectors – slicing the mineral pie differently, rather than growing it.
Instead, the UK government has announced financing for mineral importers to specifically benefit “defence, aerospace and EV battery makers”, and a £6-billion ($8bn) increase in annual defence spending.
Wind turbines, not bombs
Instead of pouring public money into weapons with a hollow claim of growth and jobs, the moment demands a proactive green industrial strategy.
Given the mineral-intensiveness of EVs, we need improved public transport, shared mobility and less car-centric planning. For grid storage, we need research into things like pumped hydro and flow batteries – which must be government-led and well-funded, with knowledge held in the public domain rather than enclosed by corporations to tout false solutions.
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Instead, the defence sector is not only competing with the green industry for minerals but is becoming the sole darling of industrial policy. As Common Wealth argues, the military sector is not inherently prosperous but has enjoyed strategic and targeted investment.
Public investment, procurement and coordination in the renewables sector at scale would far better serve jobs, livelihoods and climate goals. What’s needed is no less than a state-led reprioritisation of mineral demand, ensuring preferential access for socially useful sectors. This is no longer such a bold proposal amid the growing consensus that market forces have failed to respond to today’s crises.
Material choices
Besides the flawed economic logic, there’s a bitter irony to resourcing our militaries through extraction that is itself driving conflict. From US threats to annex Greenland to the EU sourcing Congolese minerals via Rwanda, new resource wars only make us less safe. Likewise, climate policy pursued through the lens of ‘securitisation’ risks a dystopia of armed lifeboats and sacrifice zones – one we already glimpse in growing anti-migrant and authoritarian rhetoric.
We cannot build a green future on the exploitation of poorer countries, and we don’t have to. The data shows no argument against pursuing an energy transition, but the path we take matters: ‘private sufficiency, public luxury’ is not only politically desirable but materially necessary.
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‘Degrowth’ is term that can stoke fears of eco-austerity or romanticised primitivism. But cutting consumption and production in certain industries that are socially or ecologically harmful answers calls for both global justice and a realpolitik around insecure supply chains.
Here lies the hope: that ‘another world is possible’ is more than a symbolic catchphrase when we can set out its feasible material – or mineral – basis.
