Where in the Data Are the Rare Earth Minerals?

Daniel Yergin shows that achieving the #netzero target will lead to a mining boom – big oil to big shovels, he says.

In his article from The Wall Street Journal, the following points are starkly laid out:
1. Political instability will make it difficult to obtain all the minerals electric cars will need.
2. The push for net zero by 2050 will increase critical minerals’ demand with attendant price spikes with negative consequences for net zero.
3. Slowly evolving supply chains is the single biggest obstacle to renewables development.

Exploring Yergin’s point about political instability, I plot a ranking of Global Political stability versus ranking of Global ranking of Rare Earth Minerals (REM) reserves.

The plot shows that jurisdictions ranked as least stable tend to have higher reserves. If the plot were divided into quadrants, the “ideal” quadrant would be the bottom left – high ranking in REM reserves with high political stability – alas, there’s only Australia in that quadrant.

The US led Minerals Supply Partnership clearly has taken note and guess the two countries that top its list of partners – Australia and Canada. It’s also a happy coincidence that the list is in alphabetical order!

Below is the graphic from the visual capitalist article article.