The Atlantic Council Global Energy Center’s Redefining Resilience series explores the next generation of strategies for strengthening critical energy and technology supply chains. Moving beyond strategies that typically rely on expanding mining and processing, the series examines how innovation, circularity, waste recovery, and byproduct optimization can reshape minerals resilience for the twenty-first century.
Global competition over critical materials, manufacturing capacity, and energy technologies is accelerating. Traditional approaches, primarily scaling new mining and refining, are necessary but insufficient to meet rapidly rising demand. The Redefining Resilience series fills this gap by spotlighting complementary strategies that reduce vulnerabilities, unlock new sources of strategic advantage, and create more flexible, diversified supply chains across energy, defense, and advanced manufacturing. Through private roundtables, expert interviews, and publications, this series will identify actionable pathways for governments and industry to build competitive, secure, and sustainable supply chains.
research pillars
Recycling
In an era marked by intensifying geopolitical competition over critical materials, recycling represents a strategic lever to reduce dependence on vulnerable supply chains, extend the lifespan of strategic assets, and fortify industrial resilience across defense, energy, and technology sectors.
Innovation
Technological breakthroughs in materials science, refining, and manufacturing can fundamentally reshape competitive dynamics, reducing dependence on concentrated suppliers, enabling cleaner industrial processes, and opening new pathways for leadership in critical energy and defense technologies.
Waste recovery
Waste streams like tailings and slags contain untapped reserves of a huge variety of in-demand strategic elements. Studies have shown that recovering even 1 percent of these materials could substantially reduce import reliance for most elements, yet policy frameworks and project economics lag behind technical potential.
Byproduct optimization
Many critical minerals are most efficiently sourced as byproducts of large, established commodity operations, such as gallium from aluminum refining or tellurium from copper smelting. In fact, much of today’s global supply already comes from these major systems, yet recent policy efforts often overlook byproduct optimization as a fast, economical, and lower-risk pathway for bolstering mineral supply chains.
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This series is part of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center’s broader work on energy supply chains and critical minerals.
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The Global Energy Center develops and promotes pragmatic and nonpartisan policy solutions designed to advance global energy security, enhance economic opportunity, and accelerate pathways to net-zero emissions.