Innovation as resilience: Demand-side strategies for critical mineral supply chain security

This report, the first in the Redefining Resilience series of publications, examines demand-side innovation for critical mineral supply chains: the set of strategies that reduce how much of a constrained mineral an economy requires and expand the range of viable supply options. It argues that critical mineral supply chain policy has a structural blind spot. It has been organized around the question of where materials come from while largely ignoring an equally consequential set of questions: how much of these materials economies actually need, how that demand is shaped, and who shapes demand. Material substitution, material efficiency, and system and product redesign are not substitutes for supply-side investment, but they are essential complements that remain underused.

Drawing on a roundtable convened under the Chatham House Rule by the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, this report examines two sectors, batteries and permanent magnets, to show how demand-side innovation either reaches deployment or stalls. The barriers are concrete and addressable: financing systems poorly structured for first-of-kind technology, procurement frameworks that privilege incumbent materials, qualification processes that slow substitution, and, overarchingly, a policy architecture focused overwhelmingly on supply.

Closing these gaps requires targeted interventions: demand-pull mechanisms that bolster markets for alternative technologies, standards reform that enables substitution, and better coordination that brings manufacturers and system designers into supply chain policy alongside miners and processors. The goal is not to replace supply-side interventions but to build the complementary demand-side infrastructure needed to strengthen and de-risk mineral supply chains.

Staff

Alexis Harmon

Assistant Director

Global Energy Center

Critical Minerals Geopolitics & Energy Security

Staff

Reed Blakemore

Director, Research and Programs

Global Energy Center

Geopolitics & Energy Security Energy Transitions

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Argentina Critical Minerals

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Image: A lithium-ion battery for electric vehicles (EV) manufactured by REPT is pictured at the 2024 Paris Auto Show in Paris, France, October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier