On Wednesday, 11 December 2024, Noah Law MP, the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Critical Minerals, welcomed over 50 members of industry, government and academia to the Houses of Parliament for the first official meeting of the APPG.
Noah delivered the opening remarks, noting the ‘buzz in Parliament about critical minerals’. “There has been a step change in in how Government thinks,” he said. “The Industrial Strategy is now at the heart of what we do. We are determined to make the UK a clean energy superpower.” He then introduced the speakers of the day, Dr Shobhan Dhir (IEA) and Dr Pierre Josso (BGS), as well as the APPG Secretariat that organised the meeting, Jeff Townsend and Eileen Maes.
To provide context on the current critical mineral markets and its outlooks, Dr Shobhan Dhir, an analyst on the Critical Minerals team at the International Energy Agency (IEA), gave a virtual presentation on the state of demand and supply trends in 2024 for six critical minerals: copper, cobalt, nickel, graphite, lithium and rare earth elements (REEs). The IEA statistics shockingingly highlighted that expected supply from announced project for copper and lithium, for example, are only projected to meet 70 per cent and 46 per cent of demand for global climate goals by 2035. There is a disturbing gap between future demand and supply of critical minerals, one that greatly threatens the UK and the world’s Net Zero targets.
Dr Pierre Josso from the Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC) at the British Geological Survey (BGS) then presented CMIC’s updated UK 2024 Criticality Assessment and critical minerals list, including how it will inform the UK Government’s upcoming Critical Minerals Strategy. On 3 December, Sarah Jones MP, the Minister of State for the Department of Business and Trade (DBT) and the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), announced at a Westminster Hall debate on the domestic production of critical minerals led by Perran Moon MP, that the government are planning on publishing an updated Critical Minerals Strategy in the new year.
After Dr Josso’s presentation, Jeff Townsend, founder of the Critical Minerals Association (UK) and acting Secretariat of the APPG, gave a brief overview of the UK situation. He emphasised that the past year has been characterised by a ‘shift in momentum’, with ‘progress in the UK upstream’ but ‘stalling in the midstream’ due to price volatility and lack of investment from OEMs. Many, particularly British banks, still have not grasped the gap between commercial value and strategic value of critical mineral projects - and this is where the Government can step in. The UK boasts an exceptional research and innovation landscape and some of the best universities in the world, but falling numbers in student recruitment threaten this. The UK is also ‘fast becoming a powerhouse in the circular economy’, but a lack of alignment on product design and waste legislation threatens this. On the issues of financing, legislation and skills gaps, the new government has a chance to instigate transformative change and support the growth of the UK critical minerals sector.
The publication of Invest 2035, the Government's new Industrial Strategy, identified 8 priority industrial sectors, 5 of which require critical minerals. The announcement of UK Export Finance’s new funding for critical minerals along with BGS's new geological data also shows how the UK is ‘moving in the right direction’. The UK should now focus on the speed of delivering action and prioritise ‘horizontal policy levers’ that will boost sectors across the minerals value chain, for example subsidising energy for nationally significant industrial projects, and increasing resourcing for local and devolved councils to effectively manage planning permits on shortened timelines.
To conclude the event, the Co-Chair of the APPG, Perran Moon MP, provided an overview of the APPG’s key priorities for the next year: domestic capacity; planning and permitting; finance; skills; midstream; infrastructure; circular economy; and international alignment. He noted that during a recent meeting of the APPG for Automotives, the top priority of downstream sector stakeholders was securing lithium supply for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. “Prioritising critical minerals is no longer a choice,” Perran said. “It’s an imperative.”
During discussions with the audience, questions ranged from the state of the UK’s relationship to China given recent export bans on antimony, germanium and gallium, to the BGS’s newly published Demand Foresight Studies, how the Government plans to work with British banks on addressing the gap in private financing, and if the Department for Education (DfE) will tackle the reduction of geoscience from school curricula across the country.
Thank you to everyone who attended the APPG meeting. We look forward to continuing these important discussions in the new year.
Article by Eileen Maes, Communications Manager, CMA (UK)
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