Critical Minerals: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Road Ahead

Keynote address (as written) at Resourcing Tomorrow 2025.
Rohitesh Dhawan, President and CEO, ICMM

Understanding these contradictions is the first step to resolving them. We now see clearly how tax systems entrench inequality. We know that without retiring fossil assets early, renewables won’t solve the climate crisis because they become an addition to the system, not a transition.

And mining, in 2025, sits squarely in this landscape of paradox.

The headlines shout about soaring mineral demand, looming shortages, and an urgent need for new mines. The G7, G20, IEA, UN – every major body has critical minerals at the top of their agenda. Over 100 countries have released strategies. Never has mining had so much global attention.

Yet metal plants are closing. Majors are restructuring. Outside of gold and copper, prices are weaker. New projects are stalling. And the entire mining sector is valued at less than one-third of Nvidia. Something doesn’t add up.
So what’s going on?

I believe the disconnect comes down to three paradoxes – rarely understood outside niche corners of the industry. My hope is that by naming them, we can unlock the collective action needed to achieve the mission of Resourcing Tomorrow 2025: a responsible and resilient mineral supply chain.

I’ll illustrate each paradox through one case study – American copper, European aluminium, and mining everywhere. Do note that the figures I quote are rounded.

1. American Copper – the paradox of demand without supply

The US consumes 2 million tonnes of copper a year – vital for electrification, infrastructure, and urbanisation. Demand will double within a decade. Yet the country has just two operating smelters. China has 200.

You might think, “Well, Canada can fill the gap.” Except Canada is no friend of the US right now and has even fewer smelters – and its last one, the Horne smelter, is reportedly at risk of closure. 

How is it that the world’s largest economy – with the world’s most predictable long-term copper demand – cannot secure supply of a metal it considers essential?

The answer is brutally simple: economics.

Most mines sell copper concentrate. Refiners convert this into blister copper, anodes and cathodes, and charge a fee known as the treatment charge. This is quoted as an annual benchmark, but there are also spot deals between individual miners and refineries.

For a decade, this fee hovered around $80/ton. In 2025, it collapsed to minus $80/ton in some cases.

Think about that. Smelters are now paying mines for the privilege of refining their concentrate – while absorbing the cost of doing the work. It is like your dry cleaner paying you to valet your shirts! 

Why? Because smelters need feedstock to survive. And global concentrate is tight. Several major mines are underperforming or offline. With smelter utilisation at a record-low 75%, refiners are desperate. Considering the lack of new mines and long lead times, this is the new normal. 

State-backed players, especially in China, can absorb these losses. Western smelters cannot. Neither can most of the producer countries increasingly demanding in-country beneficiation of minerals. 

The result? A metal deemed “critical,” with soaring demand and high prices, is still starved of new mines and smelting capacity. The situation in Europe is arguably even more dire.

And this reveals the uncomfortable truth: Western free-market rules are clashing with state-directed competitors. Governments must choose – embrace industrial policy or accept ongoing vulnerability.

2. European Aluminium – the paradox of green ambition without affordable energy

Europe produces 5 million tonnes of aluminium and consumes three times that amount. The gap between demand and supply rise sharply to 2030 and beyond.

Prices are strong, up 45% since 2020. Aluminium and its precursors are on the EU’s Critical Raw Materials list.

You’d expect a thriving industry. Instead, companies are shutting extrusion lines and cutting midstream production. Why? Three forces are colliding:

1. High energy prices: Aluminium is “solid electricity.” And Europe has some of the most expensive power in the world. That alone makes European production €400–€600 per tonne more expensive than in China or the US.

Expensive energy = less aluminium. Full stop.

2. A well-intentioned but flawed CBAM: The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) aims to protect European industry from dirtier imports. But its current design risks doing the opposite.

Scrap is treated as zero-emissions, enabling foreign producers to over-declare scrap content without robust verification. This could give them a 3–7% price advantage over EU producers.

Indirect emissions – power – are excluded entirely. So, carbon-heavy grids abroad go unpenalised, while EU producers pay the full cost of electricity-related emissions.

The result? European producers who emit 60% less CO₂ per tonne are being undercut by higher-carbon imports.

3. US tariffs: A 50% US tariff now prices European aluminium out of one of its most important markets. There’s not much Europe can do about US tariff policy but better energy price and CBAM design would have meant less overall pain.  

The lesson from European aluminium for critical minerals more broadly? No metal industry can survive – let alone compete – without cheap, reliable energy. In a geopolitically fractured world, it is even more important. 

3. Mining everywhere – the paradox of urgent need without innovation adoption

The third paradox is internal. If the first two are about external conditions, this one is a mirror held up to our industry.
Mining has never needed innovation more.

Permitting is slow. Environmental and social expectations are rising. Demand is surging. Companies are pledging low-carbon, nature-positive, minimal-waste mining.

This should be the golden age of mining innovation.

Instead, every innovator I’ve spoken to in the past year tells the same story:

“Our solution improves safety, efficiency or both. We’ve proven it works in real conditions. But we cannot get companies to bring us on site.”

These innovations include:

• A reactor that boosts cementation efficiency and metal recovery
• A biological method for leaching copper from low-grade primary sulfide ores
• Entirely new extraction methods such as hyperaccumulator plants or tapping mineral-rich deep crustal brines

Why are they blocked? Money is always a safe answer, and that is true. Mining chronically under-invests in R&D – 0.5% of revenue versus 6–14% in pharma and tech.

But the deeper issue is cultural. A well-intentioned but counterproductive view of risk.

New equals risky. And in an industry rightly obsessed with safety, “risky” is often a conversation-ender. 

But the truth is: Innovation is not inherently unsafe. What is unsafe is refusing to evolve while pressures intensify around us.
This is cultural work – deep, long-term, values-driven change. And it needs to start now. That’s as much a call to action as a reminder to myself, as this may need an industry-wide intervention. 

Conclusion

If we are serious about responsible and resilient mineral supply chains, we must go beyond the headlines and confront the real forces at play: the economics and geopolitics that make processing uncompetitive without support; the energy and carbon pricing systems that metals are highly sensitive to; and, the cultural barriers in mining that hold back innovation.

And before we get too despondent, remember – if Arsenal can top the Premier League, then truly, anything is possible.