From The Klima Nachrichten

New studies show that demand for critical metals is growing six times faster than supply – silver will be half short by 2030

We all know the story: wind and sun are available in unlimited quantities, clean and sustainable. The technology is there; you just have to expand it. If it weren’t for a small detail that is often overlooked in the colorful brochures of the energy transition: the raw materials. Because while sun and wind are indeed abundant, the same is not true for the metals and rare earths needed to harvest this energy.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has presented the figures in its current “Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025”. And they have it all – even if they are presented in the usual optimistic tone.

The number of horrors: factor 6.4

A recent study has calculated what the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 means: The annual demand for 21 critical minerals will increase from 4.7 million tons (2022) to 30 million tons (2030). That is an increase by a factor of 6.4 – in just eight years.

The IEA itself forecasts for its net-zero scenario (NZE) by 2040: lithium demand increases by a factor of 9, graphite quadruples, cobalt and rare earths double, copper increases by 50 percent. Clean energy technologies alone would devour almost 40 million tons of these minerals by 2040.

The Silver Dilemma: When the Sun Gets Expensive

The situation is particularly dramatic for silver. A European study from the end of 2025 calculates that global demand will rise to 48,000 to 52,000 tonnes per year by 2030. The supply? If you follow historical trends, it reaches just 34,000 tons. This means that only 62 to 70 percent of demand can be met.

The solar industry is the biggest driver. In 2023, it already consumed 19 percent of global silver production – in 2014 it was still 5 percent. By 2030, the share could rise to 40 percent. The newer solar cell technologies (TOPCon, heterojunction) require 1.5 to 2 times more silver per gigawatt than the older PERC cells.

The consequence? A study from 2023 shows that if the 63 terawatts of photovoltaics required for complete electrification were to be installed by 2050, 89 to 93 percent of the silver reserves known today would be consumed. With dominant TOPCon technology, the solar industry’s annual silver demand could exceed 10,000 tons as early as 2027 – that would be 43 percent of global supply. And that’s just for solar.

Copper: “The line is breaking”

Copper is the backbone of any electrified infrastructure. An electric car requires twice as much copper as a combustion engine, an offshore wind turbine over 20 tons per megawatt. The IEA and S&P Global predict supply shortages from the mid-2020s – that is, now.

If you look at the recent sharp rise in the price of copper, the market seems to confirm this assessment: Currently, the price is around $5.40 per pound – 34 percent higher than a year ago. In the last month alone, the price rose by over 9 percent. These are no longer normal fluctuations, this is scarcity that is reflected in prices.

The problem: The ore quality has been declining for years. In Chile, the largest copper producer, the average copper content in the ore has decreased by 30 percent in the last 15 years. New copper mines take about 20 years from discovery to production. However, there are only five years left until 2030, when the energy transition is to show significant progress. A mine planned today will not deliver until 2045 – much too late.

Lithium: The bottleneck of e-mobility

Lithium – the “white gold” of the energy transition. The IEA expects supply bottlenecks from 2027-2028 if production capacities are not drastically expanded. Currently, the market is in a paradoxical situation: prices have collapsed by over 80 percent in 2024 due to short-term overcapacity. But these prices make new investments unattractive – exactly the investments that would be needed for the predicted increase in demand.

The China question: 86 percent concentration

This is where the geopolitical component comes into play. The IEA notes: The market concentration for critical minerals has not decreased, but increased. For copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths, the average market share of the three largest refining nations was 86 percent in 2024 – in 2020 it was still 82 percent.

The reason: Almost all of the growth came from a single source – Indonesia for nickel, China for everything else. China currently refines almost half of the world’s copper and dominates lithium, graphite, cobalt and rare earths with similar proportions. At the end of 2024, China imposed export restrictions on gallium, germanium and antimony – followed by tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, indium, molybdenum and seven heavy rare earths at the beginning of 2025.

More than half of all energy-related minerals are now subject to export controls. The IEA predicts that this concentration will hardly change in the next ten years – even with today’s political requirements, the share of top 3 suppliers would only fall marginally and effectively return to 2020 levels.

The investment brake: 5 percent instead of 14 percent

And this is where it gets really problematic: Investments in critical minerals increased by only 5 percent in 2024 – after 14 percent in 2023. Adjusted for inflation, growth was only 2 percent in real terms. Exploration activity stagnated completely in 2024, after years of growth.

The reason is the low prices. Lithium prices fell by 80 percent, graphite, cobalt and nickel by 10 to 20 percent. Good for consumers, bad for the future. Because without investments today, there will be no mines tomorrow. And without new mines, there would be no minerals for the energy transition the day after tomorrow.

At what point does it become a lid?

The crucial question is: At what share of renewable energies in the global electricity mix will the availability of raw materials become a hard cap? The answer is complex, but the data gives clues:

It will be critical for silver if solar continues to grow exponentially. With current trends, the solar industry could account for half of global primary production by 2030 alone. This leaves dramatically less for all other applications (electronics, medical technology, 5G). If solar does indeed account for over 30 percent of global electricity generation by 2030, as predicted by the IEA, silver will reach its physical limits.

For copper, the bottleneck is earlier. Columbia University estimates that copper will become scarce as early as 2026 if the expansion of electromobility and power grids proceeds as planned. With a complete electrification of transport and massive grid expansion, copper could become the limiting factor before renewables even reach 50 percent of the electricity mix.

The studies show that without massive improvements in material efficiency, recycling and substitution, there is a risk of supply gaps for six key minerals: lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt, neodymium and copper. And that already in this decade.

Is the IEA concealing the problem?

Interestingly, no. The IEA reports in detail on all these problems. The “Global Critical Minerals Outlook” is now an annual report with hundreds of pages of detailed analyses. What is striking, however, is that the tone is optimistic. There is talk of “challenges”, of “risks” that are “manageable” if action is taken in time.

But will action be taken in time? The investment figures say no. The concentration trends say no. The physical realities say no.

Recycling: The lifeline?

The IEA sees recycling as an important lever. By 2050, recycling could reduce the need for new mine production by 25 to 40 percent – for copper and cobalt by 40 percent, for lithium and nickel by 25 percent. Sounds good.

The problem: Recycling only works if there is enough material in the cycle. Solar panels have a lifespan of 25+ years. The first massive waves of installations were 2010-2015, which means that relevant recycling quantities from solar will not be available until 2035 at the earliest. Too late for the 2030 targets.

The situation is similar with lithium batteries. E-car batteries last 10-15 years. The big wave of e-cars began in 2020. In the mid-2030s at the earliest.

The inconvenient truth: Green mining does not exist

More than 50 percent of today’s lithium and copper production takes place in regions with extreme water stress. The IEA dryly notes that climate change, droughts and floods are endangering the supply – in the mining areas of the minerals that are supposed to combat climate change. The green energy transition leaves behind tailings heaps in Chile, deforested rainforests in Indonesia and contaminated rivers in the Congo. But people don’t like to talk about that.

Conclusion: Physics doesn’t care about goals

The energy transition has a fundamental problem that is reluctant to be talked about: it replaces a combustion-based economy with a material-based one. Oil and gas are burned – after that they are gone, but new ones can be extracted. Metals and rare earths, on the other hand, are stuck in durable products.

The IEA figures clearly show that the demand for critical minerals will increase six times faster than the supply. Silver will be missing a third in 2030. Copper shortages are imminent immediately. For lithium from 2027. And 86 percent of the supply is in the hands of three nations – dominated by China.

You can want to expand renewable energies. You can set climate targets. You can dream of 100 percent green electricity. But if the materials are not there, the wind turbines remain in storage and the solar panels unbuilt. It is the invisible limit of the energy transition – and it is closer than many want to admit.

The energy transition will not fail due to a lack of political will. It will be

the availability of a few dozen elements from the periodic table. No subsidies and no resolutions will help against this. Only physics can help against this. And it is uncompromising.

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Sources: IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, Study “Critical mineral bottlenecks constrain sub-technology choices“, Study “Forecasting silver demand and supply by 2030“, Columbia University “Critical Mineral Supply Constraints“