 and welcome to the launch of the International Energy Agency's first ever critical minerals market review. I'm Jethro Mullen, head of the IA's communications team. I'm joined today by IA Executive Director, Dr. Fati Birol, by our Chief Energy Economist, Tim Gould, and by Teyoon Kim, the lead author of the report, which is free to read and download on our website, along with a new data explorer, which Mr. Gould will tell you more about shortly. During today's press webinar, Dr. Birol will make some opening remarks and then Mr. Gould will present the key findings of the report. We'll then take questions from journalists. For the journalists taking part in this press webinar, we invite you to submit your questions via the Q&A function in the Zoom. You can do this at any point during the presentation and we'll also take a two-minute break right after the presentation for you to submit your questions. With that, I'll hand over to our Executive Director, Dr. Birol. Very many thanks, Jethro, and greetings to all the colleagues who are following this press webinar. Greetings from the International Energy Agency headquarters. Dear colleagues, today we are launching a new market review. Many of you would know that we have market reviews for oil, gas, renewables, electricity, and now we are adding one other market review to this series, namely, Critical Minerals Market Review. This is the first one and we are going to regularly publish this market review. In addition to that, we are also launching the IES Critical Minerals Data Explorer, which provides all the data and projections the International Energy Agency has in the context of Critical Minerals. So, dear colleagues, some of you may know that two years ago, we made a landmark study on Critical Minerals, looking at the future and the demand and the supply for Critical Minerals. In that report, it was over two years ago, we said we see a looming mismatch between the demand for Critical Minerals and their availability. And in today's report that we are launching with my colleagues with Mr. Gult and Mr. Kim, in this report, we look whether or not this mismatch is still as big as we have identified two years ago. Now, when I look at the numbers, I can tell you that in the last two years, we have seen two important responses to this IEA message, because, as I said, with this report two years ago, we send a memo to the energy world and highlighting this challenge, and the alarm bells we rang. Now, two responses. One on the government side. Many governments around the world came up with Critical Minerals strategy. It is the U.S., it is Europe, it is Canada, Australia, Chile, and we know that India, for example, is about to come up with a Critical Minerals strategy to which IEA is contributing and Brazil is also coming up with such a strategy. So this was the government response to the mismatch we have identified. And that was also a response from the companies as well. The numbers of this report we are launching today shows that the Critical Minerals development investments in 2021 increased by 20 percent and 2022, last year, increased further 30 percent. So 20 percent in 2020, 2021, and 30 percent last year. So major growth in investment, which makes us happy. At the same time, we see that the market size of key energy transition minerals we are talking about reaches this year 320 billion U.S. dollars. And 320 billion U.S. dollars is more or less the same where the iron ore market size stays today. So the market size of the Critical Minerals reaches the leader of the Minerals iron ore this year and double the size of aluminium. These are all very good news and one more perhaps good news before going to the however's and the but's and if's. I should tell you that my question is my colleague Teyum Kin and his colleagues look at the all the project pipeline of the Critical Minerals today around the world and what we say that if all those projects would see the light of the day and there's a big iftar of course then we would cover about two-thirds of the Critical Minerals need for we need for reaching our net zero targets major improvement in terms of the investment of project pipeline. Having said that, we know that the mining projects often face delays. There are permitting issues, serious permitting issues and we also know that in many cases there are costs overrun. So this shouldn't be taken for granted that all the projects that we see the light of today but still an important improvement in terms of the market response to that. In my view dear colleagues, the market response increasing investments is an important signal that the markets are buying in that the clean energy transition will be even faster in the next years to come so that we will need more Critical Minerals. Now in addition to this rather encouraging news there are two worries we have which were expressed in this report. One of them is the issue of concentration in other words lack of diversification of the Critical Minerals development and especially refining. When we look at the refining segment today where the Critical Minerals are refined we see one country named China plays a dominant role and as of this year, China's share in the global Critical Minerals refining reaches over two-thirds. But one should also note that China itself would need raw materials. For example, cobalt, almost all the cobalt to China needs to come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. So there is an issue there. But our report registers this concern of lack of diversification here in terms of the supply. The second concern our report registers is the environmental and social indicators. When we look at some of the environmental indicators such as the emission intensity of production it is not improving when we compare our numbers two years ago. When we look at the water needed for the process it is even going in the wrong direction we need more water today for the process compared to two years ago. So in that respect, our review of the current situation gives an encouraging message in terms of the growing investments but also registers concerns on the side of the diversification and also social and environmental indicators. Dear colleagues, I would like to finish by saying that the International Energy Agency takes this issue very seriously and this is one of now our main work streams because we know that the secure and affordable clean energy transition will be critically hinging on the availability of the critical minerals around the world. But seeing those challenges and tasked by the G7 leaders in Hiroshima and the IEA ministers we are looking at the security of supply of critical minerals very closely and in that context we thought that we should bring all the key players together. On the 28th of September this year in Paris we are holding a summit on critical minerals and clean energy and the ministers from the important countries ministers from the resource-rich countries from Asia, Latin America, Africa investors, CEOs of the major mining companies around the world, civil society we will bring all the stakeholders together to foster a dialogue in order to address the challenges I tried to raise a few minutes ago. So with this once again I would like to thank our chief energy minister Mr. Guld for overseeing this very important project and also my colleague Teyun Kim for being the lead author and running the team. So thank you very much Mr. Malin. Thanks very much indeed Executive Director for these opening remarks and I'd like to pick up the story now and take us through some of the more detailed findings of this work but before I do so I wanted to also pick up on one thing you mentioned in that in addition to the critical minerals market review that we are releasing today we are also releasing a data explorer which allows policymakers, companies, researchers to dig into all of the numbers that we produce for a wide range of critical mineral technologies because modelling that demand is not simple you not only have the variability across scenarios but you also have variability across the different types of technologies that are used in energy transitions and how much of each mineral that they use and so as part of our commitment to market transparency we are making this data explorer available it's going to be regularly updated and also expanded over time to include additional data so you can look at all of the key focus minerals but you can also get into some of the more niche and exotic minerals that are acquired across transitions you can see the drop down menu which is a screenshot from the data explorer includes things like germanium, gallium which have both been in the news recently and in addition to our base cases for each scenario you can also look at some technology sensitivities which look at possible evolution of the technologies in key areas like battery chemistries or solar PV which you can see on the screen so please take the opportunity to look through and see what data from this explorer might be relevant for you now to the findings of the report and as the executive director was mentioning it's very clear that the move to a more electrified and renewable rich energy system is turbo charging demand for a range of critical minerals and metals and what you're looking at on the screen is the growth story over the last decade and you can see in particular how demand for the key battery metals has risen sharply over the last five years so since 2018 lithium demand tripled cobalt demand grew by 70% nickel by 40% and you can see a sharp contrast there with some of the other bulk materials like zinc and lead and when you look to explain the differences in outlook it's very clear that it's clean energy that is making the difference there the high share now of clean energy in the demand for lithium compared with much lower shares for zinc and lead and as the executive director was mentioning that means that the overall market size the overall market opportunity for energy transition minerals is increasing fast and where we are today is not the end of the growth story rather we're closer to the beginning of the journey than the end from EVs to solar panels to wind turbines deployment of clean energy technologies is moving fast and we do expect that trend to continue so this is what would be required in a scenario that limits global warming to 1.5 degrees rapid deployment of a range of technologies in such a scenario means that the overall demand for critical minerals would grow by 3.5 times to 2030 clean energy is already the main source of demand growth have we seen but by 2030 in the case of lithium the energy sector would account for some 90% of lithium demand nearly 60% for nickel and cobalt and 45% for copper now this brings huge opportunities but it also raises questions about the adequacy of future supplies and that's something that we focused on and warned about in our 2021 report now some people might look at this screen and say we're showing it showing the ambitious NZD scenario so net zero emissions by 2050 scenario that might overstate what happens in these critical mineral markets maybe but watch out because things are moving rapidly take the example of EV batteries where we all see regular announcements about new gigafactories new manufacturing projects around the world and we track all of these projects and colleagues in the energy technology policy division recently provided updated analysis to the 2023 G7 leaders summit in Hiroshima so if you put all of the announced battery manufacturing projects together the capacity would cover almost entirely the 2030 global deployment needs of this net zero emissions by 2050 scenario now of course announcements don't mean that projects get built but that is a real world indicator that the sort of demand increases you're looking at on the screen could materialize in practice so it's very important then to look at the supply side because if supply doesn't keep pace then this could make global progress towards a clean energy future slower or more costly and we've seen just over the last couple of years what the risks could be if you follow energy transitions closely you'll be aware that over the last couple of years the cost of battery packs of solar panels of wind turbines in many markets has edged higher and that's been reversing at least temporarily a decades long trend of cost demands of cost declines so why was that? Well it's higher prices for some of these key critical mineral inputs that have really been behind that slight uptick in costs and although the critical mineral prices have come down this year it wouldn't take much for us to see a resumption of those cost pressures so market balances don't just depend on supply and in our work we're very focused also on policy levers to affect the demand side things like recycling, things like technology development smaller EVs and so on but in this presentation I'm going to focus now on three layers of supply side challenges the first of them, can future supplies keep up with the rapid pace of demand growth in the IEA's climate driven scenarios and then the second question is can those supplies come from diversified sources and the third, can these volumes be supplied from clean and responsibly produced operations and I'm going to go briefly through all of these challenges and the first one relates to volume and here indeed we have seen some encouraging signs so after our warning in 2021 countries, companies, investors are responding with a wave of new policies on the government side but also projects we have seen this strong growth in capital spending as the executive director mentioned 2021 a rise of 20% and then a further 30% rise in 2022 for a sample of the largest players in that market so the largest mining companies and we've also seen a significant growth in exploration spending 20% increase in 2022 and that was driven by record growth in lithium exploration Canada, Australia led the way but activities also expanding in many parts of Africa and Brazil so we have seen that increase in capital expenditure and naturally enough that produces an increase in anticipated supply and so the second column in all of these figures is around the volumes that could be expected if all of these announced projects are implemented and planned and come through on time now that's a big if as the executive director mentioned but I think it's important to have in mind that in many cases now the announced projects that we see would be sufficient for a scenario that meets national climate objectives so all of the net zero targets that have been announced by governments around the world all of the 2030 ambitions that have been announced as well copper is a slight exception here but for lithium, for nickel, for cobalt we are either at or around or even above in the case of cobalt the amounts that would be needed in that announced pledges scenario and that's a distinct improvement on the picture that we painted in our 2021 report but the adequacy of supply is far from assured there are ever present risks of delays, of permitting issues, of cost overruns these have been regular occurrences in the past and of course cannot be excluded in the future and we're presenting this aggregate picture on the screen but I think we also need to be aware that there are some nuances here there could be some shortages of the higher specification battery grade products that need higher quality input so even within some of these pictures there are some distinctions to be made and most importantly, if we do look at what would be required to reach a 1.5 degree stabilization in global average temperatures then in all cases we would need additional projects to come through so promising signs in terms of volumes but with some caveats and qualifications along the way now onto that second issue that I mentioned the issue of the diversity of supplies and there the picture is less promising so this is a chart that we put together for our 2021 report and we've updated it now for all the latest data and what it shows is today's share of the top three producing countries for extraction on the left-hand side of the screen and then processing on the right-hand side of the screen and if we compare that picture with what we saw in our previous report which used 2019 data you see that in many cases we haven't seen an improvement and in some cases, notably for Nickel the level of concentration has actually increased so how does this evolve based on the announced projects that we've been talking about already today so our analysis of project pipelines indicates that the projects that are underway that will come into operation in the next few years that will improve the picture somewhat but we don't see the same prospects for improvement in refining operations so the majority of planned projects in the midstream are developed in incumbent regions China holds half of the planned lithium chemical plants Indonesia represents nearly 90% of planned Nickel refining facilities so it's extremely important for us to ensure resilient clean energy value chains and there is a large number of resource-rich nations in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere that are looking to find their place in this market and indeed to move from extraction into some of those midstream areas and on the consuming side many consuming nations want to diversify their sources of refined metal supplies so the task is in a way to successfully connect the dots and build new partnerships and create those more diversified network of supplier relationships finally on the third challenge around environmental social governance issues again we use the same assessment of those 20 leading companies and we did see signs of improvement on a range of social indicators improvements in community investment, worker safety and gender issues however we didn't see matching progress on environmental indicators so greenhouse gas emissions remain relatively high as emissions per ton of output water withdrawals you can see on the screen nearly doubled from 2018 to 2021 there are reasons for that resource quality is declining in some areas mean that you need more energy to extract the same amount of useful material plays are becoming more challenging but nonetheless this assessment highlights the importance of improving the environmental performance further and this is an area where consumers can also play their part if they demand high standards if they prioritize high standards in their sourcing and investment decisions that provides a strong impetus for producers to act and improve their performance so before we move to your questions a couple of concluding comments as the Executive Director mentioned in 2021 we kind of sent a memo to the energy and climate community and the initial landmark report highlighting potential risks that need attention for the role of critical minerals in clean energy transitions and in 2023 we can see that this is a very dynamic area very strong growth in the market but also that governments are responding and that companies are responding investment has been rising in a way that if all projects come through on time then supply could be sufficient to meet national climate ambitions but there are a host of risks that remain and further actions on both the supply and the demand side are needed and in particular there has been limited change in the diversity of supply and the progress that we've analyzed on a range of social environmental indicators has been quite mixed so this critical minerals review is part of a much broader effort from the International Energy Agency on market monitoring, on reliable data, on transparency and please visit also the Data Explorer to find out more and it's also part of a much broader effort from the IEA to promote reliable, secure and sustainably produced minerals for energy transition so with very strong support from IEA member governments the agency is fully engaged on this topic and as the executive director mentioned a very important expression of that will be the major international summit that we are convening at the end of September which will bring together ministers, CEOs, investors civil society on these crucial issues thank you very much for your attention thank you very much for the presentation it's time to take questions from journalists we invite the journalists in attendance to send your questions through the Q&A function of the Zoom if you haven't done so already and please mention your media outlet along with your question we're just going to take a two minute break to give you a chance to enter your questions we'll be right back back thank you for the questions from those of you who have submitted them we're going to start with one which minerals are you most worried about in terms of supply and where do you see potential strains on the market so I think our lead author, Taeyoon Kim is going to take this question over to you Taeyoon thank you Jisro so as Tim mentioned we are making some progress on the supply increasing volumes of future supply but still the supply security is far from assured and I think among the various minerals we need some set of minerals that need particular attention those are copper and high-purity manganese and the layers element for copper we see very strong demand growth of the next decade as we pursue some of the chemical as copper is used in a wide range of green energy technologies including electricity networks and renewable wind turbines and others but not cases relatively well supplied at the moment but if you look at the project pipeline we don't see the large number of high-quality large-scale projects that means that there could be some potential strains in the medium term, longer term supplies to meet the copper demand in the coming years so that is one area we need some particular attention the other one I would mention is about high-purity manganese so there are some growing trends to adapt the manganese in battery chemistry in either in high-nike chemistry or lithium-ion phosphate chemistry so there will be some growing demand for high-purity manganese to serve that purpose but the supply of high-purity manganese is quite lacking in the marketplace at the moment but also that supply is highly dominated by China so that requires some more attention to increase supply for high-purity manganese and rare earth element is another item I'd like to mention so demand is quite strong in EV models and also wind turbines but the supply is also lacking and also there are some high concentrations of supply in China especially on heavy rare earth elements such as dispersion and terabium so those are the elements among the others and I would mention as a kind of something that needs some particular attention Thank you very much Taeyun so another question we have is on ways to reduce demand so shouldn't we focus more on ways to reduce demand for critical minerals for example by driving smaller EVs or switching away from cars altogether and there's also a related question to this from Martin Mayrath from Korea in Austria on what role can recycling realistically play so I think Tim Gould, our chief energy economist can take a run at these, Tim Yeah, thanks very much indeed, Jethro I'll talk a bit about the mobility aspects of this and perhaps Taeyun would like to say a few words also specifically on recycling and it is the case at the moment that most of the battery electric vehicles that are sold today are large they're large cars, they're SUVs about 60% of the new sales are these large models that's true, 60% in Europe around the same in China and an even greater share in the United States an SUV, an electric SUV has a battery size that's two or three times larger than that of a small electric vehicle so you can immediately see that the choice of EV has a big impact then on the overall requirement for some of the critical minerals that we're talking about so we should remain very focused on the demand side looking at the way that consumer choices also pass through into overall demand for battery metals and other critical minerals and that also includes elements like getting away from cars altogether improving the quality of public transport and enabling sort of non-car choices particularly for shorter journeys however we think it's probably natural that at this stage in the market development companies are priorities and the auto manufacturers are priorities in some of these higher value segments so the larger vehicles if the companies are to hit their own targets for EV sales they will inevitably need to produce some more sort of mass market models some smaller cars and we think that would also then have implications for the amount of critical minerals that are required for that segment and then perhaps can I ask Tyun if you want to take the point on recycling Thanks Tim on recycling I think we the recycling can play a big role in the meeting some demand growth in the coming decade especially in our natural scenario but we are seeing some versioning amount of the to build some new recycling capacities today the front is very much dominated in China but there are some growing investment in Europe and the US to build some new recycling capacities that is very much encouraging but it makes some take some time to make some meaningful contribution to the supplying demand from recycling because the end of life products spent batteries, spent solar panels spent wind turbines become available around 2030 so from that point we see some strong growth in the stock volumes but in the meantime most of the pieces that will come from the manufacturing script from the battery manufacturing processes so it will make meaningful progress but it will make more meaningful progress after 2030 in our view Thanks a lot Tyun and one more question for you I think from Jeremy Creswell of the Press and Journal he's asking in the grand scheme of critical resources how significant is the news from Norway regarding the discovery of large new phosphates and associated metals reserves Tyun what can you tell us Yep so I think that is very encouraging and good news because we are seeing some growing adoption of the lithium ion phosphate batteries in total battery chemistries so we saw the large uptake of these chemistries in recent 2-3 years and we think this trend to continue over the next couple of years so that requires also lithium but also this high quality phosphate so that is some supplying this high quality phosphate is the very encouraging sign this discovery is very encouraging but it also is very much important to accelerate the development of these mineral resources to serve the demand growth of the next decade Great thank you Tyun and then just I think it's time for just a couple more questions one from Subel Bandari from Radio Free Asia apart from China and Indonesia how are other Asian countries doing in all exploration mining and refining sectors and then a question about the summit the critical mineral summit in September that was mentioned during the presentations who are you expecting at this event and what do you hope to achieve so I think those two questions Dr. Birol will take them Thank you Jethro of course in Asia in fact in the world China is the dominant player and Indonesia is also making major steps especially in the context of Nickel but in addition to these two giants there are a few other countries in Asia who are also working on the development and the refining of the critical minerals one of them is Philippines especially on Nickel the other one is Malaysia Malaysia and the context of rare earth elements so but in general there is a lot of interest there so when it comes to our summit it will be attended by many ministers around the world ministers who are from the countries who import the critical minerals ministers from Europe North America Asia, Latin America and so on but also ministers from the countries who have the resources of critical minerals ministers from Africa again Latin America and Asia but in addition to those we thought we should invite the investors because there is a growing appetite from the investors side for the critical minerals development and the mining industry we see huge interest for our summit from established mining companies as we know many of those mining companies are moving in the direction of critical minerals in terms of their investment portfolios and also we want to bring the civil society and international organizations here so it will be a diverse group from the policy makers to the industry as well as the finance sector now what we want to achieve it will be to our knowledge it will be first it is kind to hear everybody hears from each other to understand our concerns preoccupations where we see the challenges and when we look at the entire critical minerals issue we think one thing is critical namely international cooperation and we hope that this summit will be a good step in the direction to foster international cooperation and provide a good basis for dialogue among all relevant stakeholders Thank you very much Dr. Beryl I'm afraid that's all we have time for today if any journalists have questions that didn't get answered during the Q&A that you'd like to follow up on we invite you to reach out to our press office and we'll get back to you as soon as we can so thank you again to Dr. Beryl Mr. Gould and Mr. Kim and thank you very much to the journalists for the questions and to everyone who followed this event online for your interest in our work as mentioned the full critical minerals market review 2023 is available for free on our website along with the new data explorer so please go take a look and that's all for today thank you and goodbye