The geopolitics of the green transition and critical Strategic minerals

Abstract

The world is slowly transitioning away from fossil fuels. Much attention has been placed on technological breakthroughs needed for the green transition, such as longer-lasting batteries to extend the standard electric vehicle (EV) range, and on domestic and global policy challenges that accompany emissions reductions. Green technologies primarily rely upon critical strategic minerals (CSM). This article posits that just as the drive to control petroleum resources has shaped the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first, so too will CSM shape the geopolitics of the rest of this century. In this article, I introduce a realist political economy framework to examine how reliance on critical inputs, whether fossil fuels or CSM, follows similar geostrategic parameters. I discuss how the fossil fuels transition offers opportunities for countries to develop new green industries through securing key inputs needed to build a green economy. CSM have both economic and security dimensions, and we can already see geopolitical rivalry taking place around the control of key sources of CSM in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, and by China around rare earths minerals.