Critical mineral

A critical mineral is a raw material a government has designated as essential to its economy or security and vulnerable to a supply disruption.

Governments designate a mineral as critical when it is essential to a modern economy, especially defense and energy technology, and when supply is concentrated enough in a handful of countries or companies that a disruption could not easily be absorbed. The lists vary by country, but they typically include metals used in batteries, magnets, and semiconductors, alongside materials with no easy substitute in those uses.

Being critical is about vulnerability, not scarcity in the ground: many critical minerals are not rare, but their mining or, more often, their refining is concentrated in very few locations. A disruption at a single processing plant can therefore matter more than the total size of global reserves would suggest. This has pushed some governments to fund new mines, refineries, and stockpiles specifically for minerals on their critical lists. See critical minerals and the energy transition.