Senior Biden administration officials and their international partners unveiled an effort Monday to finance critical mineral projects that might counter China’s global dominance in supplying raw materials for clean energy development.
“The energy transition is at risk,” Undersecretary of State Jose Fernandez said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. “We need more production capacity for critical minerals that need to come online — many of these supply chains for critical minerals are concentrated in one or two countries and also lack resilience.”
The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) — comprising the U.S., the European Union and 13 other nations — is racing to shore up mineral supply chains that feed the manufacturing of electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies and defense applications.
Fernandez said the effort is going to require a massive shift of capital toward new markets, and he noted the partnership has already brought a dozen projects “over the finish line” during the last two years with an additional 30 projects in the pipeline.
