The International Energy Agency's Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 describes a market moving in the wrong direction on almost every security metric at once: prices rebounding, refining more concentrated, investment falling and midstream processing under financial strain. For an energy transition that is materially intensive by design, the report reads as a warning about the foundations rather than the technologies.
Prices up, investment down
Prices for base metals such as aluminium, copper and tin rose by one-third between January 2025 and April 2026, with copper reaching record highs. Lithium prices more than doubled amid strong storage demand and constrained supply, while cobalt rose by around 130%, largely because of export restrictions imposed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Prices for strategic minor minerals also more than doubled, with tungsten surging sixfold. Export controls have split markets: in Europe, gallium and the heavy rare earths dysprosium and terbium trade at around five times Chinese domestic prices, and germanium at almost three times.
Investment moved the other way. Critical mineral investment fell by 9% in 2025, ending several years of growth. Capital spending on battery metals dropped by more than 20% — the largest decline in over a decade — with lithium companies cutting investment by around 40%, while copper-focused spending rose by 8%. Exploration spending fell by more than 10%, with lithium and nickel down around 45%.
Concentration, smelters and the shape of diversification
Excluding rare earths, the average share of the top refining country rose to 72% in 2025 from 70% in 2023; rare earths were the exception, easing slightly as new United States projects and higher Malaysian output came through. Supply deficits for copper and lithium are set to persist through 2035, with the projected 2035 copper gap narrowing from around 30% to 25%, while a new gap has emerged for cobalt following the DRC's export quota.
The executive summary of the Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 also documents stress in the midstream. Benchmark copper smelter fees were settled at USD 0 per tonne in 2026, the lowest ever agreed, with zinc and lead fees negative. Since 2005 China has accounted for over 90% of growth in global copper smelting, lifting its share of capacity from around 15% to 50% by 2025; utilisation outside China fell below 70% while remaining around 85% inside it. Diversification is also unbalanced: announced rare earth refining capacity outside the dominant supplier equals about two-thirds of expected mined supply by 2035, but planned magnet production only one-third.
The exergy view
Minerals are not merely quantities but resource qualities, and the outlook is in effect a report on declining ore quality and rising processing effort. Refining costs outside the dominant supplier are around 50% higher on average, driven by feedstock and energy prices — a direct reflection of the exergy that must be supplied to separate a dilute element from its matrix. The sulphur episode makes the point sharply: disrupted supply raised sulphuric acid prices until acid costs overtook energy costs in some mineral processing routes, because acid is itself a carrier of chemical exergy. Cumulative exergy demand rises steeply as grades fall and separations grow finer, so security policy and thermodynamic efficiency in refining and recycling are the same problem seen from two directions.
