UNCTAD's Global Trade Update for June 2026 examines how rising demand for critical energy transition minerals is reshaping global trade — and concludes that demand is only part of the story. Supply is concentrated, much of the value is captured after extraction, and governments are increasingly using trade policy to secure access and build domestic capability.
Demand, and where it is concentrated
Lithium demand is projected to rise by 353% between 2024 and 2040, and graphite demand by 131%, driven by clean energy technologies, battery storage, electric mobility, digitalisation, data centres, semiconductors and industrial electrification. Clean technologies are also expected to account for a larger share of that demand: their share of lithium demand is projected to rise from 62% in 2024 to 87% in 2040.
Concentration runs through reserves, mining, processing and refining, and is most acute in the higher-value processing and refining stages. In 2025 the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for 74% of global cobalt mine production, Indonesia for 67% of nickel mine production and China for 69% of rare earth mine production. China also dominates refining for rare earths, lithium and cobalt, while Indonesia holds 43% of global nickel refining capacity.
Trade policy as industrial policy
Since 2020, nearly 100 new export measures have been introduced on critical energy transition minerals, comprising 37 licensing requirements, 31 export taxes, 29 export bans and one export quota. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has introduced the highest number, followed by China and Indonesia. Mineral-rich countries are using these instruments to support domestic processing and capture more value — a legitimate development objective that can nonetheless either strengthen or weaken the resilience of global supply chains.
Alongside restrictions, cooperation is expanding. The Global Trade Update on the shifting dynamics of critical minerals trade analyses 73 partnership agreements, 58 of them signed since 2022, which increasingly combine trade, industrial and investment policy tools. UNCTAD's conclusion is that without stronger international coordination, critical minerals trade risks fragmenting into competing blocs, and that diversifying processing capacity, promoting recycling and strengthening domestic value chains will require long-term investment and coordinated policy support.
The exergy view
The report's central asymmetry — that value is captured after extraction — is a thermodynamic observation as much as an economic one. Mining moves mass; refining upgrades quality, and it is quality that costs work. Converting an ore concentrate into battery-grade lithium or a separated rare earth requires a large input of exergy to reverse the entropy of natural mixing, which is exactly why refining capacity clusters where energy and reagents are cheap and why it is so hard to relocate. Recycling changes the arithmetic, because a spent battery or magnet is an already-concentrated deposit whose cumulative exergy demand for recovery is far lower than that of a dilute ore. Diversification policy that ignores where the exergy is spent will keep failing at the stage that matters.
