Future Energy Transition Mineral Demands and Barriers for South and Southeast Asia

While the global geological availability of critical minerals is likely sufficient to support energy transition efforts, geographically imbalanced energy transition mineral production and consumption raise concerns around supply chain disruption and import dependence. While regions like Europe and the United States are actively studying such vulnerabilities, they remain relatively underexplored for emerging economies.

This study uses a new, customizable mineral demand model for a wide set of commodities to estimate future energy transition mineral demand in the power generation and transport sectors for India, Bangladesh, and countries in ASEAN. Results indicate that ASEAN and South Asia may become significant consumers by 2050 on par with developed economies like the United States. In many cases, current mining in South and Southeast Asia falls short of projected regional demands. Both regions lack requisite graphite and lithium production. South Asia faces additional nickel, rare earths, copper, polysilicon, and cobalt deficits. Our results identify mineral supply-demand imbalances that may present future tradeoff risks between import dependence, downstream clean technology manufacturing ambitions, and public policy efforts to secure energy transition mineral supplies. Such results pose important implications particularly for countries like India, Vietnam, and Indonesia seeking to develop domestic solar, battery, and electric vehicle industries.

This analysis highlights the need for emerging economies to proactively assess the mineral security considerations of national goals and to adopt efforts including recycling, energy efficiency, materials research and substitution, international cooperation, and mining and processing project development to alleviate supply-demand imbalances.