The stumbling block in ‘the race of our lives’: transition-critical materials,

While the supply and demand of materials in the context of the climate transition is extensively explored in the literature, the subsequent link to prices and financial risks is underdeveloped. [...] This is the case because, first, the criticality of TCMs is determined by us on the basis of the global need for low-carbon technologies, and not based on the strategic economic importance of a given mineral for any single economy, which is the underlying criteria for the traditional classification of ‘critical minerals’. [...] 4.1 The methodology for the criticality assessment Building on the initial identification of 27 TCMs (Table 1), we further refine the assessment with the aim of identifying the nine materials most exposed to demand-induced risk from the transition for the following two parts of our analysis. [...] Assessment of Transition-Critical Materials (TCMs) and potential bottlenecks in the NGFS Scenarios Employing the methodology outlined above, this section conducts a three-fold analysis to assess the criticality of the focus TCMs, the implied material demand under the different NGFS 19 Scenarios and the demand increases in the context of projected supply. [...] TCM demand of the ‘Net Zero by 2050’ scenario To estimate the implied material demand under the ‘Net Zero by 2050’ and ‘Delayed Transition’ NGFS scenarios, we estimate, first, the demand increase of key materials over the period 2021-2040; second, the technology split in demand over the observed period; and finally, the relative increase in per material demand in 5-year step intervals (See Appendi.