Critical Minerals

A strategic blueprint for circular batteries and the implementation of open chain digital trusts to improve transparency, circularity and risk management in teh energy transition supply chains.

The Neighbourhood Futures team conducted a focussed piece of research examining the supply chains that underpin the global energy transition, with a focus on the critical minerals needed for batteries. The analysis maps the extraction, processing, manufacturing, use and recycling of lithium-ion batteries, highlighting growing demand alongside highly concentrated and geopolitically vulnerable supply chains.

The research explores the environmental, social and human rights impacts of mineral extraction, as well as risks around resource scarcity, market concentration and supply security. It also identifies opportunities to build more resilient and circular battery systems through better traceability, design, reuse, recycling and supply-chain governance.

These global supply chain and geopolitical dynamics have direct implications for neighbourhood-scale energy infrastructure in the UK. As communities invest in batteries, heat pumps, solar and other technologies, they are dependent on global markets for critical materials and manufacturing capacity. This raises questions about how neighbourhood transitions can be designed to manage exposure to volatile prices, concentrated supply chains and resource constraints, while building greater local resilience, ownership and control over community energy infrastructure.