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Commentary: The new geopolitical frontier — securing the arteries of the energy transition
Without a coordinated expansion of alternative refining, recycling, and processing capacity, the West’s energy transition goals will remain exposed to a single point of failure
- PUBLISHED: Thu 14 May 2026, 8:52 PM
Ahmed Bin Sulayem is the Executive Chairman and CEO of DMCC who has driven its growth from a start-up of 28 member companies in 2003 to the world’s leading free zone in 2023 with 24,000+ member companies from 180 countries, employing over 80,000 people.
The global economy is undergoing a structural transformation that has placed critical minerals and metals at the heart of national security, industrial policy, and global diplomacy. The shift from a fuel to a mineral-intensive energy system is accelerating, and the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 makes the supply-side reality clear; that despite a surge in investment, supply-side vulnerabilities, processing bottlenecks, and geopolitical risk are deepening. We are no longer discussing trade in the traditional sense, but the materials on which economic sovereignty, industrial resilience, and national security now depend.
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To understand the scale of the challenge, one must examine the convergence of the most recent critical raw materials lists from the European Union and the United States, which when combined, represent the material foundation of modern industry. Lithium is primarily mined in Australia, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and nickel in Indonesia, however, each relevant in a global context in the development of permanent magnets, electronics, defence systems, and advanced manufacturing.
The list has also expanded to include materials once treated as abundant but now recognised as strategic bottlenecks. Silver, amongst numerous use cases, has become indispensable to the solar transition; aluminium is foundational for lightweighting transport and expanding the power grid; and potash, the basis of global fertiliser supply, has become a matter of food security and, by extension, geopolitical stability. As an outcome, the geographical concentration of extraction is only the first hurdle.
The OECD’s April 2026 update to its Inventory of Export Restrictions on Critical Raw Materials found that such measures have reached record highs, with roughly 16% of global trade in these commodities now affected. China’s dominance across several critical mineral supply chains has already translated into strategic leverage, with its export control regime, tightened progressively through 2025, now covering rare earth elements including gallium, germanium, graphite, and the processing technologies associated with them.
A licensing provision extending to any product containing 0.1% or more of Chinese-origin controlled rare earth materials, regardless of where the final product is manufactured, is scheduled for full extraterritorial enforcement in November 2026, though certain measures were suspended for one year following an initial announcement. The message is unambiguous; that access to minerals, processing technologies, and advanced materials is now a geopolitical instrument.
This explains the renewed strategic interest in frontier resource jurisdictions across Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. What once appeared to be a narrow question of resource development has become a wider contest over industrial survival. Nations are no longer asking only where minerals can be mined, but who controls, processes, finances and certifies them, as well as who can guarantee access when geopolitical conditions deteriorate.
Yet the most significant bottleneck receives the least structural attention, that of refining and processing capacity, and it is here that the disparity between East and West is most glaring. The IEA has found that China is the leading refiner for 19 of the 20 critical minerals it analyses, with an average market share of approximately 70%.
In rare earths, China accounts for around 91% of separation and refining capacity. In sintered permanent magnets, its share has risen from roughly half of global production two decades ago to around 94% today. Even when minerals are mined in Africa or South America, they almost invariably travel to Chinese facilities before becoming usable industrial inputs. Without a coordinated expansion of alternative refining, recycling, and processing capacity, the West’s energy transition goals will remain exposed to a single point of failure, with the impact already becoming visible.
In December 2025, the DRC government suspended artisanal copper and cobalt processing centres in a compliance and traceability crackdown. The artisanal mining sector directly supports an estimated ten million livelihoods in the DRC, and the suspension illustrated how quickly governance failures, processing bottlenecks, and community welfare become inseparable.
The DRC’s parallel audit of its mining joint ventures has identified an estimated $16.8 billion in underreported revenues between 2018 and 2023, a figure that underscores the governance deficits embedded in the existing architecture. Western responses have been significant but remain largely reactive.
The Washington Accords, signed in December 2025 between the United States, the DRC, and Rwanda, and the inaugural US Critical Minerals Ministerial in February 2026, attended by delegations from fifty-four countries and the European Commission, reflect the extent to which critical minerals have moved to the centre of economic diplomacy.
Project Vault, a US strategic critical minerals reserve backed by up to $10 billion in Export-Import Bank financing and private sector commitments, represents the most capitalised public-private response to date. These are meaningful steps, however, funding announcements and bilateral frameworks do not, on their own, constitute the neutral, rules-based trade infrastructure that responsible critical minerals movement requires.
The surge in AI and data-centre construction has added a further demand dimension. A single megawatt of data-centre capacity requires an estimated 60 to 75 tonnes of copper for power distribution and cooling infrastructure alone, with grid investment to support these facilities accelerating globally.
The mineral demand profile of the digital economy has become inseparable from the demand profile of the energy economy, and both are competing for the same constrained refined output.
In a world where the IEA projects supply shortfalls for copper and lithium within this decade, where the OECD documents rising export restrictions, and where bilateral resource diplomacy is replacing multilateral governance frameworks, the status quo is no longer tenable. Security of supply has become synonymous with economic sovereignty, and it is for this reason that neutral trade hubs matter.
Critical minerals supply chains need trusted jurisdictions that can connect producers, traders, refiners, financiers, logistics providers, certification bodies, and end-users within a transparent, well-regulated ecosystem. Ultimately, the energy transition will not be won only by those who control resources in the ground, but by those who can move them transparently, process them reliably, and connect them to the industries that need them most.
Ahmed Bin Sulayem is the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DMCC and has driven its growth from a start-up of 28 member companies in 2003 to the world’s leading free zone in 2023 with 24,000+ member companies from 180 countries, employing over 80,000 people. Tasked with enhancing commodity trade flows through Dubai, DMCC has introduced to the market a number of value-added products and services under Mr Bin Sulayem’s leadership. In 2023, DMCC has been named the ‘Global Free Zone of the Year’ by The Financial Times fDi Magazine, for a record ninth consecutive year. Mr Bin Sulayem oversaw the exponential growth of the DMCC Free Zone master development in Jumeirah Lakes Towers (JLT), a 200-hectare business and residential community in Dubai of over 100,000 people living and working across 87 towers. Mr Bin Sulayem also oversees the development of DMCC’s latest real estate project; the much-anticipated Uptown Dubai district.