What are Critical Minerals?

About Critical Minerals:

• It is a metallic or non-metallic element that has two characteristics.
  • It is essential for the functioning of our modern technologies, economies or national security and
  • There is a risk that its supply chains could be disrupted.
• The ‘criticality’ of minerals changes with time as supply and society’s needs shift.
• Applications
  • They are used to manufacture advanced technologies, including mobile phones, computers, fibre-optic cables, semiconductors, banknotes, and defence, aerospace and medical applications.
  • Many are used in low-emission technologies, such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and rechargeable batteries.
  • Some are also crucial for common products, such as stainless steel and electronics.
• Examples: antimony, beryllium, bismuth, cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, lithium, vanadium etc.
• Top Producers: Chile, Indonesia, Congo, China, Australia and South Africa.

What is the Mineral Security Partnership?

• It is an ambitious new initiative to bolster critical mineral supply chains, announced by the United States (US) and key partner countries in June 2022.
• The goal of the alliance is to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realise the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments.
• The focus of the grouping would be on the supply chains of minerals such as Cobalt, Nickel, Lithium and also the 17 “rare earth” minerals.
• India was recently inducted into the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP).

Q1) What are rare earth elements?

The rare earth elements (REE) are a set of seventeen metallic elements. These include the fifteen lanthanides on the periodic table plus scandium and yttrium.

Source: India releases list of 30 critical minerals crucial for ‘economic development, national security’