“The International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook [..] is probably the closest thing to a bible in the energy world,” says a Bloomberg article following the publication of the 2021 edition.
Released earlier than usual in time for the Conference of Parties (COP26) starting in Glasgow next week, this edition – the 44th – “has been designed, exceptionally, as a guidebook to COP26”.
At 386 pages IEA WEO 2021 is quite the tome (download here). Under Section 6.3.1, you’ll find the energy bible’s take on “critical minerals”. It is six pages in total.
Those six pages may be headlined critical minerals, but it’s hard to detect a sense of urgency in Section 6.3.1: “The rapid deployment of low-carbon technologies as part of clean energy transitions implies a significant increase in demand for critical minerals.”
For the rest of this article: https://www.mining.com/cop26-will-be-a-colossal-mining-cop-out/