The Chairman and CEO of leading critical minerals investment company, TechMet, has warned the COP28 climate conference that the world is facing a “structural cliff of under supply” for lithium, nickel, cobalt and the critical metals required for the clean energy transition.
TechMet founder Brian Menell’s comments came at the UN Climate Conference COP28 being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Menell has also been highly critical today about the lack of discussion of critical metals at the heart of the global climate negotiations.
“Even though it is great to be here at COP28 and for critical metals to finally be on the agenda at some events, we are still very much on the fringes of this UN climate conference. Frankly, we should be closer to the heart of the talks because otherwise the world is simply not going to be able to meet our climate change goals,” warned Menell.
Earlier this week, TechMet secured a further $50 million commitment from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) as part of its latest fundraising round.
Speaking at a critical minerals fringe event hosted by the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan US think tank, Menell added: “We cannot achieve climate change goals without the metals and mining industry deploying probably an additional $50 billion per year over the next ten years to build supply and processing of the minerals going into batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. At the moment, we are not doing it.
“Our industry needed to deploy $100 billion in critical minerals production and processing three or four years ago, to avoid the structural cliff of under supply for lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth metals that is now almost unavoidable in the next three or four years.
“The implications of our ongoing failure to adequately scale production to meet the acceleration of demand are very considerable.”
