Cleaner energy, higher risk? Firm-level exposure to critical minerals

Viet Nguyen-Tien

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: To what extent has the rise of clean energy technologies created new vulnerabilities in global supply chains? In this paper, I study the role of a new type of 'input uncertainty' associated with critical minerals that underpin the deployment of clean energy technologies. I combine firm-level performance data for publicly listed companies worldwide with textual information from quarterly earnings conference calls to construct text-based measures of technological involvement and mineral exposure. As a first result, my methodology is validated by the strong co-occurrence of clean energy technologies and critical mineral usage across transcripts. In a second result, I model the impact of critical mineral-related input uncertainty on firm performance which shows clear impacts for lithium and copper-related risks across different regions. Finally, I produce text-based evidence on how firms are mitigating supply chain risk, distinguishing between long-term process innovation and short-run operational measures. Overall, I find that new supply chain risks related to critical minerals are limited, most likely to the early stage of development of the sector.

Keywords: critical minerals; energy transition; risk; exposure; sentiment; circular economy; material substitution; Green Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp2133.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2133

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().