Revising the ‘Economic importance’ dimension: The European framework for critical raw materials, completed and illustrated using lithium

Georges Daw

Resources Policy, 2025, vol. 101, issue C

Abstract: In demand since time immemorial, increasingly used as intermediate consumption and at the heart of energy and digital transitions, mineral substances are vital to the functioning of economies. While all are important, not all are strategic, and even less so, critical (as lithium). The European Union depends on them. Since 2010, the European Commission has produced statistics evaluating a broad and extensible set of criticality sub-indicators integrated in a two-dimensional matrix (Supply Risk, SR, and Economic Importance, EI) and a list of critical substances based on a combination of SR and EI, updated every 3 years. This article takes a closer look at one of these dimensions, namely the EI one. Our proposed dimension, "Economic effect, EE", integrates cost of using raw materials. Articulated in coherence with EI and assessed over the most recent period, it is compared with EI for lithium. EE suggests a systematically higher criticality than EI. Lithium stands out as 4% more critical. The dynamics of its criticality, on the other hand, is non-monotonic, enriching that of EI. The article also numerically illustrates the prospective use of SR, EI and EE. In addition, an up-to-date overview of lithium (markets, uses, production costs, supply, demand, prices, stocks and trade) has been provided, both for the EU and worldwide.

Keywords: Raw materials criticality; Lithium; European Commission's criticality assessments; Supply risk; Economic importance; Economic effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 A12 F52 F60 N54 Q31 Q32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420724008201
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Revising the ‘Economic importance’ dimension: The European framework for critical raw materials, completed and illustrated using lithium (2025)
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:eee:jrpoli:v:101:y:2025:i:c:s0301420724008201

DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2024.105453

Access Statistics for this article

Resources Policy is currently edited by R. G. Eggert

More articles in Resources Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().