G7 sets up critical minerals alliance and crisis platform

By Julia Payne

EVIAN-LES BAINS, France, June 17 (Reuters) – G7 leaders agreed on Wednesday to step up coordination on critical minerals supply chains, setting out plans to coordinate stockpiling and for a new cooperation platform with an expanded role for the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Western powers are racing to diversify their sources of metals critical to defence, tech and renewable energy and reduce their over-reliance on Chinese products. China spooked the global economy last year when some industries nearly ground to a halt after Beijing imposed export curbs on permanent magnets laying bare the world’s dependence on a single source. 

“We are committed to working towards establishing harmonized, interoperable mechanisms…This would start with two pilot critical minerals – lithium and nickel – and aim to avoid undermining competitiveness or imposing excessive cost burdens,” the leaders said in a joint statement.

The G7 will also establish a dedicated platform to coordinate policy, data-sharing and crisis response, they said, working with the International Energy Agency to monitor markets and flag risks, as first reported by Reuters.

The group said the platform would draw on the agency to provide analysis and “early warnings of market distortions”.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Makini Brice and Julia Payne; Editing by Dminique Vidalon)