Santa Marta, Colombia — Today, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network is releasing a new policy analysis examining transition mineral demand to achieve an equitable and safe transition to renewable energy systems. Circular, Equitable, and Renewable: Scrutinizing Mineral Requirements to Build a Just Energy Transition identifies governance and policy gaps that must be addressed to ensure a Just Transition and offers credible, actionable solutions to supply universal renewable energy. The report advocates for robust policy changes, economic incentives aligned with planetary boundaries, shifts in material and energy consumption patterns, and increased transparency and accountability regarding ‘critical’ mineral lists and mining plans and policies.

Governments are convening in Colombia for the historic First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels to develop concrete steps to phase out fossil fuels. As the leading driver of the climate crisis, there is no way forward to halt global warming without an immediate end to coal, oil, and gas extraction. Within this context, the new report centers on how a transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy can take place within a Just Transition framework.  With the increase in renewable energy production, concerns have grown over the accelerating extraction of ‘critical’ or transition minerals—including lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements—used in solar, wind, and energy storage systems. The expansion of mining for renewable energy technologies is leading to adverse impacts, including ecosystem degradation, water depletion and contamination, and harm to frontline communities.

While the report makes it clear there must be a rapid fossil fuel phaseout and adoption of renewable energy systems, it questions how the transition will take place. Given its widespread and well-documented harms, the report argues that extraction of transition minerals must be minimized as much as possible—permitted only where it is demonstrably necessary to achieve equitable access to renewable energy. In order to assess mineral requirements, the policy brief interrogates the dominant discourse that scaling up renewable energy will necessitate significant increases in mining—a narrative often disseminated in government announcements, industry analyses, and media articles.

Osprey Orielle Lake, Co-author of the report, and Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action (WECAN), states: “The global community is at a crossroads. To avert planetary collapse, governments must immediately implement a fossil fuel phaseout, while scaling up renewable energy, however this must not come at the expense of frontline communities or ecological integrity. To stay below the 1.5C guardrail and to prevent further social and ecological destruction, rights-based approaches are necessary to minimize transition mineral mining, ensure democratically-owned and decentralized renewable energy, and support life within planetary boundaries. The report explores what it means to supply materials for renewable energy within a Just Transition framework.”

Less than half of the demand for most transition minerals is for “clean” energy technologies. Reviewing disaggregated data in the United States, the Circular, Equitable, and Renewable report finds that only 26 of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) 2025 list of 60 critical minerals overlap with the materials  for solar, wind, and battery storage included on the Renewable Energy Materials Properties Database. The report also compares the USGS’s list of critical minerals with Global Justice Now’s analysis of minerals that will need “a considerable uplift in production” by 2040.  In this evaluation, the report finds that only seven of the minerals on the USGS’s list would need a substantial increase in production by 2040 for renewable energy generation, leaving a total of 53 minerals that do not require a significant uptick in production to develop wind, solar, and storage technology for the energy transition.

Further analysis in the report sheds light on misleading campaigns around critical minerals, probes uncertain mineral demand growth forecasts, and interrogates governments’ and international entities’ mining expansion plans. Authors suggest governments prioritize policies to reduce dependence on extraction,  disaggregate their ‘critical’ minerals lists, and transparently show what volume of which minerals are being extracted for which purpose in their mining plans and announcements.

The report closes with solutions and strategies to greatly reduce transition mineral requirements, calling for a shift in overconsumption patterns in the Global North, integration of reuse, repair, and refurbish models, and scaling up recycling of above ground minerals. Solutions highlighted in the report reveal that reducing mineral extraction to provide universal renewable energy is both technically feasible and policy dependent.

WECAN is available for interviews and will be sharing the report during events and advocacy as part of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia. Images of report graphics can be found here. For more details, please contact katherine@wecaninternational.org .