Response to Australia's Critical Minerals List update call by Critical Minerals Office

Yellishetty, M. (Fellow)

Civil Engineering

Activity: External Academic Engagement › Submissions to industry or govt committees, commissions and inquiries

Description

CMC conducted a stakeholder workshop in response to Australia's Critical Minerals List update call by the Critical Minerals Office on Tuesday, 15 August. The workshop was attended by 22 delegates representing academia, research, industry and industry associations from Australia, Japan, USA and the UK. You can find the full report here:
https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3388916/Critical-Minerals-List-2023.pdf

Period	15 Aug 2023
Work for	Australian Federal Government, Australia, Australian Capital Territory

Documents & Links

This report includes recommendations from the Critical Minerals Consortium (CMC), in response to the Critical Minerals List issues paper. The recommendations were informed in part by an online workshop conducted by the CMC with participation from 22 research and industry representatives. Recommendations are summarized below. Current set of criteria We need to consider which minerals are critical to Australia, and potash may be one mineral that would make the list. Considering Australia’s commitment to net-zero-carbon emissions by 2050, we could potentially see the addition of green steel and low-carbon cement to Australia’s list of critical minerals. We recommend that: • The criterion that currently reads “that our strategic partners need” should be modified to read “that Australia and its strategic partners need”. • Some change needs to be made to the criteria to allow Australia to source its critical minerals from other countries if it cannot produce them itself. • We should exclude from the list minerals for which no action is required, for example in the case that global demand is expected to decline. This can be done by the addition of the criterion: “for which industrial or government action is warranted”. • A comprehensive and disciplined approach to minerals criticality assessment should be adopted. Minerals criticality assessment is a topic that the CMC has published previously on including (Whittle, Yellishetty et al. 2020, Whittle and Yellishetty 2023). The CMC is well-placed to engage with the Federal Government in a detailed discussion of how to best structure the analysis to determine Australia’s critical minerals list.