Energy and Resource Atlas

# The Material Atlas of the World Economy

1. What carries the world economy today: the energy base and the master materials

The world still runs on carbon. Global primary energy consumption reached roughly 592 exajoules in 2024, up nearly 2 percent year on year, and fossil fuels supplied 86.7 percent of it: oil at 33.6 percent, coal at 27.9 percent, gas at 25.2 percent ([Energy Institute Statistical Review 2025](https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/sk/pdf/2025/Statistical-Review-of-World-Energy-2025.pdf)). Oil demand hit a record annual average near 103.8 million barrels per day ([OPEC ASB 2025](https://www.opec.org/assets/assetdb/asb-2025.pdf)). Coal, the fuel everyone keeps declaring dead, also set a new all-time high, with China alone consuming about 58 percent of the global total and now burning nearly 40 percent more than the rest of the world combined ([IEA Global Energy Review 2025](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/coal)).

The honest framing is uncomfortable. Renewables are the fastest-growing source, and 2024 was a genuine inflection: low-carbon electricity passed 40 percent of global generation for the first time since the 1940s, with wind and solar together at 15 percent ([Ember Global Electricity Review 2025](https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/world-surpasses-40-clean-power-as-renewables-see-record-rise/)). But the fossil share of *primary energy* has barely moved in fifteen years. Clean energy has been added on top of fossil demand rather than replacing it. Energy-related CO2 emissions reached about 38.4 gigatonnes in 2025 and were still rising, though at 0.4 percent, the slowest rate since 2021 ([IEA Global Energy Review 2026](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-emissions)).

Underneath the fuels sit the master materials that turn energy into an economy: steel (iron plus coking coal), cement, aluminium, copper, and the nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium triad that feeds 8 billion people. These are not glamorous. They are the load-bearing walls. None has a substitute at scale, and their production is itself a major share of fossil demand. That circularity, fossil energy needed to make the materials that build the machines that might displace fossil energy, is the central tension of the transition.

2. The pathway competition: renewables, nuclear, and AI

Three demand engines are now competing for the same materials.

Renewables are winning on cost and volume. Solar added a record 474 TWh of new generation in 2024, the largest single-source increment ever, and all renewables combined added 858 TWh ([Ember](https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/world-surpasses-40-clean-power-as-renewables-see-record-rise/)). Hydro remains the cheapest firm low-carbon source at $0.057/kWh ([IRENA RPGC 2024](https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2025/Jul/IRENA_TEC_RPGC_in_2024_Summary_2025.pdf)). The material bill is specific: solar needs polysilicon and silver (TOPCon cells use roughly 10 to 12 mg of silver per watt, falling under deliberate thrifting toward a 2 mg/W research target at [Fraunhofer ISE](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2026/silver-consumption-in-topcon-solar-cells-reduced-by-factor-ten.html)); direct-drive offshore wind needs around 240 kg of rare-earth oxide per megawatt, including up to 232 kg of neodymium-praseodymium ([Rare Earth Exchanges](https://rareearthexchanges.com/offshore-wind-turbines/)). Batteries, the enabler that makes intermittent renewables dispatchable, added 108 GW in 2025, up 40 percent, with pack prices falling to a volume-weighted $108/kWh and stationary storage hitting $70/kWh ([BloombergNEF](https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-fall-to-108-per-kilowatt-hour-despite-rising-metal-prices-bloombergnef/)).

Nuclear is the slow, capital-heavy contender. There are 421 operating reactors at 377 GW, supplying about 9.0 percent of electricity (Ember GER 2025), with 62 under construction totalling roughly 64.5 to 78 GW depending on the snapshot ([IAEA PRIS](https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstructionreactorsbyregion.aspx); [IEA 2026](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/technology-nuclear)). The West's problem is execution, not physics: Vogtle 3 and 4 came in near $36.8 billion against a $14 billion estimate ([EIA](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61963)), and Hinkley Point C has climbed to roughly £46 to 48 billion in 2024 prices ([World Nuclear News](https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Hinkley-Point-C-cost-rises-by-nearly-15)). Meanwhile 94 percent of reactor construction over the past decade used Chinese or Russian designs, and 9 of 10 construction starts in 2025 were Chinese ([IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/technology-nuclear)). The fuel cycle has its own chokepoints: Kazakhstan mines 39 percent of uranium, and Russia holds roughly 40 percent of global enrichment capacity ([WNA](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/uranium-enrichment)).

AI and data centers are the new wild card. Data centers drew about 415 TWh in 2024, around 1.5 percent of global electricity, and the IEA base case has them roughly doubling to 945 TWh by 2030, close to Japan's entire current consumption ([IEA Energy and AI](https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai)). The strain is local and acute: Virginia's data centers drew 12.1 GW in 2025, more than a quarter of state electricity ([EIA](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67664)), and Ireland's hit 22 percent of national metered demand ([CSO Ireland](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2024/)). This demand is what is reviving Western nuclear: Microsoft's 20-year, 835 MW PPA to restart Three Mile Island is anchored by Constellation's $1.6 billion investment ([DCD](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-to-return-as-microsoft-signs-20-year-835mw-ai-data-center-ppa/)).

3. Who profits, and why China's midstream control is the pivot

Resource ownership is not where the money or the leverage sits. Refining and manufacturing are. This is the single most important structural fact in the atlas.

The IEA's measure is blunt: the top three refining nations' average market share across key minerals rose from 82 percent in 2020 to 86 percent in 2024, and China dominates refining for 19 of 20 strategic minerals at roughly 70 percent average share ([IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2025/executive-summary)). The concentration is sharpest exactly where the transition is most exposed. China refines about 91 percent of rare earths and makes 92 to 94 percent of sintered NdFeB magnets ([IEA](https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/china-s-share-in-rare-earth-magnet-production-2024)). It produces 93.5 percent of polysilicon, about 95 percent of wafers, and holds roughly 1,500 GW per year of solar module capacity, already exceeding projected global demand for years ([Wood Mackenzie](https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/china-dominance-on-global-solar-supply-chain/)). It controls 98 to 99 percent of primary gallium ([USGS MCS 2025](https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-gallium.pdf)) and around 60 percent of refined antimony ([USGS MCS 2025](https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-antimony.pdf)).

The pattern repeats even where the rocks are foreign. The DRC mines about 76 percent of cobalt, but Chinese firms control an estimated 70 to 80 percent of its industrial mines ([USGS](https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-cobalt.pdf)). Indonesia mines roughly 60 percent of nickel, but Chinese companies control about 75 percent of its refining capacity, and 82 percent of Indonesia's nickel exports go to China ([C4ADS via Mining Technology](https://www.mining-technology.com/news/chinas-indonesias-nickel-capacity/)).

This midstream control is the pivot because it converts into leverage. China has demonstrated it: through 2024-25 its export restrictions cut gallium, germanium and antimony flows toward zero (near-total to the US) and pushed prices up by roughly 30 to 75 percent for gallium, around 90 percent for germanium, and two- to threefold for antimony ([Stimson Center](https://www.stimson.org/2025/chinas-germanium-and-gallium-export-restrictions-consequences-for-the-united-states/); [USGS MCS 2025](https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-antimony.pdf)). The IEA puts the value of downstream production dependent on uninterrupted rare-earth access at about $6.5 trillion per year outside China, a measure of value at risk rather than a predicted GDP loss ([IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/rare-earth-elements/executive-summary)). The profit at the value-capture end is concentrated too: NVIDIA's data-center revenue hit $115.2 billion in FY2025, up 142 percent ([SEC filing](https://investor.nvidia.com/news/press-release-details/2025/NVIDIA-Announces-Financial-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-2025/)), and the Big Five hyperscalers spent about $448 billion in capex in 2025, heading toward $630 to 725 billion in 2026 ([ComSoc](https://techblog.comsoc.org/2025/12/22/hyperscaler-capex-600-bn-in-2026-a-36-increase-over-2025-while-global-spending-on-cloud-infrastructure-services-skyrockets/)).

4. Substitution: where engineering routes around scarcity, and where it cannot

The most useful question for any scarce element is: can you engineer around it? The answer splits sharply.

Where substitution works, it works well. Sodium-ion batteries now reach 175 Wh/kg in CATL's Naxtra cell, competitive with mainstream LFP, using no lithium, cobalt, or nickel ([CATL](https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html)). LFP itself already routes around cobalt and supplies over 90 percent of grid storage and more than half of EV batteries ([IEA](https://www.batterytechonline.com/ev-batteries/iea-report-lfp-dominates-as-ev-battery-prices-fall)). Aluminium substitutes for copper in many conductors at roughly a quarter the price. Silver in solar cells is being thinned and replaced by copper plating. These are demand-side relief valves that loosen apparent hard limits.

Three elements resist substitution, and they deserve to be named plainly.

Phosphorus has no substitute in agriculture. It is a fundamental constituent of DNA, ATP, and bone; nothing else does the job. Morocco holds about 50 billion tonnes, roughly 68 percent of world reserves, a concentration starker than oil ([USGS MCS 2026](https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-phosphate.pdf)). Recovery and efficiency can stretch supply, but you cannot replace the element.

Helium cannot be manufactured and escapes Earth's gravity when released. It is irreplaceable for MRI cryogenics, semiconductor fabrication, and rocketry. Its fragility was demonstrated in March 2026 when war damage shut Qatar's Ras Laffan facility indefinitely, removing roughly a third of global supply with repair timelines of three to five years ([Euronews](https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/03/25/helium-supply-crunch-puts-mri-services-at-risk-amid-qatar-disruptions)).

Copper is the partial case, and the most economically consequential. There is no electrical substitute for high-conductivity wiring at scale, and electrification multiplies demand. The IEA projects a 30 percent supply gap by 2035 under stated policies ([S&P Global](https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/metals/120125-copper-faces-30-supply-deficit-by-2035-iea-warns-at-uk-summit)). Aluminium covers some uses, recycling covers more, but the deficit is structural.

A related hard limit sits in green hydrogen: PEM electrolyzers need iridium, of which only about 7 to 8 tonnes are produced annually, overwhelmingly from South Africa ([Johnson Matthey data](https://www.phoenixrefining.com/blog/global-iridium-supply-geology-concentration-and-strategic-risk)). Here engineering is winning the race: Ohmium reached 18 GW per tonne of iridium, beating the 2030 target of 10 ([Ohmium](https://www.morningstar.com/news/business-wire/20251113599132/ohmium-breaks-barriers-exceeds-2030-industry-targets-of-10-gwton-to-achieve-18-gwton-iridium-utilization)). Alkaline electrolyzers, which use no iridium, are the fallback.

5. The underused and the successors: honest odds

This section is partly evidence and partly reasoned bet. I will keep the line visible.

Evidence. Several abundant elements are genuinely waiting in the wings. Sodium is effectively unlimited and its batteries are now shipping, about 9 GWh in 2025, up 150 percent year on year ([multiple industry trackers]). Iron-air batteries from Form Energy target under $20/kWh for multi-day storage and have moved past pilot into real grid contracts, including a 15 MW / 1,500 MWh Georgia Power project for 2026 and a 30 GWh deal tied to a Google data center ([Form Energy](https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/)). Silicon anodes, niobium (Brazil holds 93 percent of supply), and surplus light rare earths like cerium and lanthanum are abundant inputs looking for larger markets.

Reasoned bets, labelled as such. The 100-year successors carry real uncertainty and I will not pretend otherwise.

• *Thorium reactors*: SPECULATION. Despite breathless coverage, Copenhagen Atomics has so far run only non-nuclear salt-loop tests; its first actual criticality is planned at Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute no earlier than 2028 ([Wikipedia/PSI](https://uatom.org/en/2024/07/19/first-critical-experiment-on-thorium-molten-salt-reactors-to-be-held-in-europe.html)). China's TMSR-LF1 did achieve criticality. Plausible by 2050, not before.
• *Fusion*: SPECULATION with hard fuel limits. ITER targets D-T operations in 2039, a date that has slipped repeatedly ([Physics World](https://physicsworld.com/a/iter-fusion-reactor-hit-by-massive-decade-long-delay-and-e5bn-price-hike/)). The binding constraint is tritium: the global civilian stockpile is only about 20 to 25 kg, decaying with a 12.3-year half-life ([Kleinman Energy](https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/commentary/blog/tritium-a-few-kilograms-can-make-or-break-nuclear-fusion/)). Private bets are large (Commonwealth Fusion raised about $6.85 billion), but commercial power this century is a bet, not a forecast.
• *Asteroid mining*: SPECULATION, currently failing. AstroForge's Odin probe lost contact days after its February 2025 launch ([AstroForge](https://www.astroforge.com/updates-collection/odint-mission-debrief)). Decades away at best.
• *Room-temperature superconductors*: SPECULATION. The 298 K hydride claim remains unreplicated.

The honest odds: sodium, iron-air, and silicon anodes are near-certain contributors within a decade. Thorium and fusion are credible multi-decade possibilities whose timelines have a long history of slipping. Asteroid mining and room-temperature superconductors are lottery tickets.

6. The endgame: saturation, recycling, and the shift from miners to maintainers

The long arc points away from extraction. Today's recycling rates are low: rare earths under 1 percent ([IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/recycling-of-critical-minerals/executive-summary)), copper secondary supply at 33 percent (down from 37 in 2015, because demand outran scrap). But the stock of deployed material is becoming an above-ground mine. By 2050, the IEA projects battery recycling alone could cut new mine development needs by 40 percent for copper and cobalt and 25 percent for lithium and nickel, with copper secondary supply rising toward 40 percent ([IEA](https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/secondary-supply-volumes-and-share-of-total-demand-for-copper-in-the-announced-pledges-scenario-and-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-scenario-2023-2050)).

The waves are scheduled. Retired EV batteries reach 100 to 120 GWh per year by 2030 ([IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024/outlook-for-battery-and-energy-demand)). Solar panel waste reaches up to 78 million tonnes cumulatively by 2050, containing over $15 billion in recoverable material ([IRENA 2016](https://www.irena.org/news/pressreleases/2016/Jun/Solar-PV-Recycling-Offers-Significant-Untapped-Business-Opportunity-New-Report-Shows)). Policy is forcing the shift: the EU Battery Regulation mandates 90 percent recovery of cobalt, copper, and nickel and 50 percent of lithium by end-2027, rising further by 2031 ([EUR-Lex](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/sustainability-rules-for-batteries-and-waste-batteries.html)).

This is the structural endgame, and it is reasoned extrapolation rather than certainty: as deployment saturates and the installed base ages, the economy's metabolism shifts from digging up virgin material to maintaining, recovering, and recirculating what is already in service. The value migrates from miners to maintainers. China saw this first; two-thirds of global recycling capacity growth since 2020 has been Chinese, the same midstream-control logic applied to the secondary supply chain. Whoever controls refining today is positioning to control recycling tomorrow. The chokepoint does not disappear. It moves.