This study employs a comprehensive methodology to assess material criticality through an aggregate score combining multiple factors: projected energy sector demand growth, current demand as a fraction of global reserves, and supply concentration (percentage of production from the top three producing countries), all considered alongside energy importance. From this list of critical materials, ratio of abundance in NTWS to global demand was used to delineate a normalized abundance for each element along with the NTWS with the highest concentration to predict how these sources offset the risk of supply shortage.
Materials are ranked by criticality and compared with established Department of Energy (DOE) and European Union assessments. The analysis identifies a list of materials with similar criticality scores to DOE and all materials on the European Commission's 2023 Critical Materials report appeared in our analysis, except aluminum which has a lower weight compared to ours. Our assessment highlights fluorine, magnesium, and uranium as critical materials that do not appear on the EU list. Additionally, titanium and manganese received higher criticality scores than in DOE assessments due to their high depletion rates from global reserves and concentrated production. Among the identified critical materials, magnesium demonstrates high recovery potential with a normalized abundance approaching 1010, followed by lithium (~106), uranium, and gallium. Other elements except praseodymium are in the medium range of normalized abundance (103 – 105). These findings suggest that strategic recovery from NTWS could significantly bolster supply chain resilience for key clean energy materials. Additional results will be presented at the meeting.