AAAS: "Scientists have only discovered a tiny fraction of living insect species."

From half-meter-long moths to fairy wasps smaller than sand grains, insects come in a stunning variety of shapes and sizes and constitute the most diverse animal group on Earth. "But the insect species discovered so far may represent just a fraction of the total crawling, flying, and burrowing around the planet, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Using statistical methods borrowed from epidemiologists, a team of entomologists estimates there may be as many as 20 million insect species on our planet—more than three times the previous estimate.

"Over the past 3 centuries, biologists have described about 1 million insect species, but finding and describing them all would be a daunting—if not impossible—task." However, a subfamily of parasitoid wasps known as Microgastrinae, which infamously lay their eggs inside living caterpillars, are extremely well-studied. "Over the past several years, scientists conducting surveys of flying insects in the park have identified 388 species of Microgastrinae."

Independently, when scientists surveyed caterpillars that had been parasitized within the park, they identified only 889 wasp species. With almost no overlap, the mismatch between the 2 studies allowed a statistical estimate of a whopping 2394 Microgastrinae species. Applying this as a multiple to all 53,945 known insect species within Guanacaste suggests the park is actually home to 332,846 insect species, most of which have gone unobserved.

"The researchers then scaled this number globally using another diverse group of organisms: trees...[with] 1200 [to] 1500 tree species within Guanacaste and about 73,000 on Earth, meaning the park contains between 1.6% and 2.1% of global tree diversity." If the same percentage holds true for insects, then there’s anywhere between 13.3 million and 24.7 million insect species on Earth, with a safe middle-of-the-road estimate of 20.3 million species.

While you may think this epidemiological calculation represents biodiversity run riot, recall that many insect species are in decline from pesticides + habitat loss + climate change. Do not be sanguine.

By Kennedy Maize

Fuel cells, a proven way to make electricity without combustion, fission, or gravity, are making serious inroads into the red-hot market for producing power for artificial intelligence data centers.

Last Tuesday (June 30), fuel cell vendor Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE) announced what they described as a “$25 billion” deal with Canadian financial holding company Brookfield (NYSE,TSN:BN) that is a five-fold increase in Brookfield’s initial investment last October in the San Jose-based solid-oxide fuel cell developer. In a news release, Bloom said, “The expanded partnership reflects strong and sustained demand from hyperscalers and AI infrastructure developers for fast, reliable, and community-friendly power.” 

Aman Joshi, Bloom’s chief commercial officer, said, “When we formed this partnership, we said it was the first phase of a much larger vision. Today’s commitment reflects the momentum we are seeing in the market, as evidenced by recently announced large-scale deals. Bloom is uniquely positioned to address the urgent need for clean, reliable power to support the rapid growth of AI.”

Brookfield, with a trillion-dollar diversified portfolio that includes real estate, infrastructure, renewable energy, private equity, and insurance, is one of the world’s largest financial holding companies. In late 2022, it spun off private equity investor Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE,TSX:BAM), which relocated to New York City in 2024.

The Bloom-Brookfield compact was the second major AI coup for Bloom. In April, Texas-based technology giant Oracle Corp. announced a deal with the company to develop a behind-the-meter 2.45-GW artificial intelligence  data center in the New Mexico desert, dubbed Project Juniper, powered by Bloom’s fuel cells.

 At the time, Oracle explained its choice of fuel cell technology: “Fuel cells generate electricity without combustion, meaning the Bloom microgrid is highly efficient with low emissions and water use. Compared to its previously planned gas turbines, Project Jupiter with the Bloom microgrid will reduce NOₓ emissions by approximately 92% and will use a negligible amount of water.” 

A week before the Bloom-Brookfield deal (June 24), Connecticut-based FuelCell Energy (Nasdaq: FCEL) and Fit Energy USA LP of Boca Raton, Fla., a “Foreign Limited Partnership” formed in February under Florida law, announced a “strategic agreement for up to 380 megawatts (MW) of clean, baseload on-site power for data centers using FuelCell Energy’s utility-scale fuel cell technology. The agreement includes an immediate deposit for an initial 30 MW of power scheduled to begin delivery later this year.”

Jason Few, FuelCell Energy president and CEO, said, “This agreement further validates our decision to scale our operations to 500 MW, preserving our ability to serve a broad and growing pipeline of customers.” Fit Energy CEO Joel Leonoff, said, “Today’s announcement marks a critical step in building the power foundation required for the next generation of AI infrastructure. FuelCell Energy’s technology aligns with our growth objectives and our goal of delivering behind-the-meter power solutions to data centers at gigawatt scale.”

According to a joint news release, the two companies said that “under the arrangement, Fit Energy will be eligible to receive warrants tied to future deployment milestones of up to 380 MW. The warrant structure is designed to align long-term value creation with successful project execution and customer deployment.”

Fuel cells generate electricity through electrochemical reactions between a fuel (often pure hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (typically oxygen) without combustion. As the Department of Energy describes it, “A fuel cell consists of two electrodes—a negative electrode (or anode) and a positive electrode (or cathode)—sandwiched around an electrolyte. A fuel, such as hydrogen, is fed to the anode, and air is fed to the cathode….The electrons go through an external circuit, creating a flow of electricity.”

In the middle of the new fuel cell announcements, Norwegian energy consulting firm Rystad Energy issued a very bullish report on the fuel cell-data center connection, predicting “a tenfold increase in fuel cell market revenues by 2030, rising from around $2.8 billion in 2025 to roughly $30 billion, as AI computing demand drives unprecedented growth in data center construction.”

Backing up that prediction, says Rystad, is a “contracted order book of approximately 9 gigawatts (GW), including framework agreements with Oracle, AEP, Equinix, and Brookfield, points to growing confidence among major operators in fuel cells as a viable long-term power source.”

Fuel cells are particularly well suited for what the consultants see as a decided move to “on-site power generation rather than grid connection. Unlike conventional grid connections or large gas plants, fuel cells can be deployed quickly and run on natural gas today, transitioning to biogas, renewable natural gas or hydrogen as supply matures, while producing lower on-site emissions than combustion alternatives.”

Rystad’s Lein Mann Bergsmark said, “Power availability has become one of the defining constraints on data center growth, and operators are increasingly looking beyond the grid for solutions. Fuel cells have moved from a niche application to a measurable part of the firm power mix. The question now is whether the supply chain can scale at the same pace as demand.”

The Quad Report, covering energy policy and politics

When utility professionals think about grid modernization, the conversation naturally gravitates toward large-scale upgrades: high-voltage transmission lines, massive utility-scale storage, and centralized distribution management systems. We think big because our grids are big.

But a quiet infrastructure success story unfolding in rural Haiti turns this capital-intensive, top-down philosophy entirely on its head. It suggests that in highly volatile or capital-constrained environments, the ultimate grid architecture might not be a massive upgrade at all—but rather a modular network of "nickel-and-dime" mesh grids.

Bypassing the Centralized Bottleneck

In my recent coverage for Forbes--picked up by Yahoo Finance--I looked closely at how decentralized solar mesh grids are successfully delivering clean, affordable electricity to thousands of rural Haitian households. These are not mini-utilities or traditional microgrids that require centralized generation and a mini-distribution network. Instead, they connect small clusters of homes via localized, modular nodes. If one node or home drops off, the rest of the mesh network self-heals and keeps running.

For utility professionals, the structural takeaways from this model are profound:

• Radical De-Risking: Traditional grid extensions require massive upfront capital expenditure before the first customer flips a switch. Mesh grids scale organically. You build out a few homes at a time, matching capital deployment precisely with localized demand.

• Operational Resilience Under Strain: Conventional wisdom says infrastructure requires political stability. Mesh networks prove that localized, modular assets can thrive in environments of absolute instability precisely because they have no single point of failure. If it can maintain reliability in rural Haiti, the underlying architecture has cleared the ultimate stress test.

• The Capital Sequencing Blueprint: Perhaps the most scalable lesson is how these projects are funded. Developers utilized early-stage philanthropy to absorb the initial execution risk. Once the operational data proved the model's viability, it unlocked major follow-on funding from multilateral institutions like the World Bank and the IDB Lab.

The Macro Value of Micro-Networks

As global utilities face mounting challenges from extreme weather, physical security threats, and skyrocketing interconnection queues, the "all-or-nothing" approach to grid expansion is looking increasingly fragile.

Haiti’s mesh grid success isn't just a humanitarian milestone; it’s a technical proof of concept. It proves that a highly decentralized, modular power architecture can deliver 40% lower costs and unmatched resilience. For an industry staring down the barrel of a complex energy transition, it’s time to realize that sometimes, thinking small is the most strategic way to scale.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2026/07/01/despite-crippling-poverty-haiti-is-quietly-switching-the-lights-on/?ss=energy

A new IISD report shows village-level solar can undercut grid tariffs by nearly half, but storage costs, seasonal surplus and DISCOM planning will decide whether rural solar villages actually work.

A new framework from the International Institute for Sustainable Development finds that solarising Indian villages can slash electricity costs well below state benchmarks, but only if utilities plan storage, surplus power and grid integration together rather than chasing rooftop installation targets village by village.

👉 Read the full story: https://indoen.com/news/rural-indias-solar-reckoning-why-village-grids-need-more-than-panels-to-work

Two highly relevant metrics for analysing energy operations—which invariably involve the interest of various companies and institutions—are $/kWh and kWh/activity.

$/kWh refers to the cost of all consumed energy sources normalised to a single unit.

kWh/activity represents energy consumption relative to a specific operational measure, such as tons delivered, units produced, or—in the case of buildings—the number of occupants.

By tracking these two metrics month-by-month, one can gauge the performance of energy managers on two fronts: the cost of energy procurement and energy efficiency relative to output!

Best of all, monitoring a chart is easy, simple, and quick for everyone involved with energy management—an area that typically ranks among the top 10 (and often the top 5) cost categories.

I have been writing about the problem of medium and high impact NERC CIP systems being “illegal” in the cloud for close to ten years. At one point, I gave up on the idea that things would ever get better, since I thought the changes that would need to be made to the existing CIP standards would be too much for the power industry.

The problem was (and is) that prescriptive, device-based requirements like CIP-007 R2 and CIP-010 R1 can’t work in the cloud. These will all need to be rewritten as risk based. However, the industry is worried about how auditors would audit true risk-based requirements, since NERC’s Rules of Procedure were originally developed with only prescriptive requirements in mind. Since all the NERC Reliability Standards except for CIP are ultimately based on the laws of physics, prescriptive requirements are the only ones that make sense for those standards; but cybersecurity is based on risk, and all cyber requirements should be risk-based.

Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when in December 2023 a very well-written Standards Authorization Request (SAR) for fixing the cloud problem was approved by the NERC Standards Committee. Note that, by “cloud problem” I’m referring to the fact that medium and high impact BES Cyber Systems (BCS), Electronic Control or Monitoring Systems (EACMS) and Physical Access Control Systems (PACS) cannot be implemented or utilized in the cloud without violating over thirty NERC CIP Requirements and Requirement Parts. I break the cloud problem into three “sub-problems”: BCS in the cloud, EACMS in the cloud and PACS in the cloud.

Note the cloud problem is separate from the problem of BES Cyber System Information (BCSI) being stored or utilized in the cloud. The BCSI problem was solved when CIP-004-7 and CIP-011-3 came into effect on January 1, 2024, although hardly anybody in the NERC community seems to believe that the problem really was solved. As a result, a lot of NERC entities are needlessly refraining from using cloud-based services (SaaS) that sometimes uses BCSI, such as cloud-based MFA and configuration management.

The Risk Management for Third-Party Cloud Services Standards Drafting Team was constituted in the spring of 2024 (in response to the SAR’s approval) and started meeting in the summer; they have been meeting continually since then. However, the SDT has yet to publish a single draft standard or definition for comment, even though they are currently working on about twelve new standards and an undetermined number of new definitions.

If I’d been told a year and a half ago that the SDT would still be meeting today and that they wouldn’t yet have drafted any new standards, I would probably have said that’s not surprising, given how ambitious the project is; in fact, I predicted in late 2024 that it would be 2031 before new standards would be drafted, approved and in effect.

However, starting in early 2025, I began to see some red flags that made me worry the SDT might ultimately fail – i.e., disband without having solved the three cloud problems. Those red flags have only multiplied since then. Below are brief descriptions of about ten of those red flags. Once draft standards and definitions are posted, I’ll have a lot more to discuss.

1. The SDT decided in early 2025 that they would not only draft new standards for cloud-based systems, but they would develop new standards (called the “100-series”: CIP-102, 103, etc.) that would apply to both on-premises and cloud-based systems. At the time, I didn’t see how standards that apply to both types of systems could possibly work (since on-premises systems can be directly audited, but cloud-based systems can’t). But the SDT members assured me (since at that time I was attending at least two SDT meetings per month) that this would be no problem. I still don’t know if or how CIP auditing will work for cloud-based systems.

2. In order not to alienate NERC entities that are happy (or at least not terribly unhappy) with the current CIP standards and don’t want to go through a huge effort to revise all their documentation, procedures, etc., the SDT wants to let them stick with the current standards for on-premises systems, but utilize the 100 series standards for cloud-based systems. However, NERC entities that have both on-premises and cloud-based systems subject to CIP compliance will also be able to have their on-prem systems audited on compliance with the 100 series.

The SDT’s hope is that ultimately all systems subject to NERC CIP compliance will be audited based on the 100 series standards. This is a fine idea, but I know of no provision in the NERC Rules of Procedure that allows a NERC entity to choose not to comply with a group of standards, even though they’re technically required to comply with them. All NERC entities with on premises control systems and with assets (mostly Control Centers, Transmission substations and generating facilities) that meet one of the “bright line” criteria in Attachment 1 of CIP-002 must comply with the CIP standards.

The SDT might address this problem by changing Section 4 of each existing CIP standard to say that the standard isn’t applicable to entities that have chosen to follow the 100-series equivalent of that standard (e.g., CIP-105 for CIP-005). However, negotiating this wording with the NERC lawyers will be a bear. Instead, the SDT seems to be pursuing a strategy of hoping the lawyers won’t notice what they’re doing. Good luck with that.

3. The above is one of at least two – and perhaps more – aspects of the new standards that are likely to violate the Rules of Procedure. Of course, the RoP can be changed, although not by an SDT. Nobody has been able to tell me how the RoP can be changed, but it’s certainly going to require a long process and will almost certainly require both NERC and FERC approval. The SDT’s leaders have told me, probably with fingers crossed, that RoP changes won’t be needed (although one of them said something very different to me less than a year ago). We’ll see what happens, but this is another red flag.

4. The proposed 100 series standards will supposedly fix the cloud problem, which of course is the SDT’s mandate (see below for more on this topic). But the SDT decided early last year that they wanted to add a huge task that isn’t in their mandate at all: rewrite the current CIP standards to be entirely risk-based (or “objectives-based”, to use the current NERC term). Even though NERC entities will be allowed to stay on the current standards for their on-premises systems, the 100 series standards are intended to be the next version of CIP, so sooner or later all NERC entities will have to comply with them, no matter where their systems are located.

I’ve been saying for years that the current CIP standards need to be rewritten as risk-based. In fact, in 2018 I wrote more than half of a book explaining the problems I see with the current CIP standards and describing how they could be fixed. However, I abandoned it when I became too busy (I may be working with someone soon to finally finish the book. If you’re interested in joining this effort, let me know).

But I’m not the only person with ideas about how to improve the CIP standards; just about every NERC entity who must comply with CIP has something to say about the current standards, some of it printable and some not. If this SDT wants to rewrite the current standards for on-premises systems, I suggest they stop what they’re doing now and draft a SAR for doing that, since they have no mandate to do this now. In drafting that SAR, they need to hold listening sessions with NERC entities to get their ideas on how to fix CIP; if they try to impose their own ideas on a very passion-filled topic, they aren’t likely to get approved by the NERC ballot body.

If the SDT does this right, it will take them six months to a year to conduct “listening tours” (physical and virtual, of course), then draft the new SAR. This might seem to be an unnecessary use of the SDT’s time, but deciding for themselves what NERC entities need and then forcing them to swallow the team’s ideas whole isn’t going to work.

5.  However, there’s one problem that currently makes all the others moot: Since the beginning of the year, the SDT has been sprinting (although running hard in place is a better description) to meet a seemingly arbitrarily imposed September “deadline” to submit the new standards and definitions for the first ballot for NERC entities to vote on. The SDT is no more likely to meet that deadline than I am to score a goal in the World Cup. Here’s why:

a)      Given everything that needs to go on before the first ballot, the team needs to have at least an agreed upon set of about 12 draft standards ready in a few weeks – this will be the “posting for comment” for the NERC community. Yet, after 22 or 23 months of work, the SDT has yet to agree on a single draft standard; in fact, there is at least one standard that the team hasn’t yet decided whether it will even be part of the package they submit. Will they really be able to finalize all twelve standards in a few weeks? Is it possible that the reason why they’re having so much trouble drafting the 100 series standards is that they’re trying to do too much at once - like end global warming, square the circle, and invent a perpetual motion machine in one fell swoop?

b)     When the team first started discussing new standards to apply to the cloud, they started using terms like “BES Cyber Systems or Services” and building the requirements on them. However, they never finalized any definitions and still haven’t done so; in fact, there isn’t even agreement on what terms are needed. This is just another task that needs to be accomplished in the next few weeks (this is also one reason why none of the standards are finalized. How can you finalize a requirement without being sure what the terms in it mean?). I note that the team that drafted CIP version 5 – the last major change to the CIP standards before this one – developed their fundamental definition, BES Cyber System, in 2008 or 2009. That was two years before they started drafting v5 and seven years before it came into effect, not three weeks before they first posted the standards for comment.

c)      In recent years, the primary guidance for a new or revised NERC standard is its Technical Rationale (TR) – a document prepared by the drafting team that explains what they had in mind when they developed the standard. This SDT is already at work on a TR for each standard (to be more exact, a few individuals are at work on TRs. Given the huge volume of work remaining to be done and the pressure to finish up, it’s not clear they’ll have much time to coordinate with each other). I’ve seen some of the language in one of the TRs; it’s quite complex, which is a huge red flag in my book. If a requirement can’t be described in concise language, it shouldn’t be a requirement, since it will result in endless audit fights.

d)     Before the SDT can post the standards for the first ballot, they need to take two steps: The first is posting the draft standards for comment, so that members of the NERC community can submit questions and comments. This comment period is normally at least 25 days; anything less than that will be a big problem, since a NERC compliance team at a major utility can’t just whip something up in a couple of weeks and submit it without any review; in fact, comment periods are normally 45 days.

e)     Once the comments are received, the SDT needs to respond to them, including at least all the negative ones (although they can group comments that seem to be similar). However, after responding, the hard work begins: the team needs to decide which negative comments are valid and make changes to the standards or definitions to address those comments. Finally, they need to post the revised draft standards for comment, so NERC entities can verify that they have in fact taken their comments seriously. If the SDT tries to skip this step, they risk making a lot of NERC entities unhappy, and anxious to take their revenge on the SDT in the balloting.

f)       The second step the SDT needs to take before the first ballot posting is the Quality Review, in which the draft standards are submitted to a group of NERC lawyers and auditors for their comments (actually, the SDT should have had at least one meeting with the auditors already. If they had done so – as I was repeatedly promised - they might have avoided running into a brick wall in the QR, with the lawyers and/or auditors telling them they have to restart the drafting process from the beginning.

g)      I think this is a real possibility, although it’s still better than having the standards get approved by NERC (which is almost certain to take at least a year) and then go to FERC for their judgment. It might take more than one year for FERC to render judgment (I believe the CIP record was 17 months for version 1), given the importance of the cloud changes and given the fact that, unlike almost every other change in or addition to the CIP standards, FERC didn’t order the changes. Thus, if FERC has problems with what’s submitted to them, they might not do what they normally have done with CIP: approve the standard but require that changes be made in a new version. Instead, they might simply remand the standard entirely, so the SDT will have to restart the drafting process from the beginning. This would add at least two years to the amount of time the SDT has wasted. Of course, this would be a catastrophe for NERC, since so many NERC entities have been waiting for so long to – finally! – have full access to the cloud. If they suddenly find themselves in another long wait just when they thought their problem was finally solve…I have no idea what would happen, but it’s unlikely to be pretty.

h)     It should be clear that the two comment periods (one for the general community and one for the NERC lawyers and auditors) will take at least two months each – which alone puts the SDT far past their September “deadline” for the first ballot posting. However, that assumes that none of the negative comments will require substantial changes to the standards (and anything more than a misspelling might require a substantial change). But it’s close to certain that many substantial changes will be required, to the point that the SDT may have to throw out everything they’ve drafted so far and start over (in fact, in the last SDT meeting, it was pointed out that one feature of the draft standards – even though they haven’t been officially drafted yet – has already drawn substantial negative comments from one group of NERC entities. There will likely be other such cases as well).

i)       Given this, the earliest possible date for posting for a first ballot is probably January, but even that will depend on not needing to make any substantial changes after either the posting for public comment or the quality review.  Since that’s not a realistic assumption, I’d say the SDT will be lucky if they can have a first ballot before next spring or even summer. On the other hand, it will be much worse if the initial draft standards make it to the first ballot posting substantially unchanged, since I don’t see any reasonable path to their getting passed by even a majority of the NERC ballot body (i.e., the NERC entities that say they want to vote on these changes), let alone the required supermajority. If the SDT is forced to go back to the drawing board soon (say, after the public posting for comment) rather than 1-3 years from now, it will be a very bad day at the office for the NERC community in general, but especially the SDT members.

Thus, I think it will realistically be at least 3-5 years (including allowance for an implementation period after FERC approves the new standards and definitions) before the standards now being worked on by the SDT come into effect (which brings me back to my original prediction of 2031, although I wasn’t aiming for that result). Given that the team has already met for two years with very little to show for that effort, I wonder how many members will be willing to stick around that long.

I want to point out that there are two scenarios in which I can at least imagine that the most important part of the CIP-in-the-cloud problem would be solved (i.e., an enforceable set of standards and definitions would be in place) in the next two years:

1. When I moved to Chicago decades ago, there was a common saying in politics: “The fix is in.” This meant there was no point in fighting some political move that had recently been made or was about to be made, since the people in charge (which was certainly not the voters at that time!) had already decided what they wanted; they would make it happen no matter what anyone else said. I certainly hope that can’t happen in this case, but given the obviously huge pressure on the drafting team to meet the September deadline for the first ballot, I’m not so sure it won’t.

After all, the NERC Board of Trustees has various emergency powers at their disposal. I can’t imagine what emergency would justify not going through the normal standards approval process in the case of CIP and the cloud. However, I do know that short-circuiting that process would be a huge and extremely costly mistake if it happened. NERC literally might not recover from that.

2. Last November, I realized that the three components of the Cloud CIP problem - BCS, EACMS and PACS in the cloud – could all be solved with eight small changes to the existing standards and definitions (seven of the changes are trivial. One, the definition of “system”, is less trivial but is certainly doable with a few SDT meetings). I also realized that by far the most important of these problems was (and continues to be) the “EACMS problem” (although the “PACS problem”, which is literally word for word identical with the EACMS problem if you just replace every instance of EACMS with PACS, is a close number two). In fact, the 2023 Standards Authorization Request (linked earlier), under which this SDT was constituted, mentioned – nay, pleaded – in a couple of places that the SDT should address the EACMS problem before the others. I don’t think the SDT ever seriously considered this request, mainly because they spent their first six months drafting their own SAR, which didn’t mention this issue at all.

When I realized early this year that this SDT was probably on the road to failure and needed some sort of quick fix, I realized that just the last four of the eight changes (now highlighted in red) in my November post linked earlier were all that are needed to fix both the EACMS and PACS problems (but not the BCS problem, which ironically is the least important today); all four of these are trivial changes that should be easy to draft and shouldn’t be controversial at all. I’m sure that, if the drafting team starts to draft these changes soon (they won’t require a new SAR), both EACMS and PACS in the cloud could be “legal” by the end of next year (Note to the SDT: The scheduling problem with CIP-002 that you discussed in your meeting on Thursday doesn’t apply to these changes, since no change to CIP-002 is needed).

Here’s a final kicker: I’m close to certain that whatever standards the SDT drafts for the posting for comment will not solve the problem of either EACMS or PACS in the cloud. In other words, even if by some miracle the SDT can get the currently envisioned standards and definitions approved by both NERC and FERC, they will still have to go back and make the four changes I listed in that post. Why not make these changes now, rather than wait for NERC entities - who have only on-premises systems, but want to utilize a cloud-based access control or monitoring service or PACS service - to realize they still can’t legally use the cloud when they start to get audited for the 100 series? Boy, will they be p___..…umm, unhappy.

Tom Alrich’s Blog, too is a reader-supported publication. You can view new posts for two months after they come out by becoming a free subscriber. You can also access all my 1300 existing posts dating back to 2013, as well as support my work, by becoming a paid subscriber for $30 for one year (and if you feel so inclined, you can donate more than that or become a founding subscriber for $100). Whichever option you choose, please subscribe. 

If you would like to comment on what you have read here, I would love to hear from you. Please comment in my chat or email me at [email protected].

A utility can invest years modernizing its enterprise systems and still be flying blind operationally. The culprit is usually the same: an integration layer between GIS and everything else that was never built for how spatial data actually works. 

Traditional enterprise integration was designed for business records. Work orders, customer accounts, asset registers. It moves structured, predictable data between systems on a schedule. That approach works reasonably well until GIS enters the equation. 

Spatial data is different in kind, not just degree. 

Every GIS feature carries geometry, network connectivity, and geographic relationships that directly affect field operations. A transformer or water valve isn't a row in a table. It exists within a physical network, and that network has to stay accurate across every system that touches it, in near real time, at scale. 

When it doesn't, the consequences aren't theoretical: 

• Field crews stop trusting the operational map 

• Asset records drift from physical reality 

• Manual verification quietly replaces the automated workflows organizations paid to build 

One organization we've worked with discovered that missing synchronization identifiers had generated hundreds of thousands of duplicate service connections during testing. They eventually abandoned automated synchronization altogether and reverted to manual processes. That's not a technical failure. That's an organizational one. 

What makes this harder: spatial integrations don't fail all at once. They drift. 

An ERP upgrade introduces a revised API. A workflow shifts. And data that was flowing cleanly stops doing so, without triggering any alarm. By the time someone notices, operational trust has already eroded. Rebuilding it takes far longer than fixing the integration. 

Keeping those connections stable as enterprise environments evolve requires expertise on both sides of the equation, geospatial and enterprise systems. That combination is rarer than most organizations expect, and the gap tends to show up at the worst possible moment. 

GIS is now central to digital twin programs, predictive maintenance, mobile workforce operations, and real-time network monitoring. It's not a mapping department tool. It's the operational layer connecting enterprise systems to the physical world. 

That layer deserves an integration strategy built for what it actually is. 

Modernization efforts don't stall because organizations lack ambition. They stall because the infrastructure connecting systems wasn't designed to last. Getting that foundation right isn't a technical detail. It's a strategic one. 

For CEOs leading modernization efforts, these are the questions that keep surfacing in my conversations with other executives: 

• Did we build an integration layer that understands network topology, or are we treating spatial features as generic records? 

• Is critical geospatial and enterprise systems expertise concentrated in one or two people on our team? What happens to our operations if that knowledge walks out the door? 

• Do we have a clear way of knowing when spatial data synchronization starts to drift, or are we relying on our teams noticing after trust has already been lost? 

• When we upgrade ERP, GIS, or other enterprise platforms, do we have a repeatable process to validate that our integrations still hold? 

• Do our field crews trust the operational map, or have they quietly reverted to manual processes? 

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcmontalvo_pjm-powermarkets-gridreliability-share-7478503506308571136-Wld5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAABMsYcB3I6zhtjaqBqVcePEOQqxsZNzj5E

• Mind the gap: Between 2024 and 2025, forced outages reduced coal availability by 39.8 TWh and gas availability by 19.1 TWh, NERC noted in its 2026 State of Reliability report. These shortfalls put a dent in the country’s deployable reserves—a concerning trend as demand only continues to grow.

• Clean energy is also hitting a huge speed bump: Renewable developers are racing to kick off construction before the July 4 federal tax credit cutoff. After this deadline, renewable PPA prices could jump by over 40% across the US grid (and more than double in ERCOT).

Electrification power struggles are intensifying in the energy octagon.

Resilience and agility will separate winners from losers. But not before buckets of political blood have been spilled.

First, to the grid, where we have a spike in energy security concerns.

Respondents to DNV’s survey of more than 1,000 senior energy executives and engineers point to several major challenges affecting their ability to manage disruption and meet demand.

Key theme in the 2026 findings of the global risk management company’s annual poll: resilience required.

More specifically, resilience in energy security, resilience in grid infrastructure, and resilience in energy system organizations.

The DNV report found examples of threadbare resilience across all three categories.

For example, 69% of the survey’s respondents said that dependence on imported energy sources has increased the vulnerability of their energy grids.

Energy demand is also outpacing supply, especially in North America, where 78% of survey respondents waved supply and infrastructure red flags.

Less than half of the respondents (44%) said their government is doing enough to secure long-term energy security. In North America, that percentage dropped to 37%.

What about greening the grid and the decarbonization din?

On the energy security side, it remains audible, but predictability and balance now have the ear of the market.

They are efficiency fundamentals.

“The energy industry,” as the DNV report notes, “benefits from long periods of stable prioritization and policy certainty.”

Not much of that today on any front. Instead, we have political policy uncertainty and prioritization instability on all fronts.

And that short-circuits energy business efficiency.

Simen Moxnes, a senior new energy systems adviser at Equinor, a Norway-based energy company, underscored that in the DNV report.

“Within the energy trilemma [energy security, energy affordability, and environmental sustainability], we cannot bounce from corner to corner,” he said. “We need a long-term strategy aiming for balance. If you chase one dimension too hard and ignore the others, you inevitably create new problems.”

So, we need a multi-dimensional approach. That means mixing old with new and resisting political pressures to replace old with new before new is ready for prime time.

The DNV survey respondents agree.

They support the wisdom of combining old with new to bolster energy security rather than eroding it with ill-advised bouncing “from corner to corner.”

While 79% said expanding renewable energy capacity improves energy security, 74% added that oil and gas will be critical to ensuring that security over the next decade.

When it comes to energy security, the European Union is at a critical crossroads, magnified by the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

That energy security intersection is among the issues discussed in the Carnegie Endowment’s Grand Strategy for Europe’s Clean Industrial Future.

The EU’s ambitious embrace of renewable energy at the expense of fossil fuel reliability has left it a power pauper dependent on other regions and vulnerable to geopolitical disruptions and disputes.

“Europe’s energy and foreign policies are not yet suited to today’s harsh geopolitical environment,” the Carnegie report points out. “Since the 2019 European Green Deal, the European Union (EU) has cut emissions by reducing fossil fuel consumption. But it has created new dependencies by swapping them for energy technologies and imported fuels.”

Energy realities have also recalibrated commercial shipping’s green ambitions.

As the Substack Shipping News has documented, the International Maritime Organization’s Net Zero Framework goal of net-zero commercial shipping emissions by 2050 is drifting further off course.

Electrification infrastructure and alternative fuel technology initiatives in the maritime goods-moving network remain marginal at best.

Consider, for example, that, according to DNV, only 4% of the global shipping fleet is equipped with high-voltage connections to access port shore power, and only 3% of the 3,400 ports that service ships of more than 5,000 gross tonnes provide electric shore power connections.

DNV estimates that implementing widespread use of electrical shore power could reduce fuel oil demand for large commercial freighters by approximately 3.5%, which equates to “an estimated annual reduction potential of 9.24 Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent) fuel and 29 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.”

While an estimated 51% of orders for new container ships include dual-fuel technology, only around 3,000 ships in the world’s 121,000 commercial-vessel fleet are equipped with the technology to burn anything other than heavy marine oil.

That is a mere 2%.

Small wonder then that DNV recently revised its outlook for transportation’s prime driver.

It originally forecast that oil, which currently provides 90% of global transportation’s energy needs, would reduce its share to 67% by 2040; DNV has revised that to 76%.

So, energy octagon winner and still champ: oil.

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Power grid capacity and modernization investment is atop the energy security priority list for energy executives and engineers, according to a DNV energy system resilience survey | DNV Energy Industry Insights 2026

• The deal: The tech titan has inked a 20-year PPA with Chevron to fuel a planned data center in West Texas, which is set to receive its first power in 2028. This could become one of the country’s biggest projects of its kind.

• The demand: The data center would gobble up enough electricity to power two million homes. But Chevron is optimistic it’ll have extra power to send to the grid, CNBC reported. 

• Meanwhile in Virginia, state Democrats have agreed to put a temporary two-year tax on data centers, which would cost the industry roughly $600M annually. (But data centers pull in $2B from sales tax exemptions each year.) The potential tax is part of a budget agreement that still needs approval from other state officials and Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

• The tab: TransAlta wants a refund for the nearly $20M it has spent keeping its Centralia plant in Washington state open—but not generating power—for the past six months, per orders from Energy Sec. Chris Wright. The most recent arrived earlier this month.

• Who pays? The company proposed splitting the bill between several organizations, including the Bonneville Power Administration and CAISO (who are not actually responsible here…but were mistakenly named in the initial DOE order). All these organizations have, unsurprisingly, pushed back.

• The stakes: If FERC approves TransAlta’s request for reimbursements, the costs would be passed directly onto ratepayers, a representative at Environmental Defense Fund told Energy Central.

Grist: "Alaska’s $44 billion bet on natural gas." Since his first day in office, Trump has focused on “unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.” Proponents like Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy extoll the economic benefits the pipeline will bring to Alaska and the energy security it will provide to allies. 

"But the cost is staggering: Official estimates put it at $44 billion, though independent analysts suggest it could top $70 billion." North Slope of Alaska holds about 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it one of the largest known sources in the US. "But with the project’s steep price tag and no firm commitments from buyers, oil majors like ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil have backed away over the last decade."

Glenfarne Group, a privately held energy firm that has never operated a liquified natural gas export terminal, stepped in last year. Incredibly, "shortly after Trump was elected, state officials handed the company a 75 percent stake in the project in a NO-BID DEAL, the details of which have been kept even from the legislature." Glenfarne will lead the project’s development + financing efforts and, if the company decides to move forward, oversee construction + operation of the pipeline, gas treatment plant, + export terminal.

"Though the state has not paid Glenfarne directly, it has poured at least $600 million into planning, design, and permitting—and initially floated paying Glenfarne an additional $50 million for its costs, even if the company decided to walk away." The pipeline’s backers are already eyeing additional federal support, including $30 billion in loan guarantees. 

“Every taxpayer should be furious that the federal government is chasing this project,” said Cooper Freeman, the state director for The Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing the federal government over the proposed pipeline’s threat to endangered species.

I didn't even have to look up how to spell boondoggle. Which is not a breed of dog. Or is it?

As always, hats off to our fossil fuel buddies.

Conventional wisdom suggests using residential demand response (DR) to help offset growing electricity demand from data centers. We wanted to test that assumption - and also examine the impact of rapidly growing EV ownership.

Our analysis produced two surprising results:

• Residential DR does not reduce the utility peak associated with data center growth because residential and data center peak loads occur at different times. Rebound effects largely offset temporary residential load reductions.

• Managed EV charging produces the opposite result. Under every G&T cost structure evaluated, the program generated net savings after program costs—and in some cases reduced annual residential electric costs by nearly $8/residential customer base while avoiding $40/residential customer base in unmanaged EV costs.

 For example, an electric cooperative with rate Structure II serving a suburban residential customer base of 20,000 with 10% EV ownership could increase annual revenue/reduce customer prices by $93,000.  

Study results are based on the MAISY® Utility Customer Database, Grid Impact Model analysis and industry EV data. Our paper includes the complete methodology, assumptions, and example calculations for four representative G&T cost structures and is available at https://maisy.com/dcevrates.htm

Enterprise technology and data programs live or die by how budget is allocated. The line between Capital and O&M shapes what gets funded, how work is classified, and whether data capture is treated as core program infrastructure or pushed to a separate budget. Utilities that get this right unlock capacity. Those that do not see delays, data and work‑posting shortfalls, and reporting gaps compound across the organization.

This session starts with the financial foundation: how to approach Capital versus O&M allocation strategically, not just for compliance, and how that framing expands what is possible. We will explore practical approaches to fund data work across capital and enterprise programs, including how to scope data capture, validation, and posting as capital‑eligible activities tied directly to the assets being built.

We will then connect that strategy to execution by walking through the capital and data programs that benefit most from this approach, including high‑volume construction data, asset records, GIS alignment, and the workflows that support enterprise requirements. The result is a funding model and operating rhythm that scales with program volume and gives utilities the visibility and control needed to manage enterprise data effectively.

You will leave with:

• A clear framework for improving Capital and O&M allocation decisions

• Practical approaches for funding data work as part of capital programs

• A better understanding of which programs benefit most from this alignment

• Proven ways to scale data and construction workflows while improving visibility and control

Panelists:

• Clarke Wiley, Director, SSP Innovations

• Brandon Vossler: Principal Consultant, PG Partners

• Darius Elder, Senior Consultant, PG Partners

Access the replay now

How the race for green technologies is reproducing extractive relationships in the Global South

Abstract

The global green transition — the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electrified transport — requires enormous quantities of critical minerals: lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, rare earth elements, and platinum group metals. These minerals are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The countries that hold these resources are, in many cases, the same countries that contributed least to the carbon emissions that necessitate the transition, and that stand to suffer most from the climate change it is meant to address.

This analysis argues that the current architecture of critical mineral extraction, processing, and trade is reproducing — and in some dimensions deepening — the extractive logic of the colonial era under a green banner. The Democratic Republic of Congo mines 70% of the world's cobalt but processes almost none of it. Chile and Argentina hold 40% of the world's lithium reserves but have historically captured a fraction of its value. Rare earth elements are mined across Africa and Latin America but refined overwhelmingly in China. In each case, the same pattern emerges: resources extracted from the South, value created in the North and East, profits repatriated away from the communities that bear the environmental, social, and health costs of extraction.

This is not an argument against the green transition. It is an argument for a different transition architecture — one in which the countries that supply the raw materials of decarbonisation also capture the industrial, technological, and economic benefits of that transition. The alternative — a green transition that decarbonises the North while extracting from the South — is not merely unjust. It is strategically unstable, democratically contested, and ultimately self-defeating.

A methodological note: this analysis is written from the perspective of political economy and critical realism, examining the structural interests embedded in current critical mineral governance rather than treating the green transition as a technically neutral process. The framing is analytical, not polemical.

PART I  The Colonial Template: Historical Parallels and Structural Continuities

1. The Extraction Logic, Reloaded

The Extraction Logic, Reloaded

The history of Africa and Latin America's relationship with the global economy is, in large part, a history of resource extraction. From the silver mines of Potosí to the rubber plantations of the Congo Free State, from the copper mines of Zambia to the oil fields of Nigeria, the structural pattern has been remarkably consistent: natural resources extracted from the South, processed and manufactured in the North, consumed in wealthy markets, with the profits flowing away from the communities that bear the environmental, social, and health costs of extraction.

This pattern — what dependency theorists termed the 'commodity trap' — was not merely a consequence of colonial coercion. It was embedded in the institutional architecture of the global economy: in trade rules that taxed processed goods more than raw materials, in finance structures that directed capital toward extraction rather than manufacturing, in technology regimes that kept industrial capacity in the North, and in governance arrangements that prioritised the interests of extractive corporations over those of producing communities.

The global green transition does not, on current trajectories, break this pattern. It intensifies it. The minerals required for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and grid storage systems are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Global South. The technologies that use those minerals — and the patents, manufacturing capacity, and value chains associated with them — are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Global North and, increasingly, in China. The result is a new iteration of an old structural relationship: the South supplies raw materials; the North and China supply technology, capital, and manufactured goods; the developmental benefit flows upward and outward.

Map 1: Global Critical Minerals Distribution — The Geography of the Green Transition, 2026. The minerals essential to solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Global South. Sources: USGS 2026; BGR (2025)

The Commodity Trap 2.0: From Coal to Cobalt

The term 'commodity trap' describes the structural disadvantage of economies that export unprocessed raw materials rather than manufactured goods. Raw commodity prices are volatile, driven by global demand cycles over which producing countries have no influence. The value added through processing, manufacturing, and technology development accrues elsewhere. And the environmental costs — land degradation, water contamination, air pollution, biodiversity loss — remain in the country of extraction.

In the colonial and post-colonial era, this trap was maintained by tariff structures that penalised processing in producer countries (escalating tariffs), by technology monopolies that prevented Southern countries from developing manufacturing capacity, and by financial systems that directed foreign investment toward extraction rather than industrialisation.

In the green transition era, the same structural mechanisms operate under different names. The EU's CRMA explicitly targets 10% domestic mining, 40% domestic processing, and 15% domestic recycling of critical minerals by 2030 — targets that are designed to ensure European value capture, not African or Latin American industrialisation. Trade agreements that the EU is negotiating with mineral-rich countries offer market access in exchange for raw material supply, without joint technology co-development mandates or processing requirements. And the patent system that governs green technology — solar cells, battery chemistries, electrolyser designs — concentrates intellectual property in the Global North and China, ensuring that producing countries must pay licence fees to deploy the very technologies that their minerals enable.

The 2025 AU-EU Luanda Summit reaffirmed political commitments to 'strategic partnerships' in critical minerals — but, as the SWP Berlin's February 2026 analysis documented, European initiatives continue to lose ground to China, the Gulf States, and the US precisely because they offer access to raw materials in exchange for market access, rather than genuine value chain integration for African partners.

PART II  The Critical Minerals Map: Who Owns What

2. The Critical Minerals Map: Who Owns What

The Geographic Concentration of Green Transition Resources

The raw material geography of the green transition is stark. Six minerals — lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, rare earth elements, and platinum group metals — are essential to the battery, motor, and catalyst technologies at the heart of electrification. Their distribution is extraordinarily concentrated, creating structural dependencies that are reshaping geopolitical relationships at the same time that climate policy demands their rapid scaling.

Cobalt: The Democratic Republic of Congo holds approximately 50-55% of proven global cobalt reserves and produces approximately 70% of current global supply. Of the DRC's 19 major cobalt-producing mines, 15 are owned or co-financed by Chinese entities. The cobalt is exported — overwhelmingly unprocessed — to China, where 80% of global cobalt refining capacity is located. The DRC, one of the world's poorest countries despite its mineral wealth, captures approximately 2-3% of the final value of the cobalt in an electric vehicle battery.

Lithium: The 'Lithium Triangle' of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile holds approximately 53% of global lithium resources. Australia is the current leading producer, but the South American triangle's reserves are far larger. China controls approximately 60% of global lithium processing capacity, and Chinese companies — including CATL, BYD, and Ganfeng Lithium — have made aggressive investments in all three Lithium Triangle countries.

Rare Earth Elements: Africa holds significant REE deposits in countries including South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia, and Madagascar. China mines approximately 60% of global REEs and refines approximately 85-90%. Western attempts to develop alternative REE supply chains have made limited progress against Chinese dominance of processing technology and capacity.

Rare Earth Elements: Africa holds significant REE deposits in countries including South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia, and Madagascar. China mines approximately 60% of global REEs and refines approximately 85-90%. Western attempts to develop alternative REE supply chains have made limited progress against Chinese dominance of processing technology and capacity.

Platinum Group Metals: South Africa holds approximately 91% of proven global platinum reserves and approximately 75% of palladium. These metals are essential for hydrogen fuel cell technology and catalytic converters. South Africa's mining sector is dominated by a small number of large corporations — Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum, Sibanye-Stillwater — operating under conditions that have changed less than the industry discourse suggests since the end of apartheid.

Manganese: South Africa and Gabon together hold approximately 80% of global manganese reserves, essential for lithium-manganese battery chemistries. The processing and refining of manganese ore into battery-grade material occurs overwhelmingly outside Africa.

Figure 1: Critical Minerals — Global Reserve and Production Concentration, 2025. DRC holds 55% of cobalt reserves; Lithium Triangle holds 53% of lithium; China refines 85-90% of rare earths. Sources: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026; BGR (2025)

The Value Chain Paradox: Where Resources Go vs Where Value Is Created

The critical minerals value chain moves through several stages, each representing a significant step-up in value: raw ore extraction, concentration and processing, refining to battery-grade material, cathode and anode production, cell manufacturing, battery pack assembly, and integration into end products. The difference in value between the first stage and the last is enormous.

A tonne of raw cobalt ore is worth approximately USD 30-50. A tonne of refined cobalt metal is worth approximately USD 30,000-50,000. The cobalt content of a fully assembled electric vehicle battery pack is worth several hundred times the value of the raw ore. The entire value chain from extraction to electric vehicle integration represents a 500-1,000x value multiplication — virtually none of which, under current arrangements, accrues to the DRC or other mineral-producing countries.

The African Development Bank estimates that if African countries processed their critical minerals to intermediate products before export, the continent's mineral export revenues could increase from approximately USD 11 billion per year to USD 44 billion per year — a fourfold increase. Processing to battery precursor materials could yield USD 271 billion. Full battery cell manufacturing integration could yield over USD 1 trillion annually.

These numbers are not merely aspirational — they represent the difference between a green transition that contributes to African industrialisation and one that perpetuates African extractivism. The institutional question is whether the global critical minerals governance architecture is designed to facilitate that transition or to prevent it.

Figure 2: The Cobalt Value Chain Paradox — Value per Tonne at Each Stage. DRC exports raw ore at ~$50/tonne; the cobalt content in an assembled EV battery pack is worth ~$580,000/tonne equivalent. . Sources: AfDB (2025); Benchmark Mineral Intelligenc

Figure 3: Africa's Critical Mineral Revenue Potential by Value Chain Stage (Annual USD Billion). Under current raw export arrangements, Africa earns ~$11bn/year. Sources: African Development Bank (2025); McKinsey Global Institute (2025); UNECA (2025)

PART III  The Geopolitics of Green Resource Control

3. The Geopolitics of Green Resource Control

The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act: Industrial Policy or Resource Imperialism?

The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), adopted in December 2023 and in full implementation from 2026, is the most significant European attempt to secure critical mineral supply chains for the green transition. Its stated objectives — reducing supply chain vulnerability, decreasing dependence on China, and building European processing capacity — are legitimate industrial policy goals. Its implementation, however, raises fundamental questions about whether European 'strategic partnerships' in Africa and Latin America represent genuine development cooperation or a more sophisticated form of resource extraction.

The CRMA establishes ambitious domestic targets: 10% of EU annual consumption mined in the EU, 40% processed in the EU, and 15% recycled by 2030. To supply the remaining 60-90%, the EU has embarked on a programme of 'strategic partnerships' with mineral-rich countries. By mid-2026, partnerships have been signed with Canada, Kazakhstan, Namibia, and Ukraine; deals with Argentina and Chile are in advanced negotiation.

The structural problem with these partnerships, as the SWP Berlin's 2026 analysis documented, is that they are designed around European supply security rather than partner country industrial development. The CRMA's '40% processed in Europe' target explicitly envisions African and Latin American countries supplying raw or intermediate materials for processing in Europe — reproducing the colonial-era tariff escalation structure that penalised processing in producer countries. The EU's Global Gateway programme, which is supposed to finance critical mineral infrastructure in partner countries, has a €60.5 billion Sub-Saharan Africa allocation that must compete with migration management, humanitarian assistance, and other priorities — leaving it structurally underfunded for genuine value chain integration.

As the ECDPM's analysis concluded, the EU's approach to energy transition risks reproducing patterns of colonial appropriation in its engagement with Africa's resource sectors: securing access to raw materials in exchange for market access, without the joint technology co-development mandates, processing investment, or value chain integration that would allow African partners to capture industrial benefit from their mineral endowments.

The US IRA: Domestic First, Allies Second, Global South Never

The United States' Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed in August 2022, is the most significant climate investment legislation in American history — and one of the most consequential pieces of industrial policy for critical mineral supply chains. Its electric vehicle tax credit provisions require batteries to contain a specified percentage of minerals mined or processed in the US or in countries with US free trade agreements — a provision explicitly designed to redirect mineral supply chains away from China and toward US-aligned suppliers.

For Global South mineral-producing countries without US free trade agreements — which includes most of Africa — the IRA's domestic content requirements effectively exclude them from US clean energy supply chains. The DRC, the world's dominant cobalt producer, has no free trade agreement with the United States. Neither does Zambia, South Africa, or most other major African mineral producers. Latin American countries are in a more complex position: Chile and Peru have FTAs with the US, while Bolivia and Argentina do not.

The IRA's critical mineral provisions have triggered a global race among major consumer economies — the US, EU, Japan, Korea, and Australia — to lock up supply chain access through bilateral agreements that prioritise supply security for wealthy consumers over development benefit for producing countries. This 'friends-shoring' of critical mineral supply chains is, from the Global South's perspective, a form of geopolitical coalition-building that reproduces the asymmetric power relationships of the colonial period in the language of supply chain resilience.

China's African and Latin American Positions: Partner or Predator?

China's presence in African and Latin American critical mineral supply chains is dominant and deepening. Chinese state-owned and private companies control approximately 80% of DRC cobalt output, 60% of global lithium processing capacity, and 85-90% of global rare earth refining. The Belt and Road Initiative has financed mining infrastructure across Africa and Latin America, giving Chinese companies preferential access to mineral assets in exchange for infrastructure investment.

China's critical mineral strategy is more sophisticated than a simple extraction play. Chinese companies have invested in processing capacity in producer countries — Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt's $400 million lithium sulphate refinery in Zimbabwe, CATL's $1 billion direct lithium extraction partnership in Bolivia, BYD's cathode plant investment in Chile — in ways that Western companies have generally been unwilling to match. This investment in downstream processing creates genuine local employment and value-added capacity, but it also creates deep technological dependency: African and Latin American countries that process minerals using Chinese technology, financed by Chinese capital, and sold to Chinese battery manufacturers are not escaping the commodity trap — they are entering a new version of it.

The critical analytical distinction is between value chain integration that builds genuine domestic capacity — including technology transfer, skills development, and ownership structures that allow local players to capture and retain value — and value chain integration that creates Chinese-owned processing facilities in Southern countries that serve Chinese supply chains rather than domestic development objectives. Both exist in China's African and Latin American footprint; which predominates depends on the negotiating power and regulatory capacity of the host country.

In late 2024, Bolivia's agreement with CATL, BRUNP, and CMOC for $1 billion in direct lithium extraction investment — with the Bolivian state retaining a 51% stake — represents an attempt to capture value while attracting Chinese technology. But as a July 2025 congressional session in Bolivia descended into chaos, with lawmakers throwing water and protesting deals with Chinese and Russian firms worth approximately $2 billion, the political economy of resource nationalism is clearly contested: communities that bear the environmental costs of extraction are not automatically convinced that Chinese investment serves their interests better than Western investment.

Figure 4: The Geopolitical Competition for African Critical Minerals, 2026. China controls 79% of DRC cobalt mines and outspends the US and EU combined in African mining infrastructure. Sources: CECC (2026); SWP Berlin (2026); AfDB (2025)

3.4 China's Vertical Integration vs the Western Regulatory Empire

The geopolitical competition for African and Latin American critical minerals is not merely a contest over who controls raw material assets — it is a contest between two fundamentally different models of engagement. China's model is characterised by vertical integration: Chinese entities control the full value chain from mine ownership through cobalt hydroxide processing, cathode active material production, cell manufacturing, battery pack assembly, to integration in Chinese-brand electric vehicles. This vertical integration gives China structural leverage at every stage of the supply chain simultaneously, allowing it to cross-subsidise upstream losses with downstream margins and to secure supply by ownership rather than by contract.

The Western model — particularly the EU's approach through the CRMA and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDD) — operates as a regulatory empire rather than an investment empire. The EU and its member states expect ESG compliance, child labour elimination, environmental impact assessments, governance transparency, and supply chain due diligence from mining operations in Africa and Latin America. These requirements are legitimate — the conditions in DRC artisanal cobalt mines would be criminal in any EU jurisdiction. But they are imposed without commensurate financing: the EU exports regulatory standards but does not bring to the table the fast, large-scale, patient capital required to build the physical processing infrastructure that would make those standards economically viable.

The practical consequence, as the SWP Berlin documented in early 2026, is that African and Latin American governments face a choice between a Chinese partner that offers immediate, cash-intensive infrastructure investment and turnkey processing facilities (without ESG conditions) and a Western partner that offers market access and regulatory compliance frameworks (without sufficient capital). The Lobito Corridor notwithstanding, this asymmetry explains why Western initiatives continue to lose ground: Gulf states (UAE, Saudi Arabia) are increasingly entering the same space with Gulf sovereign wealth fund capital, replicating the Chinese speed-capital model with Middle Eastern money. The Global South's critical mineral governance challenge is not merely choosing between East and West — it is navigating a three-way competition in which each bidder offers a different combination of capital, conditionality, and commitment.

3.5 The Lobito Corridor and the Infrastructure Competition

The geopolitical competition for African critical minerals has a concrete physical dimension: the race to build the transport infrastructure that determines which minerals flow to which markets. The most significant current example is the Lobito Corridor — a railway project connecting the copper and cobalt mines of the DRC and Zambia to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic coast, designed to provide an alternative export route to the Chinese-controlled Dar es Salaam corridor on the Indian Ocean.

The Lobito Corridor was announced as a joint US-EU initiative at the 2023 G7 summit, with a total projected cost of approximately USD 2.5 billion. It represents the most concrete Western attempt to compete with China's BRI infrastructure in Africa — and it is explicitly designed to redirect DRC and Zambian cobalt and copper toward Western markets rather than Chinese refineries. As of mid-2026, the railway rehabilitation component is under construction, but financing gaps remain and the political commitment of both US and EU partners has been complicated by the Trump administration's Africa policy and EU budget pressures.

The infrastructure competition in Africa — Lobito Corridor (US-EU) vs the Chinese-supported TAZARA railway and port investments — illustrates the fundamental tension in Western critical mineral strategy: the US and EU want African minerals for their own green transitions, but they are unwilling to finance the scale of infrastructure, processing investment, and technology transfer that would make African countries genuine partners rather than suppliers.

Map 4: Chinese BRI Presence vs Western Infrastructure in Africa, 2026. The Lobito Corridor (US-EU, shown in blue) is the primary Western counter to China's dominant BRI infrastructure position. Sources: AidData (2025); SWP Berlin (2026); ECDPM (2025)

3.6 The Transatlantic Sub-Competition: IRA vs CRMA and the North-North Fault Line

The analysis of critical mineral geopolitics is typically framed as a North-South or West-China confrontation. A structurally important but underanalysed dimension is the sub-competition within the Global North between the United States and the European Union — two allies whose critical mineral strategies are, in significant respects, mutually contradictory.

The IRA's free trade agreement requirement for electric vehicle battery content effectively creates a two-tier critical mineral world: FTA partners (Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Australia, Japan, Korea) whose minerals qualify for US clean energy subsidies, and non-FTA countries (most of Africa, Bolivia, Argentina, Indonesia) whose minerals do not. This architecture is designed to redirect supply chains away from China — but it simultaneously excludes European processing of FTA-ineligible minerals from US subsidy access. The IRA's domestic content bonuses have drawn European battery and EV manufacturing investment toward the US at Europe's expense, creating what European industry has characterised as an existential threat to EU battery manufacturing competitiveness.

The result is a triangular competition for limited Global South critical mineral capacity: the US and EU are simultaneously competing with China for African and Latin American mineral access, and competing with each other for the same Chilean, Argentine, and Peruvian lithium capacity. Chile's lithium, in particular, has become a contested resource between Washington and Brussels — both of which are negotiating supply agreements while Chile's National Lithium Strategy seeks maximum value capture from whichever bidder offers the best processing integration terms. This plurilateral complexity — in which the Global South can play competing Northern bidders against each other — is one of the few genuine structural advantages that mineral-rich developing countries currently possess. Whether they can convert that advantage into durable industrial policy gains before substitute technologies erode their leverage is the central strategic question of the decade.

PART IV  African and Latin American Agency: Interests, Strategies, and the Development Dilemma

4. Agency, Strategy, and the Development Dilemma

Resource Nationalism as Development Strategy

The Global South's response to the critical minerals rush is not passive. A wave of resource nationalism — state assertion of control over critical mineral assets, export restrictions on unprocessed minerals, demands for local processing before export, and negotiation of value chain integration requirements in foreign investment agreements — is reshaping the global critical minerals landscape.

Zimbabwe banned all exports of unprocessed lithium in December 2022, following Indonesia's successful export ban on nickel ore — a ban that accelerated Chinese investment in Indonesian nickel processing and contributed to Indonesia's emergence as a major battery supply chain player. Zimbabwe's ban has attracted significant Chinese investment in local lithium processing, including a $300 million investment from Chengxin Lithium and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt's refinery — Africa's first lithium sulphate processing facility.

Tanzania has implemented a 'beneficiation policy' requiring minimum levels of mineral processing before export. Namibia has moved to restrict exports of unprocessed lithium. The DRC has sought, with limited success, to negotiate processing requirements into its Chinese mining contracts. South Africa's Mineral Resources Development Bill includes beneficiation provisions — though their implementation has been contested by the mining industry.

In Latin America, Chile's National Lithium Strategy (announced April 2023, revised April 2025) requires future lithium concessions to be structured as public-private partnerships with majority state participation, and aims to move Chile up the value chain into cathode and battery production. Bolivia's lithium nationalisation has been turbulent — the July 2025 congressional chaos over Chinese investment deals illustrated the political complexity of resource nationalism when communities bear environmental costs but the economic benefits are disputed. Argentina, under the Milei administration from 2024, has moved in the opposite direction — opening lithium assets to foreign investment under deregulated conditions, prioritising capital attraction over value capture.

Figure 5: Resource Nationalism Timeline — Global South Critical Mineral Policy, 2008–2026. Sources: USGS; Reuters; SWP Berlin; government sources (2022-2026)

The African Union's Critical Minerals Strategy

The African Union's Framework for Critical Minerals, developed through the AU's African Minerals Development Centre, represents an attempt to coordinate African negotiating positions and develop a continental approach to the critical minerals opportunity. The framework's core ambition is to move African countries from raw mineral exporters to value chain participants — echoing the African Mining Vision of 2009, which made similar aspirations without achieving them.

The AU-EU Luanda Summit (November 2025) produced political commitments on both sides to 'mutually beneficial' critical minerals partnerships, with EU pledges of Global Gateway financing for processing infrastructure in Africa. The SWP Berlin's February 2026 assessment was sobering: European initiatives are losing ground to China, the Gulf States, and the US precisely because they offer less — less financing at speed, less technology transfer, and less willingness to accept African ownership structures in processing facilities.

The AU's strategic challenge is the same as it has been throughout the post-colonial period: African countries negotiate individually with much more powerful counterparties, limiting their collective bargaining power. The AU's Critical Minerals Secretariat — proposed but not yet fully operationalised — is designed to provide technical support and coordinate negotiating positions, but it faces the fundamental problem that individual African governments face immediate fiscal pressures (debt servicing, budget deficits, social spending demands) that create incentives to sign whatever deal is on the table rather than hold out for better terms.

4.3 Case Study: DRC — The Cobalt Paradox

The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world's cobalt capital — and one of its poorest countries. This paradox is not accidental; it is structural. The DRC's cobalt wealth has been governed, since the colonial period, in ways that prioritised external extraction over domestic development.

The DRC produces approximately 70% of global cobalt supply. Cobalt is essential for lithium-ion battery cathodes and is projected to see demand growth of 150-200% by 2030 as electric vehicle production scales globally. The DRC's cobalt revenues — currently approximately USD 2-3 billion per year — represent a small fraction of the value created from DRC cobalt in global battery and EV supply chains.

The human cost of this extraction is severe. An estimated 25,000-40,000 children work in artisanal cobalt mines in the DRC, some as young as six or seven years old. The US Department of Labor's 2024 assessment confirmed that over three-quarters of artisanal miners may be operating under forced labour conditions involving coercion, debt bondage, or involuntary arrangements. Environmental degradation — deforestation, soil contamination, water pollution — affects communities surrounding mining operations. Yet the DRC remains indispensable to the global green transition, and the scale of extraction is projected to increase dramatically as EV demand grows.

Chinese dominance of DRC cobalt is comprehensive: 15 of the DRC's 19 cobalt-producing mines are owned or co-financed by Chinese entities. The Lobito Corridor initiative represents the most significant Western attempt to compete — but it is a transport infrastructure project, not a processing or value capture initiative. The DRC government's attempts to negotiate processing requirements into mining contracts have been resisted by Chinese operators with significant success.

The DRC cobalt paradox — maximum resource endowment, minimum developmental benefit — is the clearest illustration of why the current green transition architecture replicates rather than disrupts colonial extraction patterns.

Figure 6: DRC Cobalt — Value Capture vs Human Cost, 2025–2026. The DRC captures 3% of cobalt supply chain value, while 40,000 children work in artisanal mines and 75% of miners operate under forced labour conditions. Sources: US Dept of Labor (2024)

4.4 Case Study: Zimbabwe — The Export Ban Experiment

Zimbabwe's December 2022 ban on unprocessed lithium exports — following Indonesia's nickel export ban model — represents the most significant African attempt to leverage resource nationalism to capture value chain benefits from the green transition. Zimbabwe holds some of the world's highest-grade lithium deposits; the Arcadia lithium mine alone, owned by China's Huayou Cobalt, is one of the largest hard rock lithium operations outside Australia.

The ban's early results are mixed but instructive. On the positive side, it has attracted significant Chinese investment in local lithium processing: Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt's lithium sulphate refinery — Africa's first — began operations in 2025, and Chengxin Lithium has committed USD 300 million to processing facilities. On the negative side, the processing facilities are Chinese-owned, integrated into Chinese supply chains, and employ predominantly Chinese technicians in senior positions — creating local employment but limited local technological capacity.

Zimbabwe's lithium strategy illustrates both the potential and the limitations of export ban resource nationalism. The ban successfully attracted downstream investment that would not otherwise have come. But without complementary policies — joint technology co-development mandates requirements, local equity participation provisions, training and skills development mandates, and export diversification — the risk is that Zimbabwe trades Chinese-controlled extraction for Chinese-controlled processing, without fundamentally altering its position in the value chain.

Map 2: Africa — Critical Mineral Wealth vs Processing Capacity. The continent is overwhelmingly an extraction zone; processing capacity exists only in fragments (South Africa, Morocco, Zimbabwe's emerging sector). Sources: USGS (2026); AfDB (2025)

4.5 Case Study: South Africa — Platinum, Just Transition, and Inequality

South Africa holds 91% of global platinum reserves — a mineral essential for hydrogen fuel cell technology and, potentially, for the green hydrogen economy that both the EU and the Global South are positioning as a key part of the post-fossil-fuel energy system. South Africa is also a major producer of manganese, chrome, vanadium, and other battery-relevant minerals. Its position in the global critical minerals landscape is unique: it is simultaneously a major mineral producer, an upper-middle-income economy with significant industrial capacity, and a country with profound structural inequality and an energy system still heavily dependent on coal.

South Africa's just transition challenge is the most complex in Africa: it must decarbonise an economy built on coal while capturing the economic opportunities of the green transition in mining and processing, while managing the social impact of coal mine closures on communities in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. The Political Declaration on Just Energy Transition (JETP) for South Africa — agreed with the G7 at COP26, with USD 8.5 billion committed — has been slow to disburse and contested in its conditionalities.

In the platinum sector, the emergence of green hydrogen as a potential major application creates an extraordinary opportunity: South Africa's platinum could power a domestic green hydrogen industry, capturing value far above current raw platinum export prices. But realising this opportunity requires investment in electrolyser manufacturing, hydrogen infrastructure, and downstream industries — all of which require technology transfer and patient capital that the current investment climate has not provided at scale.

4.6 Case Study: Morocco — Phosphates, Green Hydrogen, and the North African Corridor

Morocco occupies a unique position in the global critical minerals and green transition landscape. Through OCP Group — the world's largest phosphate company, state-owned — Morocco controls approximately 70% of global phosphate reserves, an essential input for fertilisers and, increasingly, for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cathodes. This phosphate dominance gives Morocco structural leverage in global food security as well as green transition supply chains.

Morocco has positioned itself aggressively as a green hydrogen export hub for European markets — the Moroccan government's 'Green Hydrogen Roadmap' targets 3 GW of electrolyser capacity by 2030 and significant hydrogen export volumes to Europe through the planned MEDHYDRA pipeline corridor. As analysed in Volume 3 of this series, the CBAM's extension to hydrogen creates structural asymmetries in the value chain that risk concentrating economic benefit in European buyer markets rather than Moroccan production communities.

Morocco's phosphate leverage creates a different dynamic from other African mineral producers. As global food security pressures intensify — driven partly by climate change disruptions to agricultural systems — phosphate's strategic value increases. OCP Group's investment in integrated fertiliser production (rather than raw phosphate export) is the most advanced example of an African state-owned enterprise successfully moving up the value chain in a critical mineral sector.

4.7 Case Study: Bolivia and Chile — The Lithium Triangle Dilemma

The Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile holds approximately 53% of global lithium resources — the largest concentration of any energy transition mineral in a single region. How these three countries govern their lithium assets will substantially determine whether Latin America captures developmental benefit from the green transition or replicates the commodity trap that has characterised its resource history.

Bolivia holds the world's largest lithium reserves — approximately 21 million tonnes — concentrated in the Salar de Uyuni salt flat. President Morales nationalised lithium in 2008 and established Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) as the state lithium company. Despite enormous reserves, Bolivia has struggled to develop commercial-scale lithium production due to the technical challenges of the brine's high magnesium content and political instability. In late 2024, Bolivia signed a $1 billion agreement with a Chinese consortium including CATL to build direct lithium extraction plants, with the state retaining a 51% stake. The July 2025 congressional session that devolved into chaos — with lawmakers throwing water and protesting Chinese and Russian investment deals — illustrated the deep political contestation around resource nationalism when communities bear environmental costs but the distribution of economic benefits is disputed.

Chile is the world's second-largest lithium producer and holds extensive high-quality reserves in the Atacama salt flat. President Boric's National Lithium Strategy (announced April 2023, revised April 2025) requires future concessions to operate as public-private partnerships with majority state participation through CODELCO and ENAMI. The strategy aims to move Chile up the value chain toward cathode and battery production — a stated industrial policy objective whose implementation has been complicated by political resistance from the mining industry, Indigenous rights disputes in the Atacama, and the abandonment (as of 2025) of the proposed National Lithium Company.

Argentina, under the Milei administration (from December 2023), has moved sharply in the opposite direction from Chile and Bolivia — deregulating lithium investment, eliminating export taxes, and prioritising foreign capital attraction over state participation or value chain capture. The Argentina-Chile-Bolivia divergence illustrates that 'resource nationalism' is not a single strategy but a spectrum of approaches, and that domestic political economy — class interests, electoral calculations, and ideological commitments — shapes which approach individual countries adopt.

4.8 The Water-Energy-Mineral Nexus: Physical Appropriation of Nature

The environmental dimension of the Lithium Triangle extraction economy requires more than passing mention — it represents a form of 'green colonialism' that is physical and existential, not merely economic. Lithium brine extraction in the Atacama Desert is extraordinarily water-intensive: producing one tonne of lithium carbonate requires the evaporation of approximately 2 million litres of brine, drawing down water tables in one of the world's driest ecosystems. The Atacama's indigenous communities — Atacameño and Lickanantay peoples — have documented the progressive shrinkage of wetlands, flamingo habitats, and agricultural water sources over two decades of mining intensification.

A 2024 study by the Atacama Water Consortium documented that lithium brine extraction in the Salar de Atacama has reduced the water available to local communities by an estimated 65% since 2000. The Chilean government's environmental review process has been repeatedly criticised by indigenous rights organisations for prioritising mining concession approvals over prior consultation requirements under ILO Convention 169. In Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, similar concerns apply — the high water intensity of lithium extraction in a country that already faces significant water scarcity creates a structural conflict between export-oriented mineral development and domestic food and water security.

In the DRC, the environmental dimension of cobalt extraction takes a different but equally severe form: acid mine drainage from cobalt and copper mining operations has contaminated the Kafue River and its tributaries in Zambia, and artisanal mining sites in Katanga province have left widespread soil contamination affecting agricultural land and drinking water sources. A 2025 investigation documented that a Chinese-owned mining company's tailings discharge into the Kafue River system — one of Zambia's most important water sources — constituted a severe environmental violation that had not been meaningfully sanctioned by either the Zambian government or the Chinese parent company.

The theoretical significance of this water-energy-mineral nexus is that it extends the 'green colonialism' framework beyond economic value extraction into the domain of physical resource appropriation. The green transition, as currently structured, requires the Global North to appropriate not merely the mineral wealth of Southern countries but the water, soil, and ecological systems of the communities living adjacent to extraction sites — with those communities bearing the physical costs of a transition whose climate benefits accrue primarily to the wealthy consumers whose demand drives it. This is not green solidarity. It is green extraction.

Figure 7: Global Lithium — Reserves vs Production, 2025. The Lithium Triangle holds 53% of reserves but produces a smaller share. Sources: USGS 2026; Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (2025)

Map 3: Latin America — The Lithium Triangle and Resource Nationalism, 2026. Sources: USGS 2026; FTI Consulting (2025); Catalyst McGill (2025)

4.9 The Bargaining Power Window: A Strategic Time Constraint

The wave of resource nationalism analysed in section 4.1 — export bans, processing requirements, state participation mandates — is predicated on an assumption that is correct today but may not remain correct for long: that the Global North and China are structurally dependent on specific minerals from specific Southern countries. This dependence is real in 2026, but it has a technological expiration date.

The primary technological threat to current mineral leverage is the rapid development of substitute battery chemistries that reduce or eliminate the need for the most geographically concentrated critical minerals. Sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries — which require no lithium, cobalt, or nickel — are moving from laboratory to commercial scale faster than most projections anticipated: CATL began commercial Na-ion cell production in 2024, and multiple Chinese manufacturers are scaling Na-ion capacity for applications where energy density requirements are lower (short-range urban EVs, stationary storage). Solid-state batteries, which can dramatically reduce or eliminate cobalt requirements, are projected to reach commercial viability in the 2027-2030 window for high-end applications. If Na-ion achieves cost parity with lithium iron phosphate chemistry — currently projected for the late 2020s — the demand implications for lithium and cobalt would be profound.

The strategic implication for mineral-producing countries is stark: the window for converting raw material leverage into durable industrial capacity is measured in years, not decades. Estimates from the IRENA and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence suggest a 5-10 year window before substitute technologies begin materially eroding the demand premium for lithium and cobalt. If Bolivia, Zimbabwe, the DRC, and Chile use this window to establish domestic processing, manufacturing, and technology capacity — the Indonesia nickel model — they can build industrial bases that remain valuable regardless of what happens to the underlying mineral demand. If instead they use this window for protracted export restriction negotiations without converting leverage into industrial investment, they risk being left with devalued mineral assets at the moment their bargaining power was highest.

The political economy of this time constraint is difficult. Maximising short-term royalty revenues from raw mineral export often generates more immediate government revenue than investing in processing infrastructure, which requires patient capital, technology transfer, and tolerance for short-term losses. The countries that will successfully navigate this transition are those whose governments can resist the revenue capture temptation of raw export and invest in the longer-term industrial policy that converting mineral wealth into manufacturing capacity requires.

The Bargaining Power Window — Key Strategic Insight

Current mineral leverage window: estimated 5-10 years before substitute technologies (Na-ion batteries, cobalt-free solid-state) materially erode demand.

Na-ion commercial production: CATL began 2024; multiple manufacturers scaling for urban EV and stationary storage applications.

Solid-state batteries (cobalt-reduced): projected commercial viability 2027-2030 for high-end applications.

Strategic imperative: mineral-rich countries must convert export restriction leverage into domestic processing and manufacturing capacity within this window — not merely extract maximum royalties from raw mineral exports.

The Indonesia model: nickel export ban (2020) + Chinese processing investment = Indonesias emergence as a major EV supply chain player. The time to replicate this model is now.

PART V  Breaking the Pattern: Towards a Just Transition Architecture

5. Breaking the Pattern: Towards a Just Transition Architecture

Value Addition and Processing: The Missing Industrial Policy

The central policy lever for transforming Global South countries from raw mineral exporters to value chain participants is industrial policy for mineral processing. The evidence from the few success cases — Indonesia's nickel processing boom following the 2020 export ban, Zimbabwe's emerging lithium sulphate industry, Morocco's integrated phosphate operations — is that export restrictions alone are insufficient. They create the incentive for downstream investment, but realising that investment in ways that build genuine domestic capacity requires a comprehensive industrial policy package.

The essential elements of effective critical minerals industrial policy for the Global South include: joint technology co-development mandates provisions in mining and processing investment agreements; local equity participation requirements that ensure domestic actors capture value rather than merely receiving royalties; training and skills development mandates that build domestic technical capacity in processing rather than relying on imported technicians; export diversification policies that prevent single-buyer dependency (whether Chinese or Western); environmental and social safeguards that internalise the costs of extraction into the economics of mining projects; and patient, concessional financing for processing infrastructure from development banks (MDBs, NDB, Afreximbank) rather than commercial terms that make projects unviable.

The African Development Bank's 2025 'Made in Africa' critical minerals initiative — which aims to finance processing infrastructure in 12 African countries through a dedicated USD 1.5 billion facility — is the most significant multilateral attempt to provide this kind of support. Its scale is insufficient relative to the investment required, but its model — concessional lending for processing infrastructure with local value capture requirements — is directionally correct.

Technology Transfer and the Patent Problem

As analysed in Volume 3 of this series, the IPR regime governing green technologies is a structural obstacle to Global South industrialisation in critical mineral processing. Battery chemistries, refining processes, electrolyser designs, and rare earth separation technologies are heavily patented — overwhelmingly in the Global North and China. A country that wishes to move from raw mineral export to processed battery material must either license the required technology (paying royalties to Northern or Chinese patent holders) or develop indigenous technology (an enormous R&D investment over many years).

The TRIPS Agreement provides some flexibility — compulsory licensing for public interest purposes, parallel imports, limited research exceptions — but these flexibilities have rarely been applied to clean energy technologies. The climate emergency arguably justifies applying TRIPS flexibility to battery and processing technologies in the same way that public health emergencies justified flexibility on pharmaceutical patents (the Doha Declaration model): a 'Doha for Clean Energy' framework that would allow developing countries to access critical mineral processing technologies on compulsory licence terms.

The political obstacles to such a framework are significant — the US, EU, Japan, and South Korea are all major technology-holding jurisdictions with strong pharmaceutical and technology lobbies. But the precedent exists, the legal framework permits it, and the equity argument is compelling: if Global South countries are being asked to supply the raw materials of the green transition, they should not simultaneously be required to pay licence fees to process those materials using technologies they did not develop.

5.3 Reform Framework

Reform Framework: Towards a Just Critical Minerals Architecture

1. Value chain integration requirements: all critical mineral supply agreements negotiated by the EU, US, and G7 countries must include binding minimum local processing requirements — a minimum 30% value addition in the producer country before export by 2030, rising to 50% by 2035.

2. Technology transfer mandates: mining and processing investment agreements must include joint technology co-development mandates provisions, local skills development targets, and requirements for joint ventures that build genuine domestic technological capacity — not merely locally-sited Chinese or Western facilities.

3. Royalty and revenue reform: critical mineral royalty rates in producing countries must be renegotiated to reflect the strategic value of minerals in the green transition context. Current royalty rates (typically 2-5% of revenue) were negotiated in a different market context and do not reflect the quadrupled strategic value of lithium, cobalt, and REEs since 2020.

4. Development bank financing for processing: MDBs (World Bank, AfDB, IADB, NDB, Afreximbank) should establish dedicated critical minerals processing facility financing with concessional terms (below 3% interest rates), local equity participation requirements, and environmental/social safeguards. Target: USD 50 billion in processing facility financing by 2030.

5. 'Doha for Clean Energy' compulsory licensing: G20 governments should negotiate a framework allowing developing country governments to issue compulsory licences for critical mineral processing technologies where commercial licensing is unavailable or unaffordable — modelled on the Doha Declaration's pharmaceutical licensing framework.

6. Environmental and social accountability: a binding Critical Minerals Due Diligence regulation (extending the EU's existing CSDD framework) must apply to all critical minerals imported into the EU, US, and other major markets — with meaningful enforcement, not just disclosure requirements.

7. African Union coordination support: G7 and multilateral development institutions should provide technical and financial support to the AU's Critical Minerals Secretariat, enabling African countries to coordinate negotiating positions and develop continent-wide value chain strategies rather than negotiating individually with much more powerful counterparties.

The Just Transition Imperative

The concept of a 'just transition' has been applied primarily to the workers and communities whose livelihoods depend on fossil fuel industries — coal miners in Poland, oil workers in Nigeria, LNG workers in Australia — who face economic dislocation as those industries decline. This is an important dimension of transition justice. But the just transition concept must also apply to the countries and communities that supply the raw materials of the green transition.

A just critical minerals transition requires: that the environmental costs of extraction — land degradation, water contamination, biodiversity loss, community health impacts — are borne by the corporations and consumers that benefit from the minerals, not by the communities adjacent to mines; that the economic benefits of the green transition — jobs, value added, technology development, tax revenues — are distributed to mineral-producing countries and communities, not concentrated in processing and manufacturing centres in the Global North and China; that the communities whose land, water, and livelihoods are affected by mining have genuine, prior, and informed consent in decisions about extraction — not merely consultation processes that rubber-stamp corporate investment decisions; and that the transition timetable respects the development needs of producing countries, rather than imposing extraction rates driven by Northern consumer demand without regard for local environmental or social capacity.

The alternative — a green transition that decarbonises wealthy country energy systems by extracting resources from poor country communities under conditions that would not be legally or socially acceptable in the consumer countries themselves — is not a solution to the climate and equity crises simultaneously afflicting the planet. It is a choice to solve one crisis by deepening another.

6. Conclusions

The global green transition is necessary. The world must decarbonise, and doing so requires enormous quantities of critical minerals. These are not disputed claims. What is disputed — and what this analysis has argued must be contested — is the current architecture of critical mineral extraction, processing, and trade, which is reproducing the extractive logic of the colonial period under climate-compatible branding.

The Democratic Republic of Congo mines the cobalt that powers European electric vehicles, under conditions that would be criminal in Europe. Chile's Atacama is depleted to supply lithium for German car batteries. Bolivia's salt flats are politically turbulent as external powers compete for access to its reserves. Morocco's phosphates and renewable resources are being positioned as a European energy security asset. Zimbabwe experiments with export bans while Chinese investors capture the processing value its government sought to retain. In each case, the pattern is familiar: the South supplies; the North consumes; the developmental benefit flows upward and outward.

This pattern is not inevitable. Indonesia's nickel example shows that export restrictions, combined with investment attraction and technology requirements, can shift value chain positioning. Morocco's OCP Group demonstrates that state-owned enterprises with long time horizons can successfully move up the value chain. Chile's regulatory capacity shows that environmental and social standards are compatible with mineral investment attraction. What is missing is not examples of alternatives — it is the political will, in both producing and consuming countries, to build a critical minerals architecture that serves the green transition and the development imperative simultaneously.

Volume 5 of this series — Climate Security and the NATO Green Turn — will examine how the security dimension of the green transition is reshaping military alliance structures and defence investment priorities, and whether climate security frameworks can be designed to serve Global South interests alongside NATO member security objectives.

The 2026 Iran war and its oil price shock — analysed in depth in Volume 6 of this series — adds a further urgent dimension to the critical minerals geopolitical equation. As Brent crude surged above USD 120 per barrel in March 2026, Western governments facing simultaneous energy price inflation and accelerating climate commitments confronted an intensified imperative to accelerate electrification. This desperation accelerates the race for critical minerals — but in a way that is likely to override, not reinforce, the ESG, Just Transition, and value chain integration commitments that responsible mineral governance requires. When Western governments face simultaneous energy security crises and domestic political pressure on energy costs, the temptation to secure mineral supply at any cost — overlooking child labour in DRC mines, bypassing indigenous consultation in the Atacama, ignoring acid mine drainage in Zambia — becomes a structural pressure rather than a marginal exception. The tension between the geopolitical urgency of decarbonisation and the ethical requirements of just mineral extraction is the deepest fault line in the green transition's political economy — and it will become acutely visible as the Iran war's economic shockwaves propagate through the global energy system in 2026 and beyond.

Series Overview: Geopolitics & Climate Change (6 Volumes)

No. 1 (published): The Climate Multiplier — Sahel, Middle East, South Asia.

No. 2 (published): The Arctic — The New Great Game.

No. 3 (published): Climate Finance and the Global South Revolt.

No. 4 (this volume): The Green Transition as New Colonialism? — Africa, Latin America and the Critical Minerals Paradox.

No. 5 (forthcoming): Climate Security and the NATO Green Turn.

No. 6 (forthcoming): The 2026 Iran War and Climate Policy Consequences.

Over the past several years, utilities have invested heavily in modernizing grid infrastructure, digitizing assets, and improving operational visibility.

As these efforts mature, another concept has rapidly gained attention: the digital twin.

The promise is compelling. A virtual representation of physical assets, networks, or even entire grid operations that can provide real-time visibility, predictive insights, and scenario-based decision support.

But amid the growing enthusiasm, an important leadership question remains:

Are digital twins delivering measurable value, or are they becoming another technology buzzword in the grid modernization journey?

Beyond the Buzzword

Most utilities already possess elements of what many would describe as a digital twin:

• Asset models

• GIS platforms

• SCADA and EMS environments

• Operational analytics

• Asset performance management systems

The challenge is not creating another model. The challenge is creating a living, connected representation that remains synchronized with operational reality. That distinction matters.

A static model provides information. A digital twin should provide insight.

The Real Value Proposition

When implemented effectively, digital twins can help utilities move beyond historical analysis toward proactive decision-making.

Potential applications include:

• Asset health monitoring and predictive maintenance

• Grid planning and capacity analysis

• Storm preparedness and restoration simulations

• DER integration studies

• Workforce training and operational readiness

The value is not simply in visualization. The value lies in reducing uncertainty before decisions are made. In many ways, digital twins represent another step in the industry's progression from visibility to operational intelligence.

Why Many Digital Twin Initiatives Struggle

Despite the promise, many organizations find it difficult to scale digital twin initiatives beyond pilots. A common misconception is that a digital twin is primarily a technology project.

In reality, success depends on:

• Data quality and governance

• Asset model accuracy

• Integration across OT and IT systems

• Clear ownership and lifecycle management

• Defined operational use cases

Without these foundations, even sophisticated digital twin environments can quickly become disconnected from reality. And once trust erodes, adoption follows.

The Trust Challenge

Like AI and decision intelligence, digital twins ultimately depend on confidence. Operators, engineers, and planners must believe that the representation accurately reflects the state of the physical system.

The question is not: Can we build a digital twin?

The more important question is: Can we maintain trust in it over time?

That requires continuous synchronization, governance, and accountability.

From Technology Asset to Operational Capability

One of the most common mistakes is treating digital twins as standalone technology investments. Leading organizations are increasingly approaching them differently.

Rather than asking: How do we build a digital twin?

They ask: What operational decisions are we trying to improve?

This shift changes the conversation from technology deployment to business outcomes. The digital twin becomes a means to an end, not the end itself.

Strategic Necessity or Hype?

The answer is neither simple nor universal. Not every utility needs a highly sophisticated digital twin environment today. However, as grid complexity increases through distributed energy resources, electrification, resilience requirements, and AI-enabled operations, the ability to model, simulate, and predict system behavior will become increasingly valuable.

The question is no longer whether digital twins have potential.

The question is where they create the greatest value and how utilities can operationalize them effectively.

Closing Thought

Digital twins are unlikely to transform utilities simply because they exist. Their value will be determined by how well they improve planning, operations, and decision-making. Like many aspects of digital transformation, success will depend less on technology and more on execution, governance, and trust.

The future may not belong to the utilities with the most sophisticated digital twins. It may belong to those that use them most effectively to make better decisions.

Price fluctuations for each energy source follow their own market dynamics.

In other words, these sources may experience price changes that do not move in the same direction.

This means that a robust risk-reduction strategy involves creating a "portfolio" of energy sources, thereby reducing exposure to significant price volatility.

Of course, every situation is unique.

However, I can cite an example involving a multinational company that illustrates how a client benefited greatly from having two heat-treatment furnaces: one electric and one gas-fired. I showed them how to engage in cost arbitrage, and the results were spectacular.