IRENA – Critical Materials for Renewables: Improving Data Governance

The success of the global energy transition depends on a rapidly growing and uninterrupted supply of critical materials for renewable energy technologies. This requires a unified, open, and transparent global repository of data on critical materials, covering extraction, trade, and criticality assessment. The lack of such a repository leads to actors taking less-well-informed decisions about critical materials markets. Data opacity delays the supply of critical materials to international markets and interrupts the deployment of renewable energy. This study reviews the main actors involved in the governance of critical materials supply chain data, including national government institutions, international organizations and foundations, mineral associations, and commercial data providers. A total of 45 data sources produced by these actors were reviewed in the study, with a focus on data accessibility, transparency, and coverage. Key challenges for the governance of data on critical materials supply chains include the opacity of critical materials markets, limited and outdated data, fragmented governance involving multiple actors with different agendas, and lack of transparency leading to various risks for the energy transition.