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Energy Explained
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China’s Energy Powerhouse Ambitions
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Arctic Expert Iris Ferguson on Greenland’s Resources, Geopolitical Risks
Much of the world’s attention today is understandably focused on conflict in the Middle East, and the immediate implications for energy markets and global security. But other regions...
This is the fourth episode of a five-part series exploring the lithium-ion battery supply chain. If you haven’t listened to the first three episodes, we recommend you start there.
Season 4, Episode 4
Countries around the globe are racing to meet the growing demand for lithium-ion batteries. But can they compete with China?
China has been the world’s biggest battery manufacturer for over a decade. Chinese companies got in the game early, building an industry from scratch in the 2000s. By 2022, according to the IEA, China manufactured 76% of the world’s batteries.
But that’s changing. Battery factories in the U.S. and around the world are running 24/7 to churn out millions of cells – thanks to growing demand for storage all over the world, and government support for local manufacturing.
In this episode, we’re exploring the rapid buildout of factories to support the battery economy. We’ll tour a lithium-ion battery factory in upstate NY to see how batteries are made at scale. And we ask where a small US factory fits into a global battery market dominated by China.
More Episodes
The Battery Recycling Dilemma
So far over this season we've traced the global lithium-ion battery supply chain from mining to processing to manufacturing. And we've put it all into a geopolitical and economic context.
The Big Switch Podcast
• March 27, 2024
The High Stakes for Battery Ingredients
Batteries can replace gasoline in our cars, or diesel in our generators with electricity. But batteries and petroleum-based fuels share something in common: they both rely on energy-intensive processes to turn extracted materials into something useful.
The Big Switch Podcast
• March 13, 2024
The Mining Conundrum For Critical Minerals
To produce enough batteries to reach global net-zero goals, the International Energy Agency says we'll need to increase production of critical minerals by six fold by 2040. It's a monumental task.
The Big Switch Podcast
• March 6, 2024
Are Batteries the New Oil?
Season 4, Episode 1 Batteries are at the center of the clean energy economy. Will they shape geopolitics in similar ways to oil? We need to electrify much...
The Big Switch Podcast
• February 28, 2024
Relevant
Publications
Making Critical Minerals Bankable: Policy Tools to Unlock Investment
This paper proposes a de-risking framework of policy interventions to provide the risk allocation, revenue certainty and delivery confidence required by mainstream private finance.
White Papers
with Kevin Brunelli, Gautam Jain & Tom Moerenhout •
World Economic Forum
• May 04, 2026
The international trade dimensions of the United States critical minerals security strategy
This paper examines the trade dimensions of the policy instruments employed by the United States to secure critical minerals supply chains. Drawing on policy statements, executive orders, tariff schedules, and six bilateral critical minerals agreements announced in 2025, it assesses how US trade policy has been repurposed to advance supply-chain security objectives. The paper finds that recent US initiatives reflect bipartisan trends in reconfiguring trade policy that predate the Trump administration, even as they introduce new and consequential trade coordination mechanisms that operate outside the World Trade Organization and beyond conventional free trade agreements. Specifically, US critical minerals security strategy now relies on a differentiated set of sector-specific arrangements that combine familiar elements of US international economic engagement with more novel features that increasingly utilize trade policy instruments. What distinguishes these six minerals deals is their systematic coupling with parallel reciprocal trade negotiations, their incorporation of an explicitly ‘America First’ approach to reciprocity, the absence of a clear ideological hierarchy among partner countries, an emphasis on domestic processing and industrialization, and the growing use of exclusion mechanisms targeting third-party actors. The recurrence of these novel elements across diverse minerals deals suggests deliberate design rather than ad hoc experimentation that may have durable restructuring effects across global mineral supply chains. The paper concludes by outlining implications for US policy makers, for partner countries—particularly mineral-producing low- and middle-income economies—and for the architecture of the global trading system.
Improving Critical Mineral Mining Negotiations in Chile: Toward Clearer and More Robust Frameworks for Benefit Sharing with Local Communities
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) Business School, in collaboration with CGEP, organized two closed-door roundtables in the summer of 2025 to discuss local community engagement in the context of lithium and copper extraction within the global energy transition.
Task Force Reports
by Juan Pablo Escudero, Diego Rivera Rivota, Juan Carlos Jobet + 1 more • March 30, 2026
