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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 10th Sept 2026, 07:04:50pm CEST (Norway)

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Daily Overview

Session

International trade and environmental policy
Location: Auditorium K
Session Chair: Antonia Kurz, DIW Berlin

Presentation 4

Mining Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition: Trade, Market Power and Policy

Antonia Kurz^1,2,3, Carolyn Fischer^2,4,5, Gerard van der Meijden^2,3,4

1: DIW Berlin, Germany; 2: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; 3: Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam; 4: CESifo; 5: World Bank

Discussant: Marvin Müller (Ruhr University Bochum)

Green technologies---such as solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries---are heavily reliant on mineral inputs like cobalt, lithium, and nickel, for which supplies are geographically concentrated. This paper analyses how market power in critical minerals and strategic interactions between regions affect the energy transition. It develops and parameterises a two-region analytical model of a resource-rich region (East) and a resource-scarce, energy-consuming region (West). Both regions mine and trade minerals, as well as the green capital required to replace fossil fuels in energy production. Results demonstrate how East's market power over critical minerals slows down the energy transition, increases cumulative carbon emissions in West, and lowers West's welfare. East's market power significantly changes the speed and order of extraction of different mineral reserves. When West commits to a carbon budget, East benefits due to higher profits from mineral mining and green capital production. Following unilateral strategies, West gains from taxing imported green capital goods, and then East finds it optimal to tax mineral exports. West can also reap strategic benefits from a moderate subsidy on the recycling of minerals. Collective welfare would be highest without trade interventions, even under cartel-fringe competition.