SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure | SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Institutions: Ministry of Mines | NITI Aayog | Ministry of External Affairs
The UK government has launched its new Critical Minerals Strategy, aiming to reduce dependency on foreign suppliers for minerals essential to modern technology — from smartphones and fridges to electric vehicles and wind turbines. The strategy includes three major targets by 2035:
Produce 10% of the UK’s critical-minerals requirement domestically,
Recycle 20% of the requirement via domestic recycling of materials,
And cap any single-country supply at 60% for any one critical mineral.
To support these ambitions the UK has committed up to £50 million in funding for critical-minerals projects, including extraction, processing and recycling. The strategy emphasises exploiting domestic resources (e.g., lithium in Cornwall, nickel refinery in Wales), strengthening industrial cost competitiveness, and accelerating permit approvals. It also links mineral resilience with national-security concerns, noting that China currently controls about 70% of rare-earth mining and 90% of refining globally.
Policy Relevance for India:
For India — a country with strong ambitions in battery manufacturing, renewable energy and electric vehicles — the UK strategy offers both caution and opportunity. It signals a global shift toward secure, domestic critical-minerals supply chains, which affects global sourcing, pricing and trade-relations of minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earths. India must therefore align its own policies (e.g., PLI schemes for batteries, domestic mining reforms, recycling initiatives) to ensure competitiveness and supply-resilience as other major economies build greater self-sufficiency. The strategy may also open new collaboration opportunities between India and the UK in mining technology, recycling and value-chain integration.
What are Critical Minerals?→ Critical minerals are those essential for modern technologies — such as lithium for batteries, cobalt for electric vehicles, rare-earth elements for wind turbines and electronics — whose supply risks (geographic concentration, refining bottlenecks) affect industry and national security.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders:
How should India enhance its mining-and-recycling policy ecosystem and international partnerships to ensure it remains competitive in a global environment where advanced economies are prioritising domestic critical-minerals supply chains?
Follow the full news here: UK to end over-reliance on imports of critical minerals