IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jeurec/v22y2024i1p200-229..html

Energy Transition Metals: Bottleneck for Net-Zero Emissions?

Author

Listed:
  • Lukas Boer
  • Andrea Pescatori
  • Martin Stuermer

Abstract

The energy transition requires substantial amounts of metals, including copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium. Are these metals a bottleneck? We identify metal-specific demand shocks, estimate supply elasticities, and study the price impact of the transition in a structural scenario analysis. Prices of these four metals would reach previous historical peaks but for an unprecedented, sustained period in a net-zero emissions scenario, potentially derailing the energy transition. Their production value would rise nearly four-fold to USD 11 trillion for the period 2021–2040. These four metals markets alone could become as important to the global economy as the oil market.

Suggested Citation

  • Lukas Boer & Andrea Pescatori & Martin Stuermer, 2024. "Energy Transition Metals: Bottleneck for Net-Zero Emissions?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 200-229.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:22:y:2024:i:1:p:200-229.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvad039
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Reboredo, Juan C. & Ugolini, Andrea & Ojea-Ferreiro, Javier, 2024. "Tail risks of energy transition metal prices for commodity prices," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Bastianin, Andrea & Rossini, Luca & Testa, Alessandra, 2026. "Industrial Metal Supply Shocks and Heterogeneous Macroeconomic Effects: Evidence from Copper," FEEM Working Papers 387620, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    3. Andrea Bastianin & Xiao Li & Luqman Shamsudin, 2025. "Forecasting the Volatility of Energy Transition Metals," Papers 2501.16069, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2025.
    4. Bastianin, Andrea & Casoli, Chiara & Galeotti, Marzio, 2023. "The connectedness of Energy Transition Metals," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    5. Naegler, Tobias & Rauner, Sebastian & Dirnaichner, Alois & Jochem, Patrick & Schlosser, Steffen & Luderer, Gunnar, 2025. "Raw material demand and geopolitical risk in carbon-neutral futures," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    6. Marco Taboga, 2024. "The potential macroeconomic relevance of critical materials: some preliminary evidence," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 897, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    7. Jean-Baptiste Hasse & Capucine Nobletz, 2024. "Critical Raw Materials Index -CRMI," Working Papers hal-04759077, HAL.
    8. Ordu-Akkaya, Beyza Mina & Özyıldırım, Süheyla, 2025. "Commodity dependence: Providing information on emerging market CDS spreads when economic indicators are absent," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    9. Robert J. R. Eliott & Gavin D. J. Harper & Viet Nguyen-Tien, 2026. "The economics of the electric vehicle transition: demand, supply chains, and innovation," CEP Discussion Papers dp2164, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    10. Andrea Bastianin & Luca Rossini & Alessandra Testa, 2026. "Dams and Rural Conflict: Evidence from Brazil’s Hydropower Expansion," Working Papers 2026.02, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    11. Elias Hasler, 2025. "Assessing the Global Impact of EU Carbon Pricing: Economic and Climate Spillovers," Working Papers 2025-01, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    12. Lukas Berend & Jan Pruser, 2025. "Large structural VARs with multiple linear shock and impact inequality restrictions," Papers 2505.19244, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.
    13. Doroshenko, Lyubov & De Crescenzo, Ivan & Mastroeni, Loretta & Mazzoccoli, Alessandro, 2025. "Geopolitical risks, critical materials and energy transition: Insights from wavelet analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    14. Kim, Jaden & Jaumotte, Florence & Panton, Augustus J. & Schwerhoff, Gregor, 2025. "Energy security and the green transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    15. Eugenie Dugoua & Jacob Moscona, 2025. "The Economics of Climate Innovation: Technology, Climate Policy, and the Clean Energy Transition," CESifo Working Paper Series 12267, CESifo.
    16. Eugenie Dugoua & Jacob Moscona, 2025. "The Economics of climate innovation: technology, climate policy, and the clean energy transition," CEP Discussion Papers dp2135, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    17. Attílio, Luccas Assis, 2025. "Impact of critical mineral prices on energy transition," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 377(PD).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:22:y:2024:i:1:p:200-229.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jeea .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.