When diversification fails : Geopolitical contagion and hidden vulnerabilities in Europe’s energy transition

Critical-mineral supply chains have become a strategic constraint for the energy transition because upstream disruptions propagate through interconnected supplier, resource, and technology dependencies. While existing studies have substantially improved criticality assessment, propagation modelling, and resilience planning, these analytical components are generally developed within separate modelling frameworks. This paper develops a calibrated multilayer analytical framework that integrates structural dependency representation, empirical calibration, counterfactual stress testing, and resilience planning within a common mathematical architecture. Supplier-resource relationships, technology–resource requirements, and economy-specific technology portfolios are represented through a unified family of calibrated propagation operators. The framework characterizes structural vulnerability using the dominant spectral properties of the calibrated propagation architecture, evaluates counterfactual supplier disruptions under a common benchmark calibration, and formulates constrained resilience planning on the same structural representation. The empirical analysis shows that heterogeneous transition-capacity losses are explained by differences in propagation architecture rather than by supplier diversification alone. By deriving structural diagnosis, counterfactual propagation, and resilience planning from a single calibrated representation, the proposed framework provides a coherent and reproducible methodology that complements existing critical-material assessments for resilience-oriented energy planning.