Security of mineral resources: A new framework for quantitative assessment of criticality

This article discusses the limits of economic growth through the issue of criticality of mineral raw materials. It proposes to use and expand the existing work-but not in France or for France- and then apply them to the French economy between 2009 and 2014 via the example of lithium to provide available indicators and the methodology for identifying pressure signals in the supply of raw materials not so far undetectable in existing criticality studies. After building a database on 15 years of production and world trade of lithium, a literature contextualizing the issue of criticality and articulating the criticality factors with the functioning of commodity markets is performed. The reference model of the European Commission is then explained. In addition to these introductory contributions, the main are threefold: the reconfiguration of existing indicators criticality to the French case; the proposal of a new complementary criticality indicator to the Commission's two and which takes into account not only the upstream market of the material but also its downstream processing by the economy; finally the definition of high and low criticality allows to generate twelve indicators and variants (four strong(s) and eight low) from the two previous points and subjected to robustness checks. •Economic analysis of criticality of mineral resources and methodology development of criticality indicators through a model complementing that of the European Commission and capable of unifying future research on criticality.•A version of this model is proposed in the French case for lithium between 2009 and 2014.•New database of 15 years of production and international exchange of lithium.•New criticality indicator taking into account not only the upstream market of the material but also its downstream transformation by the economy.•Explanation of aggregations methods (Vector and Index) and tests of their robustness. Lithium is not critical for France according to the high criticality (Vector) but is in the second.