Curbs on raw minerals exports by more than a dozen African countries are unlikely to kickstart home-grown processing industries unless they are accompanied by major investments in energy infrastructure, private sector partnerships and regional cooperation, mining analysts say.

Last month, Zimbabwe became the latest African country to announce new restrictions, banning the export of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates. So far, at least 13 African countries have enacted export curbs since 2023 as they seek to add value to their exports and create local jobs by processing and refining minerals domestically.

Zimbabwe, Africa’s top producer of lithium, which is used to make batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy storage, wants its resources of the silvery-white metal to be processed into higher-grade compounds such as lithium sulphate, an intermediate product that can be refined into a battery-grade material, rather than exported as raw concentrate for refining elsewhere.

Government officials say adding value to mineral resources locally is a way to boost economic growth and fund social development. “Government remains committed to ensuring transparency, in-country value addition and beneficiation, compliance, and accountability in the exportation of Zimbabwe’s mineral resources,” said Polite Kambamura, the country’s minister of mines and mining development.

Done correctly, curbs on raw material shipments may encourage development, said Namibia-based public policy researcher Suzie Shefeni.

“A ban like this can serve development interests if it is [firstly], systematically and gradually implemented and backed by appropriate legal mechanisms and [secondly] done in collaboration with the private sector,” Shefeni said.

Restrictions alone won’t ensure added value

But others say that laying the groundwork for viable processing industries will take time and money.

The continent has “not considered everything that is needed for value addition and beneficiation to happen”, said Obert Bore, critical minerals expert and programme manager at the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organisation, a Harare-based NGO.

“From a private sector perspective, when you speak to mining companies they will tell you these export bans do not work because we don’t have enough water, we don’t have enough energy,” Bore told Climate Home News.

Silas Olan’g, Africa energy transition advisor at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), said that while the intention behind export curbs is understandable, “experience shows that bans alone rarely deliver the desired outcomes”.

For export bans to work, he said governments must first put the right conditions in place, including reliable energy, supporting infrastructure, investment incentives and strong governance. Without these fundamentals, “such restrictions can inadvertently undermine the very value addition they seek to achieve”, he said.

Given these constraints, Olan’g argued that “export bans are not the right tool at this stage if the fundamentals are not in place” and could prove “counterproductive”. Instead, governments should use contracts with buyers to secure commitments on infrastructure, skills and technology transfer, building the foundations for value addition before imposing restrictions.

“Without skills, infrastructure, and reliable energy, local value addition cannot take off simply because exports are restricted” Olan’g said.

High price of added value

Africa is a major supplier of minerals needed for the global energy transition. The continent holds about 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including lithium, cobalt and copper. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 70% of global cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, while countries such as Guinea dominate bauxite production and Mozambique and Tanzania hold significant graphite deposits.

Zimbabwe exported more than 1.1 million metric tons of lithium-bearing spodumene concentrate in 2025. However with the recent move to ban exports, Bore said lithium processing requires huge quantities of energy and water, putting further strain on scarce supplies in Zimbabwe, which is prone to drought and has a hefty power deficit that causes prolonged outages.

The southern African nation, which initially banned exports of unprocessed lithium ore in 2022, before extending that to lithium concentrates last month, aims to provide 20% of global supplies.

Processing just one metric ton of lithium can require more than 50,000 litres of water, Bore said, meaning ramped-up activity by producers could significantly impact local communities and other economic sectors.

“In Zimbabwe at least, we are seeing significant impact on communities that will no longer have water, we are running out of water for our agriculture, for livestock because the companies are trying to comply with the government ban and by trying to comply they are drawing huge amounts of water just to process one ton of lithium which is not a lot,” he said.

South African rare earths project aims to rival Chinese with low-cost model

Energy is another major constraint for African nations intent on adding value to their critical minerals exports.

In Zimbabwe, Bore said half of the country’s electricity is already used by the mining sector.

However, officials say the country’s lithium boom is already delivering economic gains with export earnings from lithium surging to over $200 million in September of 2023, up from $70 million the year before. The sector has also attracted more than $1 billion in foreign investment, largely from Chinese firms developing mines and battery-material processing plants in the country.

One way of addressing the power deficit would be for governments to make less costly and faster renewable energy development an integral part of the plans for the mining sector, said Namibia-based Shefeni.

“(They) should prioritise a trajectory of green beneficiation by promoting the use of renewables including solar PV and wind, in their value addition systems,” she said.

Skirting the rules

If the right conditions are not in place for mining companies to comply with processing requirements, export bans run the risk of being bypassed, according to Bore.

Bans on exporting raw lithium have been introduced gradually since 2023, but Bore’s research suggests compliance remains weak.

“There are leakages. People are not complying because we don’t have the capacity, we don’t have the water, we don’t have the energy,” he said.

He added that complicated licensing processes are also creating opportunities for corruption.

“If the system is not conducive, it creates a breeding ground for corruption because people are trying to get licences and permits, and sometimes those licences end up in the wrong hands,” he said.

If African countries are to foster the development of mineral-processing industries, they will need to implement appropriate regulations, Shefeni said.

China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies

The development of a comprehensive mining land registry could help countries minimise the scope for illegality and smuggling. Integrating the registry with geospatial mapping and production reporting would allow authorities to compare reported output with export declarations.

“This requires investment into a strong enforcement system that can hold offenders accountable by the law,” she said.

Unified Africa vs bilateral deals

Speaking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Wamkele Mene, secretary-general of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, said African nations risk missing out on the opportunities offered by the global race for critical minerals if they do not coordinate their approach.

Echoing Mene’s call, Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio lamented: “We do not have collective bargaining power as a continent.”

Export bans by individual countries risk weakening their bargaining power by negotiating separately with international partners, rather than forming a common stance with other African nations in negotiating with major partners such as China, Bore said.

“We don’t have leverage doing it individually,” he said. He argued that African countries should stop speaking individually and instead present a united front. By highlighting the continent’s vast resources – copper in Zambia, cobalt in the DRC, lithium in Zimbabwe and Nigeria, bauxite in Guinea and iron in Mali – they could push for industries to be built locally and add value to these materials.

In that scenario, he said, China could respond and say “OK fine, you have the resources, you have the market. We can give you the technology, we will train your people and we can develop your skills.”

Shefeni also called for a greater focus on regional value chains, with “individual countries assessing how they are well positioned to contribute”.

NRGI’s Olan’g added that fragmented negotiations only “allow external partners to play countries against each other, leading to weaker commitments on infrastructure, skills, and technology transfer”.

“A unified Africa could pool demand, create economies of scale for smelters and refineries, and set common rules that strengthen governance and investor confidence,” he added.

The post Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say appeared first on Climate Home News.

Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say

The EPA released its latest enforcement and compliance report and touted the agency’s crackdown on environmental crimes under the Trump administration, yet 75 percent of the criminal cases closed last fiscal year originated before the president took office.

By Wyatt Myskow, Lisa Sorg

For over a decade, Hino Motors Ltd. imported and sold more than 105,000 vehicles and engines with misleading or fabricated emissions data, until testing by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed the emissions-fraud scheme.

Trump’s EPA Claims Strong Enforcement. But the Data Tells a Different Story.

The “cost” of cutting UK emissions to net-zero is less than the cost of a single fossil-fuel price shock, according to a new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC). 

Moreover, a net-zero economy would be almost completely protected from fossil-fuel price spikes in the future, says the government’s climate advisory body.

The report is being published amid surging oil and gas prices after the US and Israel attacked Iran, which has triggered chaos on international energy markets.

It builds on the CCC’s earlier advice on the seventh “carbon budget”, which found that it would cost the UK less than 0.2% of GDP per year to reach its net-zero target.

In the new report, the CCC sets out for the first time a full cost-benefit analysis of the UK’s net-zero target, including the cost of clean-energy investments, lower fossil-fuel bills, the health benefits of cleaner air and the avoided climate damages from cutting emissions.

It finds that the country’s legally binding target to reach “net-zero emissions” by 2050 will bring benefits worth an average of £110bn per year to the UK from 2025-2050, with a total “net present value” of £1,580bn.

The CCC states that its new report responds to requests from parliamentarians and government officials seeking to better understand its cost assumptions, amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in the UK.

The report also pushes back on “misinformation” about the cost of net-zero, with CCC chair Nigel Topping saying in a statement that it is “important that decision-makers and commentators are using accurate information to inform debates”.

Co-benefits outweigh costs

The CCC’s new report is the first to compare the overall cost of decarbonising with the wider benefits of avoiding dangerous climate change, as well as other “co-benefits”, such as cleaner air and healthier diets.

It sets the CCC’s previous estimate of the net cost of net-zero – some £4bn per year on average out to 2050 – against the value of avoided damages and other co-benefits.

These “co-benefits” are estimated to provide £2bn to £8bn per year in net benefit by the middle of the century, according to the report.

The CCC notes that this approach allowed it to “fully appraise the value of the net-zero transition”.

It concludes that the net benefits of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 are an average of £110bn per year from 2025 to 2050.

These benefits to the UK amount to more than £1.5tn in total and start to outweigh costs as soon as 2029, says the CCC, as shown in the figure below.

In addition, the CCC says that every pound spent on net-zero will bring benefits worth 2.2-4.1 times as much.

This updated analysis includes the value of benefits from improved air quality being 20% higher in 2050 than previously suggested by the CCC.

However, the “most significant” benefit of the transition is the avoidance of climate damages, with an estimated value of £40-130bn in 2050. The report states:

“Climate change is here, now. Until the world reaches net-zero CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, global temperatures will continue to rise. That will inevitably lead to increasingly extreme weather, including in the UK.”

The CCC’s conclusion is in line with findings from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in 2025, which suggested that the economic damages of unmitigated climate change would be far more severe than the cost of reaching net-zero. 

The CCC notes that its approach to the cost-benefit analysis of the net-zero target is in line with the Treasury’s “green book”, which is used to guide the valuation of policy choices across UK government. 

It says that one of the key drivers of overall economic benefit is a more efficient energy system, with losses halved compared with today’s economy.

It says that the UK currently loses £60bn a year through energy waste. For example, it says nearly half of the energy in gas is lost during combustion to generate electricity.

In a net-zero energy system, such energy waste would be halved to £30bn per year, says the CCC, thanks to electrified solutions, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps.

For example, it notes that EVs are around four times more efficient than a typical petrol car and so require roughly a quarter of the energy to travel a given distance.

Collectively, these efficiencies are expected to halve energy losses, saving the equivalent of around £1,000 per household, according to the CCC.

Net-zero protects against price spikes

The CCC tests its seventh carbon budget analysis against a range of “sensitivities” that reflect the uncertainties in modelling methodologies and assumptions for key technologies. This includes testing the impact of a fossil-fuel price spike between now and 2050.

In the original analysis, the committee had assumed that the cost of fossil fuels would remain largely flat after 2030.

However, the report notes that, in reality, fossil-fuel prices are “highly volatile”. It adds:

“Fossil-fuel prices are…driven by international commodity markets that can fluctuate sharply in response to geopolitical events, supply constraints, and global demand shifts. A system that relies heavily on fossil fuels is, therefore, exposed to significant price shocks and heightened risk to energy security.”

It draws on previous OBR modelling of the impact of a gas price spike. This suggested that future price spikes would cost the UK government between 2-3% of GDP in each year the spike occurs, assuming similar levels of support to households and businesses as was provided in 2022-23.

The CCC adapts this approach to test a gas-price spike during the seventh carbon budget period, which runs from 2038 to 2042.

It finds that, if a similar energy crisis occurred in 2040 and no further action had been taken to cut UK emissions, then average household energy bills would increase by 59%. In contrast, bills would only rise by 4%, if the UK was on the path to net-zero by 2050.

The committee says that when considering the impact on households, businesses and the government, a single fossil-fuel price shock of this nature would cost the country more than the total estimated cost of reaching.

The finding is particularly relevant in the context of rising oil and gas prices following conflict in the Middle East, which has prompted some politicians and commentators to call for the UK to slow down its efforts to cut emissions.

In his statement, Topping said that it was “more important than ever for the UK to move away from being reliant on volatile foreign fossil fuels, to clean, domestic, less wasteful energy”.

Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, welcomed this finding, saying in a statement:

“Each time this happens it gets harder and harder to swallow the cost. The best thing the UK can do for the climate is also the best thing for the cost of living crisis – get off the uncontrollable oil and gas rollercoaster that drags us into wars we didn’t want but still have to pay for. Inaction on climate is unaffordable.”

Benefits remain even if key technologies are more expensive

In addition to testing the impact of more volatile fossil-fuel prices, the CCC also tests the implications if key low-carbon technologies are cheaper – or more expensive – than thought.

It concludes that the upfront investments in net-zero yield significant overall benefits under all of the “sensitivities” it tested. As such, it offers a rebuttal to the common narrative that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds. 

The net cost of net-zero comes out at between 0% and 0.5% of GDP between 2025 and 2050, says the CCC, under the various sensitivities it tested.

“This sensitivity analysis shows that an electrified energy system is both a more efficient and a more secure energy system,” adds the CCC.

Finally, the report takes into account the costs of the alternative to net-zero. It looks at what would need to be spent in an economy where net-zero was not pursued any further.

The CCC says that the gross system cost of the balanced pathway falls below the baseline cost from 2041, which is consistent with its previous seventh carbon budget advice.

As shown in the chart below, costs fall under a net-zero pathway between 2025 to 2050, whereas they rise in the baseline of no further action.

Moreover, the total costs of the alternatives are broadly similar, with the relatively small difference shown by the solid line.

The decline in energy system costs shown in the figure above is broadly driven by more efficient low-carbon technologies, says the CCC, helping costs to fall from 12% of GDP today to 7% by the middle of the century.

The CCC’s new analysis comes ahead of the UK parliament voting on and legislating for the seventh carbon budget, which it must do before 30 June 2026.

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The post CCC: Net-zero will protect UK from fossil-fuel price shocks appeared first on Carbon Brief.

CCC: Net-zero will protect UK from fossil-fuel price shocks