The global energy system is under pressure again. This time, the shock is not just about oil and gas. It is also about minerals that power clean energy and nuclear technologies. Media reports revealed that, according to International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol, the current crisis could soon look small compared to what lies ahead in critical minerals.
Speaking at a major industry event in Canberra, Birol warned that supply risks in minerals like uranium, copper, and battery metals could reshape global energy security. His message was clear: countries must diversify supply chains now or face deeper disruptions later.
A New Energy Shock Unfolds
The world is already dealing with a massive energy disruption. The ongoing conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran has removed the equivalent of around 10 million barrels of oil per day from global markets, according to the IEA. This supply gap has pushed countries to rethink energy security. Oil prices remain volatile, and supply routes are under strain. However, Birol stressed that the bigger challenge may not be oil at all.
Instead, the future risk lies in critical minerals. These materials are essential for clean energy systems, electric vehicles (EVs), and nuclear power. Without stable access to them, the global energy transition could slow down sharply.
The problem is concentration. Today, one country dominates the refining and processing of many key minerals. China controls more than 80% of global refining capacity for several critical materials, according to IEA estimates. This creates a major bottleneck in supply chains.
To sum up, without urgent diversification, countries could face even greater risks than today’s energy shock.
IEA Highlights Australia as a Reliable Supplier of Uranium and Critical Minerals
Amid these concerns, Australia is emerging as a key player. The country holds vast reserves of critical minerals and energy resources. This includes uranium, lithium, copper, and natural gas.
Australia has the world’s largest uranium reserves. It accounts for roughly one-third of the known global resources, according to data from the Minerals Council of Australia. At the same time, it ranks among the top global uranium producers, alongside Kazakhstan, Canada, and Namibia.
This puts the nation in a strong position as nuclear energy gains traction again worldwide. IEA highlighted that Australia is a reliable supplier that does not use energy exports as a geopolitical tool. This reliability is becoming more valuable as global tensions rise.
At the same time, Australia is also rich in battery minerals. It is the world’s largest producer of lithium and a major supplier of nickel and cobalt. These materials are critical for EV batteries and renewable energy storage.
SMRs Open Lucrative Uranium Export Path for Australia
One of the biggest shifts expected from this crisis is the revival of nuclear energy. Governments are now looking for stable, low-carbon energy sources that can reduce reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets.
A key driver of this nuclear growth will be Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). They are smaller, faster to build, and more flexible than traditional nuclear plants. Countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and South Korea are leading their development.
The IEA expects global nuclear capacity to grow strongly through 2035. In its latest outlook, nuclear generation could rise by nearly 50% by 2040 under net-zero scenarios. This shift will significantly increase demand for uranium. According to the World Nuclear Association, uranium demand could double by 2040 if new reactors and SMRs scale up as expected.
For Australia, this presents a major export opportunity. Even though the country does not use nuclear power domestically, it plays a crucial role in supplying fuel to the global market.
One of the biggest shifts expected from this crisis is the revival of nuclear energy. Governments are now looking for stable, low-carbon energy sources that can reduce reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets.
As per WNA, in 2022, Australia produced 4087 tU of uranium, 8% of global production. Uranium comprises about 17% of the country’s energy exports in thermal terms.
Contracted Imports of Australian Uranium Oxide Concentrate – U3O8
LNG Demand Set to Rise
The current crisis is also boosting demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Damage to energy infrastructure in the Middle East has disrupted supply flows, forcing countries to seek alternatives.
Australia is already one of the world’s largest LNG exporters. Projects in Western Australia and Queensland supply key markets across Asia, including Japan, South Korea, and China.
Birol said demand for Australian LNG is expected to grow further as countries look for stable suppliers. This could strengthen Australia’s role in global gas markets in the short to medium term. Similarly, Wood Mac had also projected earlier that the nation’s exports would remain steady throughout this year,
According to the International Energy Agency, global LNG demand is projected to rise by around 3–4% annually through 2030, driven by Asia’s energy needs and coal-to-gas switching.
- READ MORE: War Could Boost Carbon Credit Demand: How Middle East Energy Crisis May Reshape Climate Markets
EV Growth Drives Copper and Battery Metals
Beyond nuclear and gas, electrification is another major trend shaping demand. The global shift to EVs and renewable energy systems is accelerating the need for metals like copper, lithium, and nickel.
Copper is especially important. It is used in power grids, EV motors, and renewable energy systems. Birol emphasized that expanding electricity grids worldwide will require massive amounts of copper.
The IEA estimates that clean energy technologies could double global copper demand by 2040. Similarly, lithium demand could grow more than 40 times under aggressive climate scenarios.
As said before, Australia is well-positioned here too. It leads global lithium production and has large untapped reserves of other key minerals. This gives it a strategic advantage as countries race to secure supply chains.
Investment Trends Show Growing Interest
Recent data shows rising investment in Australia’s resource sector. Uranium exploration spending has picked up after years of decline. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, uranium exploration spending reached about $55 million in 2023. This marked the highest level in over a decade.
This increase reflects renewed interest in nuclear energy and long-term expectations of higher uranium demand. At the same time, mining companies are investing more in critical minerals projects. Governments are also stepping in with policies to support domestic processing and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains.
Minerals, Not Oil, Are the New Battleground for Energy Security
While the current energy crisis is serious, Birol’s warning points to a deeper challenge. The world is entering a new phase where minerals, not just fuels, will define energy security. If supply chains remain concentrated, disruptions could become more frequent and more severe. This could slow down clean energy deployment and push up costs.
Diversification is key. Countries need to invest in new mining projects, expand refining capacity, and build resilient supply networks. And Australia is likely to play a central role in this shift. Its vast resources, stable political environment, and strong export infrastructure make it a critical partner for many nations.
The global energy landscape is changing fast. Oil shocks are no longer the only concern. Critical minerals are becoming the new backbone of energy systems. As nuclear power returns, EV adoption rises, and clean energy expands, demand for these materials will surge. This creates both risks and opportunities.
The challenge now is to scale supply, diversify processing, and ensure these materials remain accessible. If not, today’s energy crisis could soon be overshadowed by a much larger minerals crunch.
The post IEA Sounds Alarm as War Disrupts Energy Markets, Boosting Australia’s Uranium Demand appeared first on Carbon Credits.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
Net zero is often described as a balancing act: cut what you can, account for the rest, and reach zero on the ledger. That framing is useful, but it leaves something out. It treats every tonne of carbon as interchangeable and every route to zero as equally sound, while the science tells a more specific story.
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