The lithium story at Nevada North is well understood. The project has scale, grade, and long-term production potential.
What is less discussed is the presence of other critical minerals within the same system. Recent drill results show that rubidium (Rb) and cesium (Cs) occur alongside lithium mineralization at the Nevada North Lithium Project (NNLP) of Surge Battery Metals (TSX-V: NILI | OTCQX: NILIF). These elements are not the primary focus of development today, but they may represent an additional strategic layer of value.
Both rubidium and cesium are classified as critical minerals in the United States. Yet, neither mineral is mined domestically, and supply is largely dependent on imports, mainly from China and Canada. At the same time, both elements are used in high-value applications such as atomic clocks, fiber optics, satellite systems, and advanced defense electronics.
A New Layer in the Drill Results
In early 2026, assay results from NNLP began to highlight the consistent presence of rubidium and cesium within the lithium-bearing zones.
Follow-up results from the February 25, 2026, news release showed similar trends. Infill drilling returned values of up to:
349 ppm rubidium
163 ppm cesium
These results are important because they show that rubidium and cesium are directly associated with the lithium core, not isolated occurrences. This suggests a consistent geological relationship across the deposit.
At this stage, these findings remain exploration results. They have not been incorporated into the project’s Preliminary Economic Assessment, and their economic contribution is still being evaluated. However, their presence is clear and repeatable across multiple drill holes.
Rubidium and Cesium for Tech and Defense
Rubidium and cesium are not widely known compared to lithium, but they play critical roles in advanced technologies.
Cesium is used in atomic clocks, which are essential for GPS systems, telecommunications networks, and defense infrastructure. It is also used in specialty drilling fluids and electronics.
Rubidium is used in fiber optic systems, specialty glass, and emerging quantum technologies. Both elements are also relevant for aerospace and satellite applications.
Despite their importance, the global supply is limited. There are a few large-scale producers, and production is often tied to other mining operations rather than dedicated projects. As a result, supply chains can be concentrated and less transparent than those for more widely traded commodities.
For the United States, this creates a dependency on imported material for applications that are increasingly tied to national security and advanced technology.
More Than Lithium: A Multi-Critical-Mineral Profile
The presence of rubidium and cesium at NNLP introduces a different way to view the project. It is not only a lithium resource, but potentially a multi-critical-mineral system. The project’s updated resource base includes 10.5 million tonnes LCE in Measured & Indicated categories, with additional high-grade mineralization identified at 3,820 ppm lithium.
This does not change the core development strategy, which remains focused on lithium. However, it adds another dimension to how the asset may be evaluated over time.
Recent developments also point to growing confidence in the project’s advancement. On June 3, Surge Battery Metals announced a strategic financing of up to C$30 million, with an option to increase the amount to C$36 million.
The company said the funding is intended to help fast-track Nevada North toward a construction decision. The financing strengthens Surge’s ability to continue resource development, metallurgical work, and project studies while further evaluating the broader critical mineral potential of the deposit.
Graham Harris, Chairman of Surge, commented,
“This announcement marks a defining moment for Surge. With Nevada North fully funded, upon the successful closing, toward a construction decision, and with Brian and Michael leading our Strategic Advisory Board, we believe that we have the capital, the expertise, and the relationships to move this project at the pace the current environment demands. The United States is focused on developing a secure and sustainable domestic supply of critical minerals.[2] Once constructed, we plan to participate in the domestic supply of lithium through Nevada North.”
Some of the key points to consider include:
Rubidium and cesium are co-located with lithium mineralization, not in separate zones.
Both elements are classified as critical minerals with a limited U.S. supply.
Supply chains are currently import-dependent, with concentration in a few countries, but no data is available on specific percentages.
NNLP is a domestic resource located in Nevada.
These factors align with broader trends in resource development, where projects are increasingly assessed not only for their primary commodity but also for associated critical minerals.
Ongoing Evaluation Through Metallurgy: Can Rb & Cs Add Value?
At this stage, the key question is not whether rubidium and cesium are present, but how they behave during processing.
Surge Battery Metals is evaluating the deportment of these elements as part of its ongoing metallurgical work. This step is important. It will determine whether these minerals can be recovered, how they interact with lithium processing, and whether they could contribute to future project economics.
Moreover, it is too early to draw conclusions yet. No economic assumptions have been made for rubidium or cesium in the current project studies. However, identifying their presence at this stage allows for a more complete understanding of the resource.
Strategic Context: Beyond Batteries
The broader context is also evolving. Critical minerals are increasingly tied to national strategy, not just market demand.
Lithium remains central to EVs and energy storage. But rubidium and cesium connect the project to defense, communications, and advanced technology sectors. These are areas where supply security is becoming a priority.
In this sense, NNLP sits at the intersection of multiple strategic themes:
Energy transition, through lithium,
Technology infrastructure, through battery materials and electronics, and
National security, through the critical mineral supply.
This combination is not common among lithium projects, particularly within Nevada clay deposits.
Standing Out in Nevada’s Lithium Landscape
Within the Nevada lithium landscape, most projects are evaluated on grade, scale, and processing pathways. NNLP meets those criteria. The additional presence of rubidium and cesium introduces a differentiated element that is not widely highlighted in comparable projects.
Importantly, this differentiation should be viewed with the right level of caution. These elements are still under study. Their economic value has not been defined, and their recovery is not yet established.
At the same time, their consistent presence in drilling results is a data point worth noting, especially in a market where supply chains for critical minerals are under increasing scrutiny.
The Next Chapter for Nevada North’s Mineral Story
As metallurgical work progresses, more information will become available on how rubidium and cesium behave within the NNLP system. This will help determine whether they remain a geological feature or evolve into a potential secondary value stream.
For now, the key takeaway is straightforward. Nevada North is not only a lithium project. It is also a broader critical mineral system, with exposure to materials that support advanced technology and defense applications.
The latest financing also highlights how Nevada North is moving beyond the exploration stage. With the project now supported by a major strategic funding package and an expanded advisory team, attention is increasingly shifting toward development readiness and long-term value creation.
While lithium remains the primary focus, the presence of additional critical minerals may provide further strategic relevance as the project advances. And in a market focused on securing supply chains, that distinction may become more relevant over time.
New Era Publishing Inc. and/or CarbonCredits.com (“We” or “Us”) are not securities dealers or brokers, investment advisers, or financial advisers, and you should not rely on the information herein as investment advice. Surge Battery Metals Inc. (“Company”) made a one-time payment of $75,000 to provide marketing services for a term of three months. None of the owners, members, directors, or employees of New Era Publishing Inc. and/or CarbonCredits.com currently hold, or have any beneficial ownership in, any shares, stocks, or options of the companies mentioned.
This article is informational only and is solely for use by prospective investors in determining whether to seek additional information. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Examples that we provide of share price increases pertaining to a particular issuer from one referenced date to another represent arbitrarily chosen time periods and are no indication whatsoever of future stock prices for that issuer and are of no predictive value.
Our stock profiles are intended to highlight certain companies for your further investigation; they are not stock recommendations or an offer or sale of the referenced securities. The securities issued by the companies we profile should be considered high-risk; if you do invest despite these warnings, you may lose your entire investment. Please do your own research before investing, including reviewing the companies’ SEDAR+ and SEC filings, press releases, and risk disclosures.
It is our policy that information contained in this profile was provided by the company, extracted from SEDAR+ and SEC filings, company websites, and other publicly available sources. We believe the sources and information are accurate and reliable but we cannot guarantee them.
CAUTIONARY STATEMENT AND FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION
Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information generally can be identified by words such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “plan,” and similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or events. Forward-looking information is based on current expectations of management; however, it is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated.
These factors include, without limitation, statements relating to the Company’s exploration and development plans, the potential of its mineral projects, financing activities, regulatory approvals, market conditions, and future objectives. Forward-looking information involves numerous risks and uncertainties and actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking information. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, market volatility, the state of financial markets for the Company’s securities, fluctuations in commodity prices, operational challenges, and changes in business plans.
Forward-looking information is based on several key expectations and assumptions, including, without limitation, that the Company will continue with its stated business objectives and will be able to raise additional capital as required. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended.
There can be no assurance that such forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Additional information about risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company’s management’s discussion and analysis and annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2025, copies of which are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.
The forward-looking information contained herein is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Forward-looking information reflects management’s current beliefs and is based on information currently available to the Company. The forward-looking information is made as of the date of this news release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances except as may be required by applicable law.
Disclosure: Owners, members, directors, and employees of carboncredits.com have/may have stock or option positions in any of the companies mentioned: None.
Carboncredits.com receives compensation for this publication and has a business relationship with any company whose stock(s) is/are mentioned in this article.
Additional disclosure: This communication serves the sole purpose of adding value to the research process and is for information only. Please do your own due diligence. Every investment in securities mentioned in publications of carboncredits.com involves risks that could lead to a total loss of the invested capital.
Disclosure: Owners, members, directors, and employees of carboncredits.com have/may have stock or option positions in any of the companies mentioned: None.
Carboncredits.com receives compensation for this publication and has a business relationship with any company whose stock(s) is/are mentioned in this article.
Additional disclosure: This communication serves the sole purpose of adding value to the research process and is for information only. Please do your own due diligence. Every investment in securities mentioned in publications of carboncredits.com involves risks that could lead to a total loss of the invested capital.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
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.
