Tungsten, a critical mineral with unmatched heat resistance and strength, is gaining global attention. It’s dense, brittle, and grayish-white, with the highest melting point and tensile strength of any pure metal. These traits make it vital for high-performance applications. and industries needing extreme durability.
With China controlling most of the supply, the U.S. and allies are racing to secure domestic sources and diversify supply chains. Let’s deep dive into the complete outlook of the tungsten market below:
Demand Drivers: Why Tungsten Keeps Rising in Importance
The tungsten market expanded from USD 6.04 billion in 2024 to USD 6.50 billion in 2025. It is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7.95%, reaching USD 11.16 billion by 2032.
Its demand is rising due to industrial and defense needs. Key drivers include:
- Electronics & Semiconductors: Vital for high-performance chips and circuits.
- Defense & Aerospace: Used in rocket nozzles and armor-piercing ammunition. It also strengthens steel alloys for aerospace and defense.
- Tungsten is used in turbine blades and as a lead substitute in ammunition.
- Industrial Tools: Crucial for cutting and drilling in mining, construction, lighting, welding, and manufacturing.
- Green technology and electrification: Increasing use of tungsten in electric vehicle batteries, energy storage, and renewable energy technologies
Industry experts are indicating that global tungsten demand is expected to rise in 2025 and the next few years. With geopolitical tensions increasing, the U.S. and allies anticipate further growth as supply diversification becomes essential.
China’s Tight Grip on Tungsten Supply
Tungsten is found worldwide, but most supply comes from China. It produces over 80% of global tungsten and holds more than half of the known reserves. Vietnam and Russia follow, contributing only a small share. Other producers like Spain, Austria, Bolivia, and Rwanda account for just 1% to 2% each.
Interestingly, other countries own about 35% of global reserves but produce only 1%. This gap shows growth potential but highlights challenges like high costs and long permitting times.
China also controls production. In late 2024, Beijing introduced new export licensing rules for tungsten, tightening supply further. Analysts view these controls as part of China’s strategy in global trade.
Global Push for Supply Chain Resilience
China’s dominance has raised concerns. Countries are diversifying their tungsten supply chains. New projects in Australia, South Korea, Canada, and Africa show promise, but scaling up will take years.
Vietnam, Russia, and Spain are boosting production. Smaller nations like Rwanda are gaining attention for their resources. However, these efforts face high costs and technical challenges.
China’s market control is expected to last until the early 2030s, but momentum is shifting toward more resilient supply options.
U.S. Tungsten Dependence: A Strategic Risk for Defense
As per the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. has not mined/ tungsten since 2015. It relies mostly on imports, especially from China. Notably, in 2023 U.S. imported over 10,000 metric tons of tungsten.
Most U.S. tungsten is used in cemented carbide parts for construction, mining, and drilling. The rest goes to specialty steels, defense alloys, electronics, and chemicals.
This dependence poses serious risks as tungsten is vital for defense applications, including armor-piercing munitions and missile systems. Thus, supply disruptions could threaten U.S. military readiness and high-tech industries.
DoD’s Big Investments and New Rules
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is boosting efforts to secure tungsten, a critical metal for defense systems. Since last year, it has directed millions toward U.S. and allied projects.
In July 2025, it awarded $6.2 million under the Defense Production Act to Golden Metal Resources for the Pilot Mountain project in Nevada, the largest undeveloped tungsten deposit in the U.S.
The project aims to restore domestic production, reduce reliance on China’s 80% market share, and prepare for the 2027 ban on China- and Russia-sourced tungsten in defense contracts.
Procurement Rules
A new U.S. law prevents the Pentagon from sourcing tungsten, magnets, and other critical materials from adversarial nations like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. By January 2027, these rules will also cover the mining stage. This means tungsten mined in these countries can’t enter U.S. defense supply chains.
Thus, the U.S. Department of Defense now views tungsten as a national security issue. In summary, its strategy focuses on:
- Diversifying supply chains beyond China.
- Funding domestic exploration and allied projects.
- Expanding metallurgical testing and engineering studies.
- Tightening procurement rules to phase out adversarial tungsten by 2027.
This effort demonstrates a strong commitment to boosting domestic tungsten production for new defense systems and advanced manufacturing. Additionally, it also aims to build secure supply partnerships with allies.
Top Tungsten Stocks Gaining Investor Attention
In 2025, tungsten stocks are attracting attention as the metal becomes essential across industries. Rising demand and tight supply make these stocks appealing. Investors value tungsten for its strategic role in technology and its relatively stable prices compared to other critical minerals.
Elemental Altus Royalties Corp. (ELE.V) Rises on Strong Momentum
Canada-based Elemental Altus trades around $15.76 USD (OTC) and CAD 24.37 (TSX Venture) as of October 2025. Its shares climbed nearly 47% in six months, outperforming peers, with a market cap of $388 million USD. Analysts set the TSX target price at CAD 25.92, signaling upside potential.
In September 2025, it merged with EMX Royalty to form Elemental Royalty Corp. Tether Investments backed the deal with $100 million USD to buy 75 million shares at CAD 1.84 each. The capital fuels growth, acquisitions, and expansion in tungsten, rare earths, and other critical minerals.
Elemental Altus leads in the critical minerals’ royalty space, with strong stock momentum and strategic investments positioning it for growth.
American Tungsten (TUNG) Fuels U.S. Supply Revival
American Tungsten Corp. (TUNG) is gaining attention as a pure-play tungsten stock. In February 2025, it hit an all-time high of CA$2.37, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company’s efforts to develop domestic tungsten resources.
Currently, it is trading at around CAD 1.84 per share. Analysts forecast the stock to rise through the rest of 2025 and into 2026.
With a market capitalization of roughly CAD 25.72 million, the stock has experienced some volatility. This was influenced by critical minerals sector trends and tungsten market dynamics.
However, the company’s performance remains closely tied to progress in U.S. tungsten projects, government support, and global supply-demand trends.
In March, the company announced that its application to join the U.S. Defense Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC) had been approved. The consortium, managed by Advanced Technology International (ATI) for the Department of Defense (DoD), connects private-sector companies with the U.S. Government to strengthen the defense supply chain.
Another key development is the IMA Mine Project in Lemhi County, Idaho, a major step in restoring U.S. tungsten production. This critical mineral supports tank armor, hypersonic weapons, submarine hulls, and semiconductors.
The mine sat idle for nearly 70 years. It is now being redeveloped to meet rising domestic demand. With a few publicly traded tungsten companies existing in North America, American Tungsten is the top choice for investors in U.S. supply chains.
The Rise of Tungsten Juniors
However, this year, several junior mining companies focusing on tungsten in the U.S. are also gaining attention, particularly those developing critical mineral resources to strengthen domestic supply chains.
One such example is Patriot Critical Minerals. It owns100% of the MEGA Deposit in Elko County, Nevada, a strategically located resource that could help close the domestic tungsten supply gap.
The deposit contains approximately 19 million tonnes of mineralized material, with about 32,300 tonnes of contained tungsten trioxide.
Tungsten Prices Stay High Amid Tight Supply
In September 2025, tungsten bar FOB prices held steady at USD 95–97 per kg. Meanwhile, tungsten concentrates (scheelite and wolframite) traded at RMB 284,000 per ton. This marked a 1.1% drop from peak levels but doubled the price from early 2025, showing strong market volatility.
However, global prices continue to fluctuate due to Chinese export restrictions, production issues, and rising demand in defense, aerospace, and electronics. At the same time, supply-demand gaps, geopolitical tensions, and stockpiling keep prices elevated.
In conclusion, rising demand, tight global supply, and national security concerns make tungsten a strategic mineral. Consequently, U.S. projects and companies like Elemental Altus, American Tungsten, and Patriot Critical Minerals are actively reducing reliance on China.
As production ramps up, tungsten will play an increasingly vital role in defense, technology, and industrial applications.
The post U.S. Tungsten Revival: Rising Demand, Tight Supply, and Top Stocks to Watch in 2025 appeared first on Carbon Credits.
For most businesses, the emissions that matter most sit outside their own walls. Scope 3 emissions, everything generated across your value chain, from the suppliers who make your inputs to the customers who use your products, typically make up the majority of a company’s total carbon footprint. Under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), those value-chain emissions now have to be measured and disclosed with a rigour that spend-based estimates alone struggle to satisfy. This guide sets out how to improve Scope 3 data accuracy for CSRD: the calculation methods open to you, how to move from estimates to verified supplier data, and how to govern that data so it holds up to audit.
A carbon credit is a commitment that extends well into the future. The tonne of CO₂ compensated for today from a nature-based carbon project must remain out of the atmosphere for good, which means the forest behind the credit has to remain standing long after the transaction is complete. For any buyer, this raises a defining question: What ensures that the forest endures?
What replaced the cheap REDD credit on the boardroom slide deck, and why procurement is leading the rewrite.
Three years ago, a corporate slide showing a portfolio of cheap REDD+ credits could carry a board meeting. The number was big, the price was low, and the press release wrote itself. Today, that same slide gets sent back with questions. The questions are uncomfortable, the answers are unclear, and your general counsel is suddenly in the room.
Conventional carbon offsets are not dead. The voluntary carbon market retired 202 million tonnes in 2025, and the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing survey published in January 2026 confirmed that interest from corporate buyers remains substantial. What changed is the credibility threshold. The integrity floor has risen, the disclosure scrutiny has tightened, and the buyer profile has shifted. This article tracks what changed, what sophisticated buyers now ask before signing, and what serious corporates are putting on the board slide instead.
What boards used to buy, and why it stopped working
The 2020 to 2022 model was simple: buy a large tranche of avoidance credits at low single-digit prices, retire them against the company footprint, announce the carbon-neutral claim, and move on. Most of those credits came from REDD+ projects, renewable energy installations in countries where the renewable energy was already economic, or methane projects with thin documentation.
Several things broke that model. Academic research published in 2023, including a widely cited Science paper, found that the majority of REDD+ credits issued under the most common methodologies did not represent additional reductions when tested against rigorous counterfactuals. The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative published its Claims Code of Practice, which sets requirements for what companies can credibly claim from credit use. The European Union finalised its Green Claims Directive, restricting how companies can describe products as climate-neutral. France’s Décret 2022-539 already restricts carbon neutrality advertising. California’s AB 1305 imposes disclosure requirements on any company making net-zero or carbon-neutral claims while doing business in the state.
The collective effect: the cheap credit no longer buys the announcement, and the announcement now carries litigation risk.
The integrity reset: ICVCM, VCMI, and what changed
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market published the Core Carbon Principles in 2023 and began assessing methodologies against them in 2024. The first methodologies received the CCP label later that year. The point of the label is to give corporate buyers a defensible quality screen they can cite in disclosure.
The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative complements this on the demand side. Its Claims Code of Practice defines what a buyer can say (Silver, Gold, or Platinum claims, with associated requirements) based on the quality of credits used and the underlying decarbonisation strategy. Together, CCP and VCMI build a quality stack: CCP on the supply, VCMI on the claim, with the science-based target sitting underneath both.
The reset is not a ban on offsets. It is a ratchet. Credits that meet the new bar continue to clear; credits that do not, do not. The Morgan Stanley survey found that 61% of current buyers like the CCP label concept but that supply of labelled credits remains limited. That supply constraint is now visible in pricing.
What sophisticated buyers ask before they sign
The questions on the procurement scorecard have changed. A 2022 buyer might have asked about price, vintage, and project type. A 2026 buyer asks five different questions before any of those.
- What does the counterfactual look like, and who validated it.
- What is the permanence regime, and what is the buffer pool exposure.
- What is the leakage risk, and how is it mitigated.
- What rating has the project received from the independent ratings agencies (Sylvera, BeZero, Calyx Global), and what was the rationale.
- What is the documentation discipline that survives an audit four years from now when the procurement team that signed the contract has moved on.
If the vendor cannot answer those five questions on a first call, the conversation ends. Conversely, if the vendor can answer them with documented specificity, the conversation often expands beyond a single transaction toward a multi-year engagement.
Where this leaves your near-term commitments
You probably have near-term commitments that pre-date the integrity reset. Public targets to be carbon neutral by 2025 or 2030. Product-level claims that ran in last year’s marketing. Disclosed reduction trajectories that assumed continued access to cheap credits.
You have three workable paths. The first is to re-baseline your strategy, replacing the most exposed credits with higher-quality alternatives and adjusting the public language to match what you can defend. The second is to shift the underlying spend from offsetting outside your value chain to investing inside your value chain, where reductions count against Scope 3 directly and the audit trail is cleaner. The third is to keep the strategy and absorb the risk, which is increasingly the most expensive option once you price in litigation, restatement, and reputational exposure.
Most serious buyers are choosing the second path. It moves the carbon spend from a compliance cost to a procurement and resilience investment, and it removes the central failure point of the legacy model: the disconnect between where the emissions occurred and where the reductions sat. Nature-based supply chain investments, structured under the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard and aligned to the SBTi FLAG Guidance, are the asset class that fits this brief. They generate inventory-grade reductions, they produce audit-grade documentation, and they survive the new claim restrictions because the carbon math sits inside the value chain that the disclosure already covers.
If you are reassessing a carbon strategy under the new integrity bar, or rebuilding a board narrative that has to survive a more skeptical audience, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help. The Dual-Value Model gives you a defensible alternative to legacy offset purchases, with the documentation and operational integration that survives the procurement scorecard and the audit. Schedule a consultation.
-
Climate Change11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy9 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测