10 official lists, side by side
Governments define “critical” differently — by import dependence, economic importance, defense needs or energy transition demand. Here are the current official lists from the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and Canada, normalized to one mineral vocabulary.
Critical mineral lists by country
United States
Required by the Energy Act of 2020 and updated at least every three years. The 2025 list kept all 50 minerals from 2022 and added 10: boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver and uranium.
United States (DOE)
DOE's energy-focused list. It adds materials USGS does not cover, such as electrical steel and silicon carbide. DOE added metallurgical coal in May 2025.
Critical Materials List — critical materials for energyEuropean Union
34 Critical Raw Materials, 17 of which are Strategic Raw Materials with 2030 benchmarks: 10% EU extraction, 40% processing, 25% recycling, and no more than 65% from any single third country. Next review due by May 2027.
Critical & Strategic Raw MaterialsUnited Kingdom
34 minerals from the 2024 UK Criticality Assessment, now also used in the National Security and Investment Act schedule.
2024 Criticality AssessmentChina
China's official catalogue of 24 strategic minerals: 6 energy (oil, natural gas, shale gas, coal, coalbed methane, uranium), 14 metals and 4 non-metals. Oil, gas and coal are not mapped here. Separately, China has imposed export controls on many minerals since 2023.
National Mineral Resources Plan (2016–2020) — 24 strategic mineralsJapan
Japan's long-standing rare-metals list, treated as its critical minerals under the January 2023 policy for stable supply; batteries and rare earths are priority areas.
Critical Minerals (35 mineral species)South Korea
33 minerals managed for economic security, with 10 strategic minerals prioritized for intensive supply-chain management, focused on batteries and magnets.
33 Critical Minerals / 10 Strategic Critical MineralsIndia
Identified by an expert committee in 2023; 24 of the 30 were placed in Part D of the First Schedule of the MMDR Act, giving the central government auction powers.
30 Critical Minerals for IndiaAustralia
31 critical minerals plus a separate Strategic Materials List (aluminium, copper, phosphorus, tin, zinc) that is important for the energy transition but not considered supply-vulnerable.
Where two lists agree — and disagree
The consensus matrix
Each row is a mineral, each column a list. Solid cells are strategic-tier listings; lighter cells are critical; faint cells are included through a group such as rare earths or PGMs.