The USGS released projections for world production capacity for seven critical minerals and helium for the next five years in the first World Minerals Outlook, a forward-looking assessment that is part of a larger effort to provide forecasts and scenarios for global mineral supply chains.

The world’s capacity to produce cobalt and lithium, two elements critical to the batteries used to power mobile devices, tools and vehicles, is expected to double over the next five years. Capacity for gallium, palladium, platinum and helium is expected to remain stable.

This first World Minerals Outlook is part of the USGS effort to produce multiyear forecasts of the production, consumption and recycling patterns of all 50 critical minerals, as directed by the Energy Act of 2020. In 2017, Executive Order 13817 A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals defined critical minerals as those essential to the US economy and national security and with a supply chain vulnerable to disruption and directed the USGS to develop the whole of government List of Critical Minerals. Earlier this year, Executive Order 14154 Unleashing American Energy emphasized that role.

The World Minerals Outlook methodology pulls from multiple rich datasets that USGS produces and analyzes, as well as from the expertise of USGS mineral specialists. It considers announced, funded projects in evaluating future capacity based on when they may come online; subtracts operations nearing the end of their announced life or with depleted resources; and accounts for idled capacity as available. When there are no available statistics for a plant or country’s production capacity, it uses a conservative approach that incorporates their actual production.

In other findings, the first World Minerals Outlook noted:

• Magnesium projects outside China have lost funding or encountered other obstacles, and capacity globally is being idled.

• US titanium sponge production capacity was idled and has resulted in the US increasing its reliance on imports from Japan.

• Gallium is used in gallium arsenide and gallium nitride compound semiconductors. There is additional production capacity for gallium outside China with the potential to produce gallium in Germany, Kazakhstan and South Korea in response to China’s gallium export ban to the US.

• Cobalt production in the US and North America has stalled due to price reductions by world market leader China, a phenomenon the USGS also examined in the 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries.

• Palladium demand would decrease if the electric vehicle market ramps up, as electric vehicles do not need catalytic converters. Domestic capacity for palladium mine and metal production could be further idled if prices remain low or drop farther.

The World Minerals Outlook is part of a suite of USGS products this year providing insight to US leaders, industry and the public on critical minerals. Products include the annual Mineral Commodity Summaries, released in January, and the upcoming updated List of Critical Minerals. In addition to production and market analysis, the USGS continues to develop scenario analyses to forecast the economic impacts of mineral supply disruption and is actively working to map and assess critical-mineral resources throughout the US, both still in the ground and above-ground in mine wastes through its Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI), a partnership with state geological surveys.

The next World Minerals Outlook will appear in 2026.

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