The West faces a huge strategic challenge to its plans for renewable energy, battery storage and electric vehicles because China has won a 15-year war to dominate supply of rare earths and other essential metals.

Brian Menell, chairman and CEO of TechMet, a private technology metals company, is helping to address this strategic imbalance by producing, processing and recycling these metals.

He says: “What is often not adequately appreciated is that the global power, energy and mobility revolution is dependent on a relatively small number of strategic technology metals that go into batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy systems and that are in structural short supply and are almost entirely controlled or substantially influenced by the Chinese state or by Chinese interests.