From Energy Security to Material Security: The Next Frontier for India’s Transition

India’s energy transition is often discussed through renewable energy targets and EV adoption numbers. Those are important. But underneath both lies the same question: where will the materials come from?

June 09, 2026. By News Bureau

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Rohan Gupta

Attero

Energy Security to Material Security

For a long time, energy security was mostly about fuel. Countries worried about oil imports, gas pipelines, coal reserves, and price movement in these commodities. That is changing in real time along with the global world order.

The global energy transition is now dependent not only on how much clean energy countries can generate, but also whether they can secure the materials needed to build that future. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper, manganese, and rare earth elements have become as strategically important as oil once was if not more. These materials now sit at the centre of electric vehicles, batteries, renewable energy systems, semiconductors, and modern electronics.

That shift is particularly important for India. The country is expanding EV manufacturing, battery storage, renewable energy, electronics production, and grid infrastructure all at the same time. Each of these sectors depends heavily on critical minerals where supply chains remain concentrated in a few countries.

India aims to reach 500 GW of non-fossil fuel energy capacity by 2030. At the same time, battery demand is expected to rise sharply as EV adoption and energy storage accelerate. Industry estimates suggest India could require nearly 300 GWh of advanced batteries for e-mobility alone by the end of this decade.

The challenge is that India still relies heavily on imports for battery-grade lithium, cobalt compounds, graphite, and rare earth magnets. China currently dominates global refining capacity across several of these materials, especially rare earth processing and battery chemicals. Recent export restrictions and geopolitical tensions have made one thing very clear: countries that do not secure material supply chains will struggle to secure their energy transition.

This is why material security is becoming just as important as energy security.

Critical Minerals are now Strategic Assets

Demand for critical minerals is rising much faster than most traditional supply systems were built to handle. According to the International Energy Agency, demand linked to clean energy technologies could more than triple by 2035. Rare earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium are now essential for high-performance magnets used in EV motors and wind turbines. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite remain central to battery manufacturing. Copper demand is also increasing rapidly because electrified systems require significantly more conductive material than conventional infrastructure.

Countries across the world are responding aggressively. In the United States, the policy centre of gravity has shifted decisively from the Inflation Reduction Act to a post-IRA industrial-security framework: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has phased out most IRA clean-energy credits while preserving and expanding the 45X production credit for critical minerals through 2030, paired with Defense Production Act funding for domestic mining and processing, reshoring-linked tax benefits, tariffs on Chinese refined inputs, and bilateral supply-chain agreements with allied nations. Europe's Critical Raw Materials Act is pushing aggressively for domestic extraction, refining, and recycling capacity. Japan and South Korea continue investing heavily in circular supply chains, strategic mineral partnerships, and advanced recovery technologies to reduce long-term dependence on concentrated supply geographies.

India has also started moving in this direction through policy interventions like the National Critical Mineral Mission, Battery Waste Management Rules, and Production Linked Incentive schemes for advanced chemistry cells. But policies alone are not enough. The larger question is whether India can build domestic recovery and processing ecosystems fast enough to support future demand.

That is where urban mining becomes critical.

Urban Mining is no Longer a Side Conversation

India already has a growing above-ground reserve of critical materials in the form of discarded electronics, batteries, industrial scrap, motors, magnets, and electrical equipment.

The scale is massive. India is now the world’s third-largest producer of e-waste, generating around 3.8 million metric tonnes annually. According to Redseer, the recoverable economic value within this waste stream is estimated at nearly USD 6 billion. These discarded products already contain copper, aluminium, lithium, cobalt, nickel, gold, silver, graphite, and rare earth elements in commercially recoverable quantities. In many cases, spent batteries and electronics contain higher concentrations of valuable metals than traditional mined ore.

This changes how recycling should be viewed. If India can recover these materials domestically at scale, it can reduce import dependence, lower exposure to volatile global supply chains, and support local manufacturing across EVs, batteries, renewable energy, and electronics.

But this requires a very different recycling ecosystem from the one that exists today. Informal processing still handles a large share of recoverable material flows. That leads to low recovery efficiency, material leakage, environmental damage, and poor traceability.

Technology will decide whether India can bridge that gap.

Advanced hydrometallurgical systems, robotics, AI-led sorting, automated dismantling, and digital traceability platforms are already changing how modern recycling operates globally. AI is improving material classification and feedstock analysis. Robotics is reducing manual handling risks in battery dismantling. Digital systems are helping create transparency across fragmented supply chains.

These capabilities matter because future manufacturing systems will increasingly demand high-purity recycled inputs that meet industrial-grade specifications.

The Next Phase of India’s Transition

India’s energy transition is often discussed through renewable energy targets and EV adoption numbers. Those are important. But underneath both lies the same question: where will the materials come from?

Without secure access to critical minerals, energy transition plans eventually run into supply constraints, price volatility, and geopolitical risk.
That is why the next decade will not only be about energy generation. It will be about material recovery, refining capacity, recycling ecosystems, and circular supply chains. Countries that build strong material security systems today will have stronger manufacturing ecosystems tomorrow.

For India, this is no longer a downstream sustainability discussion. It is becoming a core economic and industrial priority.

- Rohan Gupta, Co-founder and COO, Attero