Critical minerals need more than capital to succeed

By any measure, Australia is a global powerhouse in critical minerals, and Western Australia sits at the heart of that. WA has virtually all the minerals on Australia's critical minerals list and 43 of the 55 minerals identified as critical by US agencies. The State is a leading supplier of lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, mineral sands and rare earths. These commodities are central to many of the issues influencing decision-makers and geopolitical dynamics around the world as they are key enablers of the global energy transition, essential for defence systems and at the centre of competition between great powers.

The geopolitical conditions for Australian critical minerals have never been more favourable. The US-Australia Critical Minerals Framework has opened a door, financing commitments are real, and the desire to diversify supply chains away from concentrated sources is significant. Capital is willing.

But here is the problem: projects are often stalling not because capital is unavailable, but because they cannot get to the point where capital will deploy. Whilst geopolitical conditions are favourable, the mines that produce the minerals also face significant pressures from growing and evolving community concerns, including for the protection of the environment and Indigenous rights. Projects may lack the approvals certainty that equity investors need before committing, or the social and environmental licence that increasingly sophisticated investors and customers require as a condition of engagement. Government financing facilities are genuinely useful, but they do not remove commercial risk.

In a sector as complex and politically sensitive as critical minerals, the regulatory landscape is one of the most consequential determinants of whether a project proceeds, at what cost and on what timeline.

The approvals challenge

Getting a critical minerals project from discovery to production in Australia requires navigating an approvals environment of genuine complexity — environmental impact assessments under both State and Commonwealth frameworks, biodiversity offsets, water licensing, cultural heritage assessments, native title agreements and ESG disclosure obligations. None of this is inherently bad. Environmental and heritage protections exist for good reasons, and our robust regulatory frameworks are a comparative advantage internationally. But the time and cost involved, particularly where State and Commonwealth processes are duplicative and not well coordinated, is a material constraint on development timelines. In a sector where the window of geopolitical opportunity may not be indefinitely open, and where competing jurisdictions are shortening their own timelines, this matters.

Both the WA and Australian governments have signalled a commitment to streamline approvals. WA has seen statutory reform, the development of Strategic Industrial Areas, the Green Energy Approvals Initiative, and the State Development Act introducing powers to declare Priority Projects and State Development Areas facilitated by the Coordinator General. At the Federal level, environmental and cultural heritage frameworks are going through significant reform. Strengthening biodiversity and heritage protections are important pillars of these reforms, but so too is reducing duplication and increasing certainty for proponents, including in relation to information requirements and the identity of relevant consultation parties.

The test is whether this commitment translates into a genuinely faster and more certain process without compromising assessment integrity. There is still significant room to move on coordination, resourcing and process design. In some cases, a material shift will require a cultural change within approval bodies, away from the assumption that more information and more surveys always leads to better outcomes.

Expectations of true efficiency gains should be managed in the short-term. The extent of Federal reform means approval efficiency is likely to get worse before it gets better. Not only will there be inevitable delays as assessing officers, proponents and the community work through significantly changed requirements and processes, but if there is no bilateral agreement accrediting the WA framework before the changes to the EPBC Act approvals framework commence on 1 December, duplication will increase as State and Federal assessments run entirely in parallel.

Beyond compliance: ESG as commercial logic

It is not just statutory frameworks that influence a project's pathway to production. For critical minerals projects — many located in environmentally and culturally sensitive areas of WA — environmental, social and governance issues are a central feature of the commercial environment.

The instinct historically may have been to treat this as burden management: identify the requirements, comply, move on. However, this is increasingly not the case, and with good reason. Even where a project is technically entitled to proceed, reputational consequences for a company that has not met community expectations can be severe.

The projects that take a deliberate and proactive approach by investing in understanding their environmental and heritage context early, building genuine relationships with traditional owners and affected communities, and designing projects to achieve positive social and environmental outcomes rather than simply acceptable ones generally end up in a materially better position. They have shorter approval timelines, better access to capital, and stronger social licences.

This is not altruism — it is risk mitigation and commercial logic. And it is increasingly the difference between a project that gets built and one that gets tied up for years.

WA has everything it needs to be a global leader in critical minerals. Not just as a source of raw materials, but as an industry that adds value and captures the rewards of the energy transition. The door is open. But the pathway runs through environmental approvals, native title and heritage agreements and social licence, and there is still work to be done to fully realise the robust but also fast and efficient approvals framework required to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the State's incredible raw assets.