An interdisciplinary team at UNSW Sydney has developed an online modelling platform designed to help industry, governments and investors assess trade-offs across critical minerals supply chains, including cost, emissions and supply security.
The university says the Green Minerals Platform is intended to support decisions at a time when demand for minerals used in electric vehicles, renewable energy and advanced manufacturing is increasing, and supply chains are under pressure to be cost-competitive, low-carbon, resilient and secure.
UNSW’s release notes that critical minerals projects vary widely, with challenges spanning extraction conditions such as geology and ore grade, through to processing technologies, energy requirements, market dynamics and supply-chain concentration. It argues this makes it difficult to apply a single approach across different minerals or sites, and that decisions about where processing occurs and which technologies are used can materially affect both competitiveness and environmental outcomes.
The platform allows users to examine different supply-chain designs and geographic configurations, considering factors including ore quality, processing locations, technology selections, energy sources and transport routes. Using structured inputs across the value chain, UNSW says users can compare alternative pathways under different technical, economic and policy conditions, including the impact of carbon pricing, trade policy and government incentives.
According to UNSW, the initiative is led by Scientia Associate Professor Rahman Daiyan from the School of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineering, with support from research staff and students working across commodities including copper, lithium, green iron, rare earth oxides and gallium recovery. The university also cited involvement from Professors Iain MacGill, Ismet Canbulat and Serkan Saydam.
“Critical minerals supply chains involve complex decisions about technologies, energy systems, processing locations and market conditions. By bringing together expertise from different disciplines, we can develop tools that help industry and governments better understand these challenges,” A/Prof. Daiyan says.
The release links the work to Australia’s ambitions to expand domestic processing and manufacturing, pointing to opportunities driven by mineral endowment, renewable energy potential and investment under the Future Made in Australia agenda. It also notes that the viability of long-lived projects will depend on factors such as energy costs, infrastructure, processing technology choices and access to international markets, making upfront decisions consequential for Australia’s longer-term position in global supply chains.
UNSW says it has held discussions with industry organisations about practical applications, and that beyond commercial use cases, the platform could support government policy development by providing consistent techno-economic and environmental assessments for emerging investments and technologies.
“Without public questioning and public debate, this industry won’t move forward,” A/Prof. Daiyan says.
