Mexico 'has a lot to discover' regarding key minerals for the energy transition

Mexico, the world's top silver producer, has great potential to supply strategic minerals for the energy transition but it must devise a strategy to encourage exploration, according to the president of the Sonora state mining cluster, Alberto Orozco.

“Different governments see in different ways how the exploration of different strategic minerals can be stimulated. I think that in Mexico we still have a lot to discover, because although we already produce some key minerals such as silver... there are some others where we could have potential and we haven’t evaluated them, such as rare earths and lithium," Orozco told the CanCham Day held by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Mexico (CanCham México).

Ensuring the supply of minerals is considered key to the development of clean technologies for the transition to low-carbon energy, such as solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries.

Latin America and the Caribbean are seen as having an important role in the transition due to the region’s extensive resources to achieve these goals and combat climate change.

“Mexico still has a lot of potential to capture more value, to create resources to be able to provide for this energy transition,” said Orozco.

Sonora state has major lithium and copper resources, which are essential for electric vehicles.

“The adaptation of new technologies is coming at an accelerated pace… Today we see that the adoption of clean energy and electric vehicles, in short, the energy transition that we’re trying to achieve in order to stop global warming, are not possible without mining,” Orozco added.

Unfortunately, he said, in Mexico “we are doing poorly” in taking advantage of the energy transition because “there has been no exploration in years” of these critical minerals.

“We have to promote geological knowledge to see where the potential rare earth deposits are… There could be potential, but we need to start from scratch,” Orozco said.