“…Critical metals usually refer to rare metals, rare disperse elements, and rare earth elements that play irreplaceable and significant roles in new energy industries-from solar photovoltaic and wind turbines to electric vehicles and battery storage (Zhai et al, 2019;IEA, 2021a). Gallium, tungsten, rare earths, bismuth, antimony, magnesium, germanium, vanadium, molybdenum, indium, tin, silver, lithium, niobium, beryllium, nickel, cobalt, chromium, platinum, and copper are recognized as the critical metals for low-carbon technologies (Wang et al, 2021a;Zuo et al, 2021). With the massive and increasing deployment of low-carbon technologies for a net zero emission society, demands for these metals have been increasing significantly and the world is moving from fuel-intensive systems to more material-intensive systems (IEA, 2021b).…”