National geoscience: the foundation for Australia’s critical minerals future

Australia is a major global supplier of critical mineral resources, ranking in the top five producers for nine of the 26 commodities on the 2022 Australian critical minerals list, and is a leading producer of many other minerals essential for the transition to net zero. To meet rapidly growing global demand, and position Australia as a reliable source of critical minerals to the world, it is essential to maintain a critical minerals resource pipeline. Geoscience Australia aims to accelerate discovery by increasing understanding of critical mineral systems, sourcing new commodities from existing assets, and delivering data and integrated interpretive products to stimulate exploration, aid future discovery success, and position communities and government to make informed decisions about future resource development. The vast amount of precompetitive geological, geochemical and geophysical data acquired by Geoscience Australia and its predecessor agencies for over 70 years is finding new applications in exploration for critical minerals. These foundations are being built upon by new precompetitive data delivered as part of Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program aimed at mapping the Earth’s structure and composition from the surface and into the mantle, providing insights into the fundamental processes that lead to the formation of mineral systems, both spatially and temporally. Drawing on research by the academia and conceptual mineral system models, these data are being integrated to produce national-scale predictive mineral potential and economic fairways maps to reduce the exploration search space and inform exploration targeting. Recognising that extracting secondary commodities from existing deposits will be an essential source for the critical mineral requirements of the future, Geoscience Australia is collaborating with international counterparts and Australian universities to undertake a national assessment of critical mineral potential in known deposits, including characterising critical minerals occurring in ores and those contained in waste from previous mining operations. Presented at 2023 Critcon Conference