USC Marshall Energy Business Summit Panel Discussion | October 17 2025
Moderator: Peter Bryant, Board Chair, Clareo
Panelists: Mary Neumayr, Director, Government Affairs, Urenco USA | Teague Egan, CEO, EnergyX | Rodrigo Barbosa, President and CEO, Aura Minerals
At the recent USC Marshall Energy Business Summit, Clareo’s Peter Bryant moderated a panel of industry leaders to confront an uncomfortable truth – current approaches to critical minerals are fundamentally inadequate. The unanimous message – incremental adjustments won’t work, and what’s required is systemic transformation across policy, industry practice and international collaboration.
Severe copper, lithium and uranium shortages are projected by 2035, and with mine development timelines stretching to 29 years in the United States, the math is brutal. Even if every policy shift proposed today succeeds, a decades-long supply gap looms.
The panel identified seven imperatives that demand immediate action.
1. Abandon the ‘critical minerals’ fiction
Peter opened by challenging the terminology that shapes policy worldwide.
“I hate the term critical minerals,” he stated, “because people that don’t understand mining think about rare earth elements or lithium and then bestow the characteristics of that metal predominantly across all 60 critical minerals.”
The problem runs deeper than semantics, because treating critical minerals as a single category masks crucial differences in geology, supply chains and geopolitical dynamics.
“Every mineral is different. China has a different choke point on every single supply chain,” Peter explained. “We need to unpack critical minerals and what they mean individually instead of looking at this big bundle because it leads to wrong-headed policy.”
The action: Policymakers must develop differentiated strategies for each mineral system. One-size-fits-all approaches to friend-shoring, stockpiling or supply chain diversification will fail because they ignore how each mineral is extracted, processed and used.
2. Confront the 30-year gap
The math of mine development demands urgent attention to permitting reform.
New mines require 15-20 years to permit and develop globally. In the US, that timeline has stretched to 29 years—creating what Peter termed “a 30-year gap” between recognition of need and production capacity.
Rodrigo Barbosa delivered a stark assessment of American competitiveness: “It’s easier, faster, and efficient for me to build and operate and permit a mine in Brazil than in the US.”
The action: Permitting reform can’t be incremental. The current administration’s efforts represent a start, but fundamental restructuring of regulatory frameworks is essential. As Peter noted, if friend-shoring strategies depend on domestic mine development, the 30-year timeline makes them ineffective for addressing 2035 supply gaps.
3. Rebuild nuclear fuel supply chains
Mary Neumayr outlined the nuclear industry’s transformation – what she carefully termed a “resurgence” rather than a renaissance, acknowledging past false starts. This time, the momentum appears genuine.
Very broad bipartisan support at the federal level has produced unprecedented alignment. The previous administration pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, but the Trump administration has pledged to quadruple it.
Some of the existing fleet of 94 operating nuclear reactors are seeking 80-year extensions rather than facing shutdowns. Reactors are restarting for the first time ever, including Michigan’s Palisades plant and Three Mile Island Unit 1 which will support Microsoft’s energy needs. Around 80 new reactor designs are under development, from small modular reactors to micro-reactors.
Yet fuel supply chains remain critically dependent on Russia. “The US has some uranium deposits. We have conversion capability. We don’t have enrichment other than one High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) enrichment facility that’s not yet operational,” Mary explained.
The action: Allied coordination through the Sapporo Five (the US, UK, France, Canada and Japan) must accelerate to strengthen Western fuel supply chains. As Mary stated, “It will take that coordination to be able to strengthen that fuel supply chain to support this resurgence.”
Additionally, addressing what Teague Egan called the “idiot index” – where enriched uranium costs far exceed raw material value – is essential for deploying small modular reactors economically.
4. Redefine collaboration with resource-rich nations
Peter called out a critical divide in global mineral strategies: “The tensions between US/Europe’s focus on de-risking supply chains and friend-shoring, and the desire of resource-rich countries to retain more downstream value.”
Resource-rich nations in Latin America and Africa don’t simply want to export raw materials. They want to “build prosperity” through downstream processing and value addition. Western strategies that ignore these goals will fail.
The action: Peter’s closing remarks called for “an almost hyper-level of collaboration between the US with countries in Latin America and Africa. We need to get our act together.” This requires shifting from extraction-focused relationships to genuine development partnerships that support local processing capabilities, technology transfer and shared prosperity.
5. Transform Indigenous engagement
Peter challenged conventional approaches to indigenous communities, drawing on experience with the Grand Chief of the Cree Nation.
“We always use the word consultation. They actually find that word insulting. They want participation.” The distinction matters, since consultation implies informing communities about predetermined plans. Participation means integrating indigenous values into project design from the start.
“When they say, ‘we want education’, we immediately want to build a school. But that’s maybe not what they want. And we don’t listen to them,” Peter explained.
Mary reinforced this point: “It underscores how important engagement is from the very beginning.”
The action: Mining companies must move beyond tick-box consultation to genuine co-design of projects with Indigenous communities. This means understanding community values, ensuring benefits extend beyond mine life, and building what Peter called “a triangle of trust between governments, Indigenous communities and the miners.”
6. Reframe public discourse on trade-offs
The panel confronted anti-mining sentiment directly. Rodrigo was direct: “There’s no green energy without copper, lithium, or nuclear. And there’s no way the world will be able to change from carbon to electric without a significant amount of mining. So we should not ask if we do or don’t want mining. We should ask how. Let’s do it right.”
Teague added a fundamental perspective – “If it’s not grown on trees, it’s mined out of the ground. If we don’t grow it, we dig it out.”
Peter pushed for an honest assessment, saying, “Every human activity has a negative consequence. There is no zero-consequence pathway. Renewable energy is not a zero consequence.” The point, he emphasized, is that society must weigh competing consequences and make informed choices about which trade-offs are acceptable to meet energy and development goals.
The action: Industry, government and environmental advocates must engage in evidence-based dialogue about specific trade-offs rather than abstract opposition to mining. This includes acknowledging that renewable energy deployment requires massive mineral extraction and processing, each with environmental footprints that must be managed and mitigated.
7. Navigate the shareholder value paradox
Peter’s final observation captured another critical tension in the system. Mining companies remain cautious about projected demand increases, having previously destroyed shareholder value through overbuilding. Major producers are taking incremental approaches rather than making massive long-term investments in 30-year projects.
“There’s this kind of tension in the system around shareholder value,” he noted. This conservatism could worsen supply constraints even as demand surges, creating the very shortages that would justify the investments companies are avoiding.
The action: Resolving this paradox requires new financing mechanisms, risk-sharing arrangements between governments and industry, and long-term offtake agreements that provide certainty for major capital deployments. Without addressing the fundamental mismatch between mine development timelines and corporate investment horizons, supply gaps will persist.
The expansion imperative
Peter reframed the entire energy discussion from its foundation: “We’ve really shifted from the age of an energy transition to the age of energy expansion.” More than simply semantic repositioning, this acknowledges that global energy demand will grow substantially, even as the system evolves.
Four pillars underpin this framework: reducing emissions where possible; addressing social equality, including the 1.5 billion people without electricity; shifting to a minerals-intensive energy system; and solving China and India’s coal dependence.
“Americans particularly forget, and Europeans, that there’s nearly a billion and a half people that don’t have electricity in the world,” Peter noted. “They have a human right and moral right to have electricity, which we prevent them from having, mainly in Africa.” This broader framing challenges Western assumptions that energy policy can focus primarily on decarbonization while ignoring development needs and resource constraints.
From recognition to action
The panel delivered both challenge and opportunity. As Peter concluded: “What you’ve heard is tremendous opportunity with tremendous challenges across everything that we’ve talked about.”
Meeting global energy and development goals requires technological innovation and capital investment, but the overarching need is for fundamental shifts in how nations collaborate, how industries engage with communities, how regulators approach permitting, and how policymakers understand the complex, differentiated nature of mineral supply chains.
The alternative to action will be a minerals famine that simultaneously constrains energy deployment, economic development, and climate goals.
The window to avoid this outcome is measured in years, not decades. The actions required are systemic, not incremental. And the stakes including energy security, economic prosperity and global development, could not be higher.
