Engineers Against Poverty chair Richard Threlfall calls for the engineering, infrastructure and construction profession to lead on cutting whole‑life emissions and controlling capital cost overruns in major civils programmes. He argues that effective infrastructure governance must move beyond compliance to active stewardship of carbon, cost and social outcomes, with engineers shaping procurement models and performance metrics rather than leaving them to financiers and policymakers. For practitioners, this signals greater responsibility for transparent cost baselines, carbon accounting and value-for-money evidence on large public works.

More than 60% of global demand for critical minerals is now met via international trade, with the IEF warning that copper and nickel could face material shortfalls by the mid-2030s as total demand for copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium and rare earths climbs from 28 Mt in 2021 to nearly 41 Mt by 2040. EV copper use alone is forecast to jump from 200,000 t in 2020 to 3.4 Mt by 2035, while Indonesia supplies over half of nickel, the DRC about 70% of cobalt, and China over 90% of rare earth refining. More than 600 policies now target critical mineral supply chains, with the US, Canada and Australia incentivising exploration, refining and recycling, and Indonesia, Chile and Peru pushing in-country value addition and export controls.

US federal critical minerals policy in 2026 is set to move beyond rare earths to high‑risk inputs such as antimony and tungsten, where the US currently relies heavily on China, Tajikistan and Russia for supply into defence alloys, munitions and flame‑retardant applications. Washington is expected to prioritise domestic processing capacity over new mines, backing alternatives to traditional smelting and refining that cut emissions and withstand high US power prices. Intensifying competition for electricity from AI data centres will put aluminium, copper, magnesium and titanium processors under pressure, favouring technologies that materially lower energy use and total production costs.