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Supporting the UK’s clean energy transition with Fudan University

Professor Jing Meng (The Bartlett) used UCL-Fudan University Strategic Partner Funds to explore vulnerabilities in the supply chain of critical minerals needed for clean energy.

Massive Sulfide Nickel Ore Rock

1 May 2025

Several critical minerals are used in clean energy technologies, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements (REEs). With the growing urgency of tackling climate change, clean energy innovations are expanding, which means the need for critical minerals is also growing. However, critical mineral supply is highly concentrated in various parts of the world, which brings supply chain challenges. Some countries, including the UK, are reliant on importing critical minerals in order to achieve the transition to clean energy. For energy security, it’s crucial to plan for vulnerabilities in the supply chain and possible future disruptions to it.

Professor Jing Meng – along with the wider team at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction – has been collaborating with Professor Yutao Wang and others at the Fudan University Department of Environmental Science and Engineering since 2019, and they have published papers together in journals including Nature. The Fudan University team has built a comprehensive database on global critical mineral extraction, while the UCL team has expertise in supply chain modelling and analysis. Keen to continue their collaboration to build a mineral-focused input-output model for the UK, the collaborators were successfully awarded UCL-Fudan University Strategic Partner Funds.

Planning for clean energy security in the UK

“The UK transition to clean energy heavily relies on critical minerals,” Jing explained. “But the UK has to import these minerals, and this is vulnerable to disruption. The existing analysis misses some of the risks, particularly around the inter-linkage between countries. So we designed this project to fill that gap.”

Part of the complexity of mapping a country’s critical mineral needs is including imported products that have used critical minerals in the manufacturing process. So even if a country doesn’t import any REEs directly, it may rely on goods such as foreign-made wind turbines, which require a large amount of REEs to be made. For this project, the collaborators wanted to use input-output analysis to understand the full picture of what critical minerals are required by the UK, and to clarify the reliance of the UK on foreign critical minerals, both directly and indirectly.

To develop this work, the team used the UCL-Fudan University Strategic Partner Funds to host a workshop for researchers from both universities, plus external experts to discuss the modelling framework. PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from both universities are spending time in the partner institution to undertake some of the work, and a second workshop is taking place during summer 2025 to bring in more experts. In the meantime, work has commenced on building the model, and this will continue while the collaborators refine their approach.

Creating a model for everyone

“This new model for the critical mineral supply chain will be made available to everyone when it’s finished,” Jing said. “We will also develop a policy brief for government, which will highlight the vulnerabilities in the supply chain and what the solutions could be. We’re also looking at how to increase the resilience of the supply chain by making some key adjustments.”

This collaboration is getting some positive attention, and the team is also exploring an opportunity to develop a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to ensure their work can inspire a wide audience. The team has recently been offered provisional financial backing from Fudan University to establish an international virtual centre, to bring together researchers, educators, policymakers and people from industry. The topic of securing the global future of clean energy is important to many people, and this centre holds the potential to enable a sustainable and stable approach to this.

As well as furthering her research on an important subject, Jing believes this funding has been instrumental in propelling her career forward. “I’ve been able to take on more of a leadership role due to this funding,” she said. “Since the project started it has become a much higher level collaboration, as the possibility of creating an international virtual centre changes it from a department-level to a university-level partnership. As a young professor, this is a great opportunity.”

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Description: Massive Sulfide Nickel Ore Rock