Energy Transition Capex: Investment Trajectories and Critical Minerals Demand, 2025-2035

Clean-energy investment has compounded at roughly 8 to 11% a year since 2022, reaching about $2.3 trillion in 2025, with electrified transport, renewables, and grid infrastructure the three largest line items. This report sets a base trajectory under stated policies and a decelerated case that incorporates US tax-credit rollbacks, which repeal or accelerate phase-outs on a large share of the prior clean-energy incentives. Against the policy-adjusted baseline, it derives the aggregate critical-minerals demand implied by each path, noting projections of a large copper supply shortfall and a tripling of lithium demand by 2035. China's outsized share, around a third of the 2025 global total, and its diverging policy trajectory open a structural wedge between Western-policy scenarios and realized global investment. The analysis converts each scenario into demand ranges for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earths.