According to Recharge, Samuel Leupold, chair of Corio Generation, a newly formed specialist offshore wind unit of global finance company Macquarie, said that given the current situation, European governments need to focus on securing access to the materials needed for the transition to the next energy era.

"The current crisis is opening our eyes to what it means to depend on commodity imports from big single supplying countries. The end of hydrocarbon commodities will not be the end of energy commodities", said Leupold.

He pointed at copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth minerals as the key materials required to make the transition, as they are crucial for the development of things like batteries and wind turbines.

Leupold stated that it is not the mining and extraction that is the problem, but rather the refinement and processing of these materials, as these processes are being done mostly within one country, China.

He said that "this industry is essentially controlled by one country – China is the transition material refinery of the world. They’re producing or purifying all the materials that will drive net zero."

China is responsible for the refinement of about 40% of the total amount of copper used in the world, 60% of the lithium and 90% of the rare earth elements, and Leupold says it is important for Europe to establish a strong supply chain of these materials within the continent to allow for the energy transition process to go smoothly.

"We need to build a supply chain for transition-critical materials here in Europe. Renewables and wind energy must position itself much more as an instrument of geopolitics going forward in Europe", he said.

Leupold's comments repeated what US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said, which was the need to diversify and scale-up the supply chains for materials that are critical for the energy transition that is happening worldwide.