He said the threat of its power across these sectors was not “theoretical or hypothetical”, citing the incident in 2010 when a collision between a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese Coast Guard vessel prompted China to end rare earth sales to Japan.

“Frankly, we’re not aware that we were so dependent on Chinese rare earths,” said Mr Terazawa. “The embargo almost paralysed entire industrial activities, and the prices of rare earths skyrocketed quickly,” he said.

Bowen and Granholm signed the Australia - US Net Zero Technology Acceleration Partnership to develop low emissions and renewable energy technologies, as well critical mineral supply chains to diversify the global market that is currently dominated by China. Australia also joined a multilateral partnership to boost secure global supply chains for critical minerals, joining the US, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and others.

Professor Martin Green of the University of New South Wales, who is often referred to as the father of modern photovoltaic technology, told the Herald and The Age China had crucial advantages in the sector, including the scale of its domestic market, its access to key raw materials and to a vast skilled workforce.

“There’s got to be a risk to this because the Chinese government has entered this new aggressive phase,” he said.

He said while Europe and the United States was beginning to ramp up its efforts on solar production, it was likely only India could compete with China on cost.

Birol said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine combined with the impact of COVID had caused the first truly global energy crisis, with prices spiking from “Sri Lanka to Albania, from Albania to Argentina to sub-Saharan Africa”.

But while the crisis was likely to get worse before it got better, Birol said this would be a turning point in the history of the use of energy on earth.

He noted that the 1970s oil crisis had accelerated the development of nuclear energy and fuel-efficient vehicles. He said this crisis was deeper as climate change impacts the world and hits gas and coal prices as well as oil.

But he said, unlike in the 1970s, cheap alternatives to fossil fuels existed, and would now likely be rapidly adopted.

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Speaking with the Herald and The Age after his address, Birol was sceptical about the role of new fossil fuel projects. “If I was a businessman, I would be extremely careful to make large scale any fossil fuel investment,” he said. “When you look at them in today’s context, there is a need to replace the Russian oil and gas for sure, but this will not continue forever.”

He said by the time new developments were operational, technologies such as wind, solar and hydrogen may have superseded them. He said he expected small nuclear reactors may one day play a role in Australia’s energy mix, but ranked it behind the development of wind, solar, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage as a priority.

Solar, wind and hydrogen solutions were rapidly emerging as the business case for new fossil fuel investments increased, he said.