The company’s push into lithium suffered a major setback earlier this year when Serbia’s government tore up the company’s permits for its $3 billion Jadar lithium mine that would have been Europe’s largest amid community concerns about its potentially harmful impact on the environment and months of large-scale protests.

In March, Rio Tinto completed a $1.1 billion acquisition of the Rincon lithium project in Argentina.

As the permitting process for Rincon progresses, Rio Tinto is consulting communities and carrying out studies exploring possible pathways for a “smaller start-up to accelerate market energy”.

“We’re definitely seeing really strong interest from car manufacturers – as that awareness of supply chains and shortages comes in – wanting to talk to us about lithium,” Kaufman said.

In copper, another commodity vital to the clean-energy transition, Rio Tinto is carrying out a multibillion-dollar expansion of its large Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.

However, its plans to develop a new copper in mine the United States through a joint venture with BHP are facing opposition from the San Carlos Apache tribe, which fears the mine will impact sacred and actively utilised religious land.

Across Rio’s global business, the company is investigating or starting production of multiple other critical minerals found in mine waste, known as tailings. Critical minerals including scandium oxide, tellurium and lithium are being extracted from existing waste streams at operations in Quebec and Utah without the need for new mining.

“The idea that you could have a mine where you don’t produce anywhere near as much tailings, or maybe even any, or you don’t have dumps left at the end,” Kaufman said. “When we think about mining in 100 years’ time, that’s the sort of stuff that we need to we need to get really good at.”

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