By combining material flow analysis with a multilayer shock propagation model, researchers found that risks often originate in upstream parts of the supply chain but become most severe at key refining and manufacturing bottlenecks. The study shows that shocks can move through both horizontal and vertical pathways, as well as through direct and indirect connections, creating long chains of disruption and sudden breakdowns. These findings suggest that traditional country-by-country risk assessments fail to capture the full extent of the cobalt supply chain's vulnerability and that coordinated system-wide strategies are needed to strengthen resilience.

Rising Demand and Growing Supply Chain Risks

The rapid growth of electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage has driven a sharp increase in demand for cobalt. As a result, concerns about supply security, geopolitical concentration, and environmental and social challenges have intensified.

Many existing studies evaluate critical minerals by looking at individual countries, materials, or trade flows separately. However, modern supply chains are highly interconnected, with complex relationships linking suppliers, manufacturers, and consumers across multiple stages of production. Recent events, including export restrictions, trade disputes, and pandemic-related disruptions, have demonstrated how local problems can quickly spread through global production networks.

Despite these risks, many current analytical methods struggle to explain how disruptions move simultaneously through different countries and stages of production. This limitation highlights the need for a broader, network-based approach to understanding cobalt supply chain vulnerabilities.

Mapping the Global Cobalt Network

In a study published online in late 2025 in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, the University of Southern Denmark, and other institutions examined global cobalt flows between 1998 and 2019.

The team built a multilayer supply chain model and applied an iterative shock propagation framework to track how disruptions move both across countries and through six stages of the cobalt life cycle, including mining, refining, manufacturing, use, and recycling. The resulting analysis provides one of the most detailed examinations of systemic risk in the global cobalt supply chain to date.

To conduct the study, the researchers created a network connecting 230 countries across six interlinked production stages. By combining trade-based material flow analysis with a dynamic shock propagation model, they were able to simulate how a supply shortage or drop in demand at a single point in the network could spread through the broader system.

Their simulations showed that disruptions often travel through alternating direct and indirect pathways, moving across international trade links as well as domestic production chains. Mining disruptions, especially in highly concentrated upstream regions, frequently act as the initial source of risk. However, the most severe consequences tend to emerge later at refining and manufacturing "bridges," where dense connections between production stages amplify failures.

Hidden Interdependencies Increase Vulnerability

The researchers found that the resulting "avalanche network" of potential failures is approximately four times denser than the underlying physical trade network. This finding points to extensive hidden interdependencies that are not apparent when examining trade relationships alone.

Countries including China and the United States showed particularly high levels of systemic fragility. In these cases, disruptions originating within their supply chains could trigger widespread failures across the global network. At the same time, several countries with relatively modest production volumes were found to be highly exposed to random disruptions and lacked sufficient resilience to respond effectively.

The study also identified a long-term trend of increasing risk. Over the past two decades, global cobalt supply vulnerabilities have become more volatile while generally rising, driven by growing concentration within the supply chain and imbalances between supply and demand.

Why the Cobalt Supply Chain Is "Robust-Yet-Fragile"

According to the authors, the cobalt supply chain exhibits a "robust-yet-fragile" structure. In practice, this means the system can withstand many small, random disruptions but remains highly susceptible to targeted shocks affecting critical nodes.

The researchers note that measures such as national stockpiling programs or efforts to relocate production may lower risk for individual countries. However, these actions can also shift vulnerabilities to other parts of the network rather than eliminating them altogether.

Improving resilience, they argue, requires coordinated strategies that account for the connections between upstream and downstream production stages. Focusing only on national interests without considering these broader relationships could unintentionally worsen instability across the global system.

Implications for Energy Security and Clean Technology

The findings have important implications for energy policy, critical mineral management, and industrial planning. By identifying where risks emerge, accumulate, and spread, the framework could help support early warning systems for supply disruptions and improve international cooperation.

Policymakers may be able to use these insights to develop shared stockpiling programs, diversify refining and manufacturing capacity, and better assess the broader effects of trade restrictions or economic decoupling strategies.

Although the research focuses on cobalt, the same approach could be applied to other critical materials that support battery production and clean energy technologies. Ultimately, the study suggests that a successful low-carbon transition will depend not only on securing access to essential resources, but also on understanding and managing the complex global networks through which those resources flow.