Funding aside, shared infrastructure, quicker planning approvals and more transparent and developed pricing tools will be essential for Australia to achieve its growth ambitions in critical minerals.

That’s the view of mining figures including Dale Henderson, the chief executive of Pilbara Minerals, who told The Australian Financial Review Mining Summit in Perth on Wednesday that the Biden administration’s $US369 billion ($559 billion) Inflation Reduction Act had “ratcheted up the intensity by an order of magnitude” in the race to develop materials critical to the energy transition.