In Spring 2025, we held an essay contest for current undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Texas-Austin, the Colorado School of Mines, or the U.S. Naval War College for a 2000 word essay on national security, critical minerals, and the clean energy transition. The topic could be broad or narrow, tackling a particular substantive dimension (such as cyber risks of the clean energy transition or workforce development in minerals) or a particular geographic focus (such as risks of instability in the lithium sector in Bolivia). Entries could be up to 2000 words. All entries had to be solo-authored. The winning essay will receive a $3,500 prize. We also are awarding two runner’s up prizes of $500.
We are happy to report that we had 11 submissions from which we selected Alex Gilbert’s essay “Contested Depths: Securing Arctic Seabed Minerals in an Era of Energy Transition and Strategic Competition” as the overall winner. Alex is a PhD student at the Colorado School of Mines. pdf
The runner’s up were Chunyang Zhang and Emma Hamilton.
Chunyang’s essay was entitled, “Building Resilience: Securing U.S. Lithium Supply Chains Through Strategic Policy and Recycling Innovation.” Chunyang is a PhD student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. pdf
Emma’s essay was entitled, “The Case for Latin American Participation in the Minerals Security Partnership.” Emma is an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin. pdf
Watch this space for the essays to be posted shortly.