ABSTRACT Guided by government strategy, Indonesia has rapidly become the world's largest producer of nickel, a key mineral used in electric vehicle batteries. But this growth is not due to savvy industrial policy alone. I argue that Indonesia has revolutionized its production, and thereby expanded the commodity frontier, through a new metabolism of nickel. This new metabolism is predicated on the particular materialities of Indonesia's nickel deposits, high‐intensity processing technologies, and a spatial constellation of mines and industrial parks. Paradoxically, it has brought Indonesia's low‐grade nickel—previously considered unprofitable—to market at the world's lowest prices. I show how this transformation has been built on cheap nature, producing cheap nickel with significant socio‐ecological costs. The case of Indonesian nickel illustrates how the push for energy transition minerals entails more than just new mining frontiers; it is also a frontier in the metabolism of earth into metal.
Matthew Libassi (Sun,) studied this question.