Growing Terbium Shortage Urges Radical Green Mining of Heavy Rare Earths

China’s supply of terbium and other heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) are critical to global sustainable transition. However, their supply chain and corresponding bottlenecks remain unclear. Here we present the first deep-dive analysis of China’s terbium supply chain and trade flows from 1990 to 2018, as well as its future potential trends through 2040. We identify a growing terbium shortage along with its fast-increasing demand to meet various sustainable applications, particularly for electric vehicles (EVs) and wind power (nearly half in 2018). In sharp contrast to previous views, we uncover that the lack of available green mining technology under rigorous environmental regulations, rather than China’s production quota, is currently the main constraint of terbium supply, given only 25% of its quota was exhausted in 2018. Moreover, this supply gap is expected to increase six-fold over the next 20 years to meet China’s EVs and wind power ambitions. Our further analysis reveals the present widely-advocated approaches (including material substitution, reduction, and recycling), will alleviate only around 56% of such shortages, which urges radical green mining breakthroughs to overcome environmental constraints in both China and other HREEs supply countries.