Greenland, the largest island on Earth, possesses some of the richest stores of natural resources anywhere in the world.

These include critical raw materials – resources such as lithium and rare earth elements (REEs) that are essential for green technologies, but whose production and sustainability are highly sensitive – plus other valuable minerals and metals, and a huge volume of hydrocarbons including oil and gas.

Three of Greenland’s REE-bearing deposits, deep under the ice, may be among the world’s largest by volume, holding great potential for the manufacture of batteries and electrical components essential to the global energy transition.

The scale of Greenland’s hydrocarbon potential and mineral wealth has stimulated extensive research by Denmark and the US into the commercial and environmental viability of new activities like mining. The US Geological Survey estimates that onshore northeast Greenland (including ice-covered areas) contains around 31 billion barrels of oil-equivalent in hydrocarbons – similar to the US’s entire volume of proven crude oil reserves.

But Greenland’s ice-free area, which is nearly double the size of the UK, forms less than a fifth of the island’s total surface area – raising the possibility that huge stores of unexplored natural resources are present beneath the ice.

Greenland’s concentration of natural resource wealth is tied to its hugely........

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