Humanity is using mineral resources at an unprecedented level and demand will 1 continue to grow over the next few decades before stabilizing by the end of the century, due to 2 the economic development of populated countries and the energy and digital transitions. The 3 demand for raw materials must be estimated with a bottom-up and regionalized approach, and 4 the supply capacity with approaches coupling long-term prices with energy and production costs 5 controlled by the quality of the resource and the rate of technological improvement that depends on 6 thermodynamic limits. Such modelling provides arguments in favour of two classically opposed 7 visions of the future of mineral resources: an unaffordable increase in costs and prices following the 8 depletion of high quality deposits or, on the contrary, a favourable compensation by technological 9 improvements. Both views are true, but not at the same time. After a period of energy and 10 production cost gains, we now appear to be entering a pivotal period of long-term production 11 cost increases as we approach the minimum practical energy and thermodynamic limits for many 12 metals.