WASHINGTON — While copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt often grab headlines when it comes to battery metals, there is an array of other minerals important to the energy transition away from fossil fuels.

As the importance of manganese, graphite, silicon and fluorspar grows alongside demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage, that dynamic also highlights China's dominance of these industries.

As government leaders in the United States and Europe work to build out their ex-China supply chains for a host of critical and strategic minerals, industry executives gathered at a recent Benchmark Mineral Intelligence mining conference in Washington...