The geopolitical race for critical raw materials in the green transition era has emphasized the critical importance of securing raw materials for the green transition, recognizing the challenges it faces in competition with China. However, convincing companies to prioritize geopolitical concerns over market dynamics presents a significant hurdle. While electric vehicles offer a cleaner alternative to fossil fuel vehicles, their production involves a considerable amount of materials. Compared to conventional vehicles, electric cars require a much larger quantity of minerals, such as copper and manganese. The increasing adoption of clean energy technologies, especially electric vehicles, has led to a surge in demand for critical raw materials (CRMs). This heightened demand underscores the need for a stable supply chain to support Europe’s transition to green technologies. The European Union identifies certain materials as “critical raw materials,” crucial for various sectors beyond clean energy, including digitalization and defense. However, dependence on external sources, particularly China, raises concerns about supply chain security. China’s dominance in processing many CRMs, despite not being rich in these resources, poses challenges for the EU. Chinese mining companies have made significant investments overseas, controlling key mining operations in regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. In response to these challenges, the EU has implemented initiatives such as the European Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) and strategic partnerships with producer countries. These efforts aim to secure the EU’s CRM supply while promoting sustainable development in partner nations. The CRMA emphasizes supply chain security but also faces criticism for prioritizing mining projects over sustainability. Achieving a balance between security and sustainability is crucial for ensuring a resilient supply chain. Despite the EU’s emphasis on strategic partnerships and free trade agreements, challenges remain in translating rhetoric into action. Building domestic supply chains for green energy technologies requires significant investment and private sector involvement. However, crashing prices of key minerals like lithium and cobalt have stalled Western investments in new mines. Chinese companies, benefiting from state support, are better positioned to weather market fluctuations. The EU’s approach to competing with China in the CRM sector must address these challenges effectively. Balancing economic interests, sustainability goals, and supply chain security will be essential for the EU to establish resilient CRM supply chains and maintain its competitiveness in the global market.
Tag: Critical raw materials
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Rovina Valley project is setting a new standard for sustainable mining in Romania
Toronto-listed Euro Sun Mining, under the leadership of South African CEO Grant Sboros, is charting a new course for gold and copper mining in Romania with its Rovina Valley project. This initiative not only aligns with the European Union’s Critical Raw Materials Act but also sets a new standard for environmental sustainability in mining operations. Sboros’s active engagement with the Romanian government and the local community underscores a collaborative approach to ensure the project’s success and compliance.
Euro Sun Mining’s Rovina Valley project is a beacon of innovation in the mining industry, emphasizing the exclusion of cyanide and wet tailings from its process. This method reflects a growing trend towards more environmentally friendly mining practices. The project’s focus on copper, a critical raw material, is timely given the EU’s increasing emphasis on securing a sustainable supply of such materials. The environmental impact assessment, nearing completion, is a testament to the project’s commitment to minimizing its ecological footprint.
Engaging with communities and government for mutual growth
Grant Sboros’s proactive dialogue with Romanian officials and the community at large is pivotal in navigating the bureaucratic and social landscapes. Such engagement is crucial for aligning the project’s goals with those of the local population and the broader Romanian economy. The government’s projected earnings of 45% from the project underline its potential economic impact. Furthermore, the comparison with Gabriel Resources’ Roșia Montană project highlights a shift in Romania’s mining sector towards more sustainable and community-friendly practices.
Setting the stage for a sustainable mining future
The Rovina Valley project, slated to begin production in mid-July 2026, represents a significant step forward in the mining industry’s journey towards sustainability and economic viability. The possibility of extending the mine’s life by exploring and potentially doubling its resources speaks to the project’s long-term vision. As the European Union focuses on critical raw materials, projects like Rovina Valley are crucial for demonstrating how mining can evolve to meet modern demands for sustainability and economic contribution.
This ambitious project not only reflects a significant economic opportunity for Romania but also a model for future mining operations worldwide. The emphasis on environmental sustainability, community engagement, and alignment with critical raw material needs positions the Rovina Valley project as a pioneering initiative in the global mining industry.
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Quest Critical Metals Provides Update on EU HORIZON-Funded EIS Project
Quest Critical Metals Inc. (formerly Canadian Palladium Resources Inc.) (“Quest Critical Metals” or the “Company”) is delighted to share the latest advancements in the EU HORIZON-funded Exploration Information Systems (EIS) Project. The project, in which the Company participates through its wholly-owned Czech subsidiary, Golden Pet SRO, aims to bolster Europe’s self-sufficiency in critical raw materials (CRM) with a focus on sustainable mineral exploration.
The EU HORIZON-funded EIS Project, valued at €7.5 million, is dedicated to developing advanced exploration concepts and data tools to facilitate mineral exploration while minimizing its environmental impact. Moreover, the project seeks to raise awareness regarding the significance of critical raw materials and the challenges associated with exploring for them within the EU.
James Newall, CEO of Quest Critical Metals, expressed his enthusiasm, stating, “We are privileged to have an abundance of geological and geophysical expertise analyzing our Klingenthal/Tisova project, all funded by the EU. Their validation of our geological interpretation is not only reassuring but also invaluable. Furthermore, being selected as a case study for the EIS Awareness Campaign will significantly amplify our project’s exposure.”
Key Highlights:
- EU Funding Boost: Quest Critical Metals has received three tranches of EU grant funding, bolstering its exploration efforts.
- Top European Collaboration: The Company has collaborated with leading geologists and geophysicists in Europe, benefiting from their expertise. Notably, Professor Jiri Zacharias of Charles University, Prague, contributed to the understanding of the ore body evolution at Tisova.
- Data Contribution: Quest Critical Metals’ data has played a crucial role in creating the Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (VMS) identifying model.
- Tisova Project Advancement: The EIS project is advancing into its testing phase in 2024, with Klingenthal/Tisova identified as the sole test site for planned drilling activities.
EIS Project Awareness Campaign:
The EIS Project aims to raise awareness of the importance of Critical Minerals and the challenges associated with their exploration within the EU. Golden Pet, the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, serves as a case study for this campaign.
Objective: Targeting governments, corporations, and stakeholders, the campaign will culminate at the EU Raw Minerals Week in November 2024 in Brussels.
Engagement: A dedicated workshop at the PDAC 2024 Convention in Toronto, Canada, will be led by EIS Project partners, engaging with leading mineral exploration and mining companies.
Quest Critical Metals is poised for significant advancements, with its participation in the EIS Project and strategic acquisitions positioning the Company for growth and success in critical minerals exploration.
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Extraction of raw materials could rise 60% by 2060
The United Nations’ flagship Global Resources Outlook report is the portrait of a juggernaut. Due to be published later this month by the UN’s International Resource Panel, it highlights how global consumption of raw materials, having increased four-fold since 1970, is set to rise by a further 60% by 2060.
Already, the technosphere — the totality of human-made products, from airports to Zimmer frames — is heavier than the biosphere. From the 2020s onward, the weight of humanity’s extended body — the concrete shells that keep us sheltered, the metal wings that fly us around — have exceeded that of all life on Earth. Producing this volume of stuff is a major contributor to global heating and ocean acidification, and the rapidly accelerating extinction of plants and animals.
As the UN report spells out, the extractive activities that lie behind the concrete, metal and other materials we use are disrupting the balance of the planet’s ecosystems. The mining industry requires the annexation of large tracts of land for extraction and transportation; its energy consumption has more than tripled since the 1970s.
That upward curve is set to continue. The demand for materials is rising, the quality of ores such as copper is declining, and deeper and more remote mines require extra energy for extraction. More seams will be dug and more mountains moved to bring glittering fortunes to some while many regions, above all in developing countries, become sacrifice zones.
Critical raw materials
Attention is increasingly focused on a particular class of material. “Critical” and “strategic” raw materials are those that face supply risk either in their scarcity or their geographical concentration, and which the major powers require for their military sectors and for competitive advantage in tech industries. Right now, the race for critical materials is geopolitical: each major power wants to secure supplies in allied countries.
Critical raw materials are indispensable to the green transition too. The EU, for example, deems nickel a strategic material in view of its role in batteries.
A wind turbine can require nine times the mineral inputs of a typical gas-fired power plant, while the average electric vehicle contains between six and ten times those of its conventional counterpart, according to the UN report that is due to be published on February 26.
None of this means that a green economy would use greater quantities of materials than the current fossil fuel-based one. Energy consumption due to mineral demand for energy transition technologies is dwarfed by that which arises from mineral demand for the rest of the economy.
Nonetheless, the mineral demand of the energy transition stokes the mining boom in such sectors as copper and lithium.
Urban mining
Mining must change in order to reduce its environmental impact. On the supply side, recovering minerals from waste goods can be ramped up, for instance by forcing retailers to offer collections of household electronic waste that can be sent for enhanced recycling.
There is scope for urban mining: for example, locating copper from inactive underground power cables or recovering elements from construction waste, sewage, incinerator ash and other garbage zones.
In practice, however, the use of secondary materials relative to newly-extracted ones is declining. The recovery rates of minerals from recycling remain low. Another UN study of 60 metals found the recycling rate for most of them was below one percent.
The current economic system makes extractive mining cheaper and easier than urban mining. Extractive mining involves the purchase of cheap land, often in developing countries.
That land gets dug up, pulverised and processed in a simple flow that is amenable to capital-intensive operations. Urban mining by contrast is often labour-intensive and requires a complex and state-enforced regulation of waste streams.
Urban mining suffers from the refusal of governments to shift taxation from labour to “the use of non-renewable resources”, as Walter Stahel, an originator of the circular economy concept, recommended in 2006. Until robust regulation and taxation is introduced, all forms of circular economy risk unleashing rebound effects.
So, throwing more materials onto the market lowers prices, which tends to expedite economic growth, raise energy consumption, and proliferate environmental harms. In short, there is nothing intrinsically “green” about urban mining or the circular economy. The progressive potential of all such engineering programmes is governed by the political-economic framework.
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Amidst Growing Importance, Europe’s Battery Innovation Strategy Takes Center Stage
Europe aspires to become a global leader in battery innovation. To this end, BATT4EU has published a new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda recommending the battery research and innovation priorities for which public funding should be allocated effectively and efficiently.
Competing in the global battery arena requires constant innovation
The global demand for batteries has increased significantly in recent years, due to the rapid adoption of electric vehicles, renewable energy storage systems, and portable electronics. Given the expected growth in demand and the associated business opportunities, competition in the battery space is surging worldwide with China dominating. When it comes to battery manufacturing, China holds close to 70% of the current and forecast battery cell production capacity, with 101 battery plants planned till 2029. In the meantime, in Europe, the construction of 30 gigafactories has been planned to exceed 1 Terawatt-Hour capacity by 2030.
To reduce reliance on China for the EV transition, ensure open strategic autonomy and get close to climate neutrality, significant initiatives are now being developed in Europe and North America. Europe wants to compete with current manufacturing bases and increase its share of production to 25% within this decade.
Taking on the challenge of becoming a global leader in sustainable batteries will require constant and ambitious innovation efforts all along the battery value chain, from raw materials, to advanced materials, to battery manufacturing, application development and of course battery recycling.
Innovation is however costly
Estimates by the European Battery Alliance suggest that the European battery market could be worth €250 billion a year as of 2025. To ensure that Europe develops fast and well its own competitive battery value chain able to meet the growing demand for more sustainable batteries, funding of innovation efforts by public authorities is of vital importance for the sector to reduce technology risks. Between 2014 and 2020, the battery industry received at least €1.7 billion in EU grants and loan guarantees, on top of state aid of up to €6 billion authorised between 2019 and 2021. With BATT4EU, the batteries European partnership, the current EU funding for battery research and innovation planned until 2027 should reach up to €925 million under Horizon Europe Programme. Innovation is however costly and despite the generous funding made available to Europe’s industry and research organizations, it is essential that limited available financial resources are allocated in the best way to maximise the impact of research and innovation efforts.
Research and innovation priorities are aligned through a European strategic research and innovation agenda
To avoid gaps in funding and duplication of research and innovation efforts, the BATT4EU Partnership has developed a new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA). The document represents the culmination of extensive consultations with over 200 members of the Batteries European Partnership Association (BEPA). In addition, it incorporates collaborative inputs from other significant European battery initiatives, including Batteries Europe and Battery 2030+, ensuring a comprehensive and unified approach to advancing battery technology across Europe.
The new SRIA outlines time-based research and innovation priorities for every part of the battery value chain and points to 6 imperatives that need tackling in order to increase the competitiveness of the European battery value chain.
The 6 imperatives of the SRIA are:
Ensure research and innovation match industry needs to translate into gigafactories and markets
Increase the strategic autonomy of Europe by reducing the reliance on imported critical raw materials
Improve battery affordability to accelerate the green transition and keep the European industry competitive
Improve the flexibility of battery manufacturing and recycling systems
Implement a safe and sustainable by design framework for batteries
Support the continuity of excellent European battery research and academic-industrial
The SRIA aims to guide funding in Europe and maximize impact
In conclusion, as Europe aims to establish itself as a global leader in battery research and innovation, the SRIA will serve as a reference to highlight key technological challenges, promote research and innovation, and guide funding priorities across Europe (at European level in Horizon Europe, at the level of Member States and Regions). This should maximize impact to help put Europe at the forefront of research and innovation, for the benefit of competitiveness across the European battery value chain.
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Kazakhstan Produces Over Half of Raw Materials Critical for EU Economy
Kazakhstan produces and processes 19 types of essential raw materials included in the list of critical raw materials for the European Union (EU), reported the Ministry of Industry and Construction on Feb. 6. The list updated by the EU in 2023 includes 34 critical raw materials.
The raw materials from Kazakhstan are also exported to China, the EU, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia.
“Kazakhstan’s producers supply the European market with metal and chemical products such as beryllium, tantalum, titanium, ammonium metavanadate, and phosphorus,” said the ministry in a statement.
Kazakhstan is also among the world’s top 10 copper-producing countries. Kazakhstan boasts opportunities to establish a cluster for battery material production, such as nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium.
Rare metals and rare earth metals are considered critical types of raw materials in demand by leading sectors of the global economy, necessary for the transition to green energy, the development of digital technologies, defense, aerospace, medical, and other high-tech areas.
“One of the main problems in the rare metals mining industry is the dependence on imported raw materials. Additionally, the development of the production of essential raw materials is hindered by the wear and tear of technologies and equipment at enterprises,” said the ministry.
These issues are outlined in the comprehensive plan for the development of the rare earth metals industry for 2024-2028, which was approved by the government on Dec. 28.
According to the document, the main problems of the domestic rare metals and rare earth metals industry are low level of geological exploration, low level of assessment and commercial exploitation of technogenic mineral formations, wear and tear of the main assets of enterprises, and underdevelopment of the regulatory framework for the industry.
The ministry noted it is working on the tasks for the next five years. Overall, 15 rare earth deposits registered in the state are spread across three regions of Kazakhstan: Turkistan, Kostanai, and Mangystau. Data from the National Geological Service also indicates Kazakhstan possesses a raw material base of rare metals, including tungsten with 2.2 million tons of reserves, molybdenum with one million tons, lithium with 75,600 tons, tantalum with 4,600 tons, niobium with 28,100 tons, beryllium with 58,000 tons, among others.
Kazakhstan’s Minister of Industry and Construction Kanat Sharlapaev headed the Kazakh delegation at the Raw Materials Week in Brussels in November. Speaking at a panel session in Brussels, Sharlapaev said critical materials represent a blueprint for a new chapter in the Kazakhstan-EU cooperation.
“Our country is not just rich in terms of the mineral base. It has been a reliable partner for the EU, particularly contributing to its energy security through oil supplies and to the nuclear energy sector through uranium supplies. Now, Kazakhstan is ready and committed to integrate itself with the value chain of critical materials, which was aptly named critical for our green energy transition,” he said back then.
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Photo credit: strategy2050.kz.
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Europe is ‘miles behind’ in race for raw materials used in electric car batteries
European carmakers have secured less than a sixth of the key raw materials they will need by 2030 to make electric vehicle batteries, according to analysis that highlights the expected scramble for green-tech resources.
Carmakers have secured contracts for 16% of the lithium, cobalt and nickel required to hit their 2030 electric car sales targets, according to public disclosures analysed by Transport & Environment (T&E), a Brussels-based campaign group.
The world’s two biggest electric carmakers, Tesla in the US and China’s BYD, were significantly further ahead of many of their European rivals in securing access to key raw materials, the researchers found.
Batteries used in devices ranging from mobile phones to cars are made of precisely controlled combinations of metals. There is a global race to find enough lithium, the lightest metal, but cobalt and nickel are also important in many batteries.
The analysis suggested carmakers had disclosed agreements that would cover only 14% of the lithium, 17% of the nickel and 10% of the cobalt needed to meet their targets for 2030. The EU and UK will ban the sale of new fossil fuel cars in 2035.
Julia Poliscanova, the senior director for vehicles and emobility at T&E, said: “There is a clear disconnect between carmakers’ electric vehicle [EV] goals and their critical mineral strategies. Tesla and BYD are way ahead of most European players, who are only waking up to the challenge of securing battery metals now.”
T&E said Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Hyundai/Kia were the carmakers with large European operations that were lagging furthest behind rivals. Ford, Volkswagen and Stellantis have disclosed plans for battery mineral supply that rival Tesla and BYD.
Some of the carmakers may have secret deals with mining or refining companies to supply enough minerals, while some are looking at ways of reducing or eliminating the use of expensive cobalt and nickel. Nevertheless, the scale of the undersupply detailed in publicly disclosed contracts suggested carmakers would have to battle to hit their electric targets.
The analysis tallies with forecasts from the data company Benchmark Mineral Intelligence that demand for some key materials will significantly outstrip supply in the coming decade.
Benchmark predicts that lithium demand will quadruple by 2030 as China, Europe and then the US move rapidly away from petrol and diesel. However, its forecasts suggest there will be a lithium shortfall of 390,000 tonnes in 2030, compared with global production of 2.7m tonnes. It also predicts shortfalls of cobalt and nickel – part of what it describes as a “great raw materials disconnect” that could limit the pace of the transition away from petrol and diesel cars.
Caspar Rawles, Benchmark’s chief data officer, said: “In the medium and even the long term, lithium is probably going to be the limiting factor on the rate that the battery industry can scale.”
Big mining projects usuallytook at least five years to start producing material at scale, and as long as seven years if fundraising was required, Rawles said. That would mean investment decisions would need to be made in the next year or two to increase supply by 2030.
Poliscanova said it was supply chain strategies that would “make or break the EV transition in Europe, and render some companies obsolete”. However, she added that European manufacturers were ahead of rivals from China and the US in “cleaning up supply chains”. Some mineral suppliers have previously been found to have used child labour, exploited low-paid workers or used environmentally damaging methods.
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Sustainable raw materials for green technologies
Euromines President invited European Institutions and Automotive sector to jointly assess the realities of supply of raw materials to European manufacturers. His two statements summarize the past decade approach to raw materials in the EU: “For years Europe was far too complacent in outsourcing pollution – and receiving raw materials for our consumption in return” – and yet “Nowhere else mining is happening at such a high level of environmental protection as in Europe”.
From the rare earth crisis in the beginning of the 2000s, to the magnesium, gallium and germanium graphite crunch today – the intervals demonstrating European vulnerabilities are becoming shorter. The resulting dependency creates pressure on political leadership in the EU. European Institutions seem to have acknowledged this threat to competitiveness of the European industry. After all, the same materials are critical to achieving Green Deal made in Europe with or values, industry and society. Only by including all these aspects the green transformation can be a successful role model to copy for other countries.
In 1957, European leaders had the incredible foresight to make war economically impossible and eventually unthinkable. At the heart of it: integrating the production of raw materials across borders of countries, obliging them to work together. Across various economic crises, Europe calibrated a systemic prosperity and comfort by trading, finding allies and ensuring access to energy and non-energy commodities.
Today EU faces yet another challenge: climate change and the required energy, consumption and production transition, shift the rules of the game to a new level of fierce competition. War has returned to Europe, and it is not a given that allies and rivals alike step in for what Europe decided to outsource. Such increasing exposure is a serious to our prosperity and innovation power to find answers to the gargantuan task of tackling climate change.
ESG and geopolitical imperatives while maintaining prosperity will depend on a commodity transition: metals and minerals will fuel the planet. The demand increase for metals needed for goods such as e-vehicles and the infrastructure to make this work will be enormous – we cannot even fathom it. This requires bold steps in how we treat and use raw materials: not just specific in form of applications or technologies but systemic across value chains. After all, the sustainability impact of driving an e-vehicle depends on the sustainability performance of the raw materials it is made of.
European mining emerges as a strategic linchpin for autonomy in green, digital, and defence sectors. It can provide the raw materials needed to make a wind turbine run and a battery to store this electricity, but also serve as a benchmark for ESG standards for imported materials.
Europe is not alone.
The EU’s Green Deal is not the only sustainability transition policy – the race for raw materials will intensify even more, scrambling to get access to the most promising deposits. Control over extraction rights and refining capacity will be the defining geopolitical challenge for the decades to come. Europe needs to reckon with this on three accounts:
Utilize Europe’s Resources: Europe must tap into its promising deposits for critical and strategic materials, utilizing the knowledge and expertise of EU mining companies with minimal environmental impact.
Build Sustainable Partnerships: Outsourcing to areas with lower regulatory requirements is not an option. Europe must engage in partnerships with allies willing to uphold high standards in environmental, social, and governance issues.
Circular Economy Integration: Beyond recycling, integrating mining into the Circular Economy concept can minimize primary raw material extraction for other sectors.
Redefining Raw Material Approaches.Raw materials should no longer be considered merely a procurement issue. Confirming this disparity in approaches is the fact that for many sectors, supply of raw materials is sixth or seventh tier on their demand list. Yet, without securing the premium for the ESG criteria in sourcing them, the rift between downstream manufacturing and upstream mining companies will continue to render supply chains fragile, prone to disruptions and impede sustainability and human rights standards.
Extraction, refining, and manufacturing need to compete on more than “just-in-time” and cheapest prices. This behaviour change is a catalyst to do more in a sustainable way and be honest in how we source and procure raw materials to fulfil our own sustainability ambitions.
Sustainability is not an externality.
Internalizing high production standards in upstream and security of supply externalities in downstream industries must go hand in hand to recognize costs and benefits of a sustainable raw materials extraction. Mining as the base of many Green Deal objectives – if done right – decarbonizes entire value chains. LKAB’s pellets are 7 times less CO2-intensive than sinter production and key for decarbonized steel production. Boliden’s Aitik and Kevitsa mines are prime examples of mine electrification -providing low-carbon copper and zinc that are needed for electrification through increased deployment of fossil free electricity.
The EU raw materials mining industry has all the elements ready – from deposits, environmentally friendly extraction processes to a world-class R&D ambition to further reduce the impact of mining and providing critical and strategic raw materials. To make this happen Europe must act now! The Critical Raw Materials Act is a paradigm shift politically recognizing the benefits of our own backyard. The momentum initiated with the CRM Act must not be slowed down. There is a lot to do if we are serious about our role in the global green transition – starting with the production of our daily-life consumption.
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Council and Parliament strike provisional deal to reinforce the supply of critical raw materials
The political agreement reached today keeps the overall objectives of the original proposal but strengthens several elements. It includes aluminium in the list of strategic and critical materials, reinforces the benchmark of recycling, clarifies the permitting procedure for strategic projects, and requires relevant companies to perform a supply-chain risk assessment on their sourcing of strategic raw materials.
Ensuring the supply of raw materials locally and globally
The Commission’s proposed regulation establishes a list of 34 critical raw materials (including 16 strategic ones) and sets targets to increase the EU contribution of these substances (10% for the extraction; 40% for the processing and 15% for the recycling). To achieve this, the proposal called for a quick and simplified permit procedure for strategic extracting projects, to be dealt by a single national contact point. It also called for risk analysis of possible dependencies, member states’ exploration plans, higher investment in research, innovation and skills; and protection of the environment by promoting the circularity and sustainability of raw materials.
On the global stage, the regulation identified measures to diversify imports of critical raw materials ensuring that not more than 65% of the Union’s consumption of each strategic raw material comes from a single third country.
Main elements of the agreement
The provisional agreement adds one critical raw material (aluminium) to the list of strategic raw materials (hence, 34 critical raw materials and 17 strategic raw materials). The compromise text also considers that in addition to the natural graphite (which already in the list) the synthetic graphite will also be a strategic raw material during a period of three years, until the Commission makes the first revision of the list.
Furthermore, the agreement allows that projects able to produce innovative raw materials that substitute strategic raw materials in relevant technologies can be candidates to become strategic projects
Member states will have the possibility to object on whether a project will be developed on their territories.
Realistic benchmarks
The provisional agreement keeps the benchmarks of 10% for extraction of raw materials and 40% for processing but increases the benchmark for recycling to at least 25% of EU’s annual consumption of raw materials. In addition, there should be substantial increase on the recovery of raw materials present in waste.
Promoting technologies to moderate consumption
The co-legislators propose that 18 months after the entry into force of the regulation, the Commission shall present a report on the estimated consumption of each critical raw material for the next three decades.
Points of single contact
According to the different administrative systems of each country, member states will be able to designate one or several single contact points, at the level they decide (local, regional or national) and the different stages of the value chain (mining, processing, recycling). Promoters of strategic projects will have a “relevant administrative unit” in these points of single contact who will facilitate the permit granting process for the project.
Permitting procedure
The provisional compromise also unifies the timings of the permit procedure. The total duration of the permit granting process should not exceed 27 months for extraction projects and 15 months for processing and recycling projects. While the first step of the environmental impact assessment (the production of the report, which must be conducted by the project promoter) will be not included in the time-line for the project approval, the public consultation needed for an environmental impact assessment will be part of the total duration of the permit process.
Company risk preparedness
Large companies exposed to shortages of strategic raw materials in strategic technologies (i.e. battery manufacturers, hydrogen producers, renewable energy generators, data transmission and storage, or aircraft production) will have to regularly carry out a risk assessment of their supply chain of strategic raw materials, which they may present to their board of directors, mapping where the materials come from, what can affect their supply and what are the vulnerabilities to supply disruptions.
Background
The Critical Raw Material Act, together with the Net Zero Industry Act and the Reform of the electricity market design is one of the flagship legislative initiatives of the Green Deal Industrial Plan that the Commission presented on 1st February 2023. The three were presented as a package on 16th March. The Council adopted the negotiation mandate on 30th of June.
