High investments and international cooperations: Fraunhofer study shows what is required to achieve the goals of the Critical Raw Materials Act.
With the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), the European Union has enshrined raw materials supply security in law for the first time. Among other things, it stipulates that by 2030, the bloc must extract ten percent of its demand for strategic raw materials itself, process 40 percent itself and cover 25 percent through recycling. However, a new study led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI shows that additional expertise and new technologies are needed to achieve these goals. The study was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Panel on the Future of Science and Technology STOA.
The study concludes that the EU needs to expand its strong international position in research and innovation. There is a need for research along the entire supply and value chains, from the exploration of raw material deposits and the development of new extraction and processing methods to the circular economy and recycling. To this end, strategic, large-scale investments should be considered that correspond to those of other key technologies. The expansion of monitoring and analysis capacities would also make sense.
Resistance to Mining Projects: Researching Possible Conflict Solutions
In addition to technological aspects, research in the social sciences needs to be strengthened, as new mining or production projects often encounter local resistance due to environmental and social concerns. Participation processes and approaches to conflict resolution could help here.
The research team also advocates international cooperation, both within Europe and with the USA and Japan, but increasingly also with China. This is quite remarkable, as the raw materials giant is actually the focus of Europe’s efforts to achieve greater supply chain autonomy. For example, 98 percent of rare earth magnets, which are needed for electric motors and wind turbines, among other things, come from the People’s Republic.
The study presents packages of measures and specific recommendations for all of these issues.
However, the expansion of innovation and research capacities could pose a challenge, as the EU Raw Materials Act does not yet provide for any additional financial resources, but instead refers to existing funding programs such as Horizon Europe or Global Gateway. Just last week, Bernd Schäfer, CEO of EIT Raw Materials, a consortium for networking industry and research, called for a dedicated fund for the extraction of critical minerals for the European economy (we reported).
More on the CRMA’s goals: In a whitepaper together with Adamas Intelligence and TRADIUM GmbH, we have examined how realistic the EU targets are, especially for rare earths and lithium.
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