The European Union has selected 46 new strategic projects across the EU...set to bolster the EU’s supply of critical raw materials, the metals and minerals that underpin everything from electric vehicle batteries to wind turbines and consumer electronics.
The new projects are intended to help the EU hit targets it set for itself for the end of the decade: by 2030 EU capacity should meet at least 10% of the EU’s annual consumption for extraction, 40% for processing and 25% for recycling of critical raw materials. Right now, the EU imports the large majority of many of these materials, leaving European manufacturers exposed to supply disruptions and price swings set largely outside the bloc. Critical raw materials include things like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements, which are hard to substitute in batteries, magnets, and other components central to the clean energy transition and to electronics manufacturing.
Alongside the new projects, EU regulators also finalized updated rules to protect workers from exposure to harmful chemicals by setting new limit values for chemicals used in the battery, steel, chemical and textile industries. Officials estimate the measures should prevent around 1,700 lung cancer cases, since several of the substances involved are linked to long-term respiratory illness among industrial workers.
The timing matters for an industry audience: battery and electronics manufacturers worldwide have spent the past several years trying to diversify where they source critical minerals, partly in response to supply concentration in a small number of countries. A larger European base of extraction, processing, and recycling capacity would give manufacturers on the continent, and their customers elsewhere, an additional source of supply to draw on alongside existing suppliers.
Building new mines, processing plants, and recycling facilities typically takes years, so the practical effect of this week's selections will show up gradually rather than all at once.
Individual projects will now move into permitting and financing stages, a process that in Europe has historically taken several years before new capacity comes online.
What counts as a critical raw material?
The category generally includes materials like lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements that are difficult to substitute in batteries, magnets and other industrial components.
Why is Europe focused on this now?
Manufacturers have been trying to diversify mineral supply chains that are currently concentrated in a small number of countries outside Europe.