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The role of critical raw materials in the energy transition Stampa E-mail

The role of critical raw materials
in the energy transition

di Alicia Mignone


The future of European competitiveness report and the UN Guiding Principles present a complementary vision of the importance of critical raw materials in the decarbonization process and the multiple challenges to be addressed

The importance of critical raw materials in the decarbonization process is not a new issue in the clean energy domain even though their role has been strengthened recently in several reports following different approaches. First, the report on the future of European competitiveness – The future of European competitiveness – released on September 9th by Mario Draghi.

Three areas of action have been indicated: closing the innovation gap with the US and China; elaborating a joint plan for decarbonization and competitiveness; and increasing security and reducing dependencies. Within the third area, Europe is particularly exposed because relies on a handful of suppliers for critical raw materials, especially China, even as global demand for those materials is exploding owing to the clean energy transition.

A few days later, on 11 September 2024, the UN Secretary-General, considering that the demand for minerals critical to clean energy technologies expected to almost triple by 2030, issued a set of recommendations and guiding principles for governments, industry and other stakeholders to ensure the opportunities of the global energy transition are pursued with equity, justice and sustainability. Extensive work has been and is being done by the IEA, both in the technology reports, for example Demand for critical raw materials in Electrical Vehicles; Global Supply Chains of EV Batteries and others; as well as in the Outlooks, Critical Minerals Market Reviews and Sustainable and Responsible Critical Mineral Supply Chains.

IRENA has dealt with issue through the creation of the Collaborative Framework on the Critical Materials for the Energy Transition launched in March 2022 and followed by the meetings of three working groups:
1. Observatory for Critical Materials and Minerals on data collection to help understand scarcity and potential supply shortages.
2. De-risking Critical Materials and Minerals Supply aiming at developing and applying strategies to de-risk supply.
3. ESG for Critical Materials and Minerals Supply pointing at developing strategies to raise acceptance for new mining projects.

An interesting approach has been adopted in the report released in August 2024 by McKinsey Global Institute in collaboration with its associated firms (The hard stuff: Navigating the physical realities of the energy transition). It consists in the identification of 25 physical challenges, within the seven domains of the energy system, that would need to be addressed to progress the transition.

The present paper presents the main points of the chapter on CRMs of the future of European competitiveness report as well as the UN Guiding Principles and actionable recommendations.[...]

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