Minerals in 2023
The 20th anniversary issue of the Minerals Bulletin comes in a year of significant change for minerals in Europe. The Covid-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have directly and forcefully confirmed long-standing warnings from the industry about the vulnerability of the stability of the supply of certain raw materials, especially those essential to achieving the goals of the green and digital transition. Europe imports most of these important raw materials from only a few countries in the world.
To mitigate the unacceptable risk that such high dependency poses to the development of advanced technologies, the European Union adopted two important Regulations in 2024, REGULATION (EU) 2024/1252 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL establishing a framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials (CRMA) and REGULATION (EU) 2024/1735 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL establishing a framework of measures to strengthen Europe's net-zero technology manufacturing ecosystem. The Regulations aim to improve the functioning of the internal market by establishing a framework to ensure the Union's access to a secure, resilient and sustainable supply of critical raw materials, including by promoting efficiency and circularity throughout the value chain, and by establishing a framework to ensure access to a secure and sustainable supply of net-zero technologies. The implementation of the Regulations, in particular the CRMA, will stimulate new and large-scale geological research as well as enable the development of potential projects for the extraction and processing of critical minerals in the European Union and in strategic partner countries with high ethical standards. The implementation of both Regulations heralds a boom in the geological, mining and related disciplines in the years and decades to come.
The Geological Survey of Slovenia monitored the drafting of the regulations, especially the CRMA, from the beginning of their preparation and actively participated in the public debate, both independently and through the associations in which it participates. It is also prepared to take on the tasks that the Regulation directly or indirectly imposes on national geological organisations - the vast majority of which are national geological institutes. In addition, GeoZS supports the implementation of the CRMA through a major European project within Horizon Europe - the establishment of the Geological Survey for Europe (GSEU), in which it is responsible, among other things, for the establishment of the EU International Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Resource Management (EU ICE SRM). Although the GSEU programme was prepared and launched before the adoption of the CRMA, it is to a large extent focused on pan-European support for the supply of (critical mineral) raw materials. The crisis in supply chains did not take the profession by surprise and it has been preparing for it for decades, only the (positive) political reaction in the wake of the war in Ukraine came as a (positive) surprise. For example, to support the implementation of the CRMA, the EU ICE SRM has already organised training for UNFC (Train the trainer) experts, who will be able to disseminate the knowledge needed to implement the regulation in their own countries.
It is clear that the green and digital transition and many new carbon-free technologies will not happen without certain raw materials. The need for these raw materials will increase dramatically in the coming years. The projected increase in demand for Pt group metals by 2050 is almost a thousand-fold. There will be no technological progress without new deposits and extraction facilities for these critical raw materials. All of this forms the basis for a renaissance of the geological and mining profession in Europe and a new era in the development of geological research and mining technologies.
The Slovenian and European profession is ready for a renaissance and we look forward to mid-2025, when, as requested by the CRMA, Slovenia and the other Member States will launch national research programmes for the general exploration of critical raw materials and minerals, the carriers for critical raw materials. The programmes are already being prepared in the Member States and will have to be ready by May 2025 at the latest.
Ljubljana, September 2024
Dr. Miloš Bavec
Director of GeoZS
