On Tuesday, March 18th, the Council adopted the regulation to set a framework to ensure a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials (CRM).
Europe aims to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In this context, Rare Earth Elements (REEs) play a key role in both Europe’s economic landscape and its commitment to environmentally sustainable policies. Particularly, the demand for REEs is driven by the production of Permanent Magnets (PMs) containing neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), and dysprosium (Dy) for high energy-efficient electric motors, renewable energy technologies, robotics, as well as aerospace and defence applications. Nevertheless, a significant challenge in the REEs European value chain is the dependency on imports from third countries, notably China. Additionally, the recent European energy crisis has further raised tensions within the EU’s high-tech and green industries.
Given these circumstances, the European Union has labelled REEs as critical raw materials (CRMs) and ranked them among the highest supply risk in all the four lists of CRMs released since 2011. In March 2024, the Council adopted the European Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) to ensure a sustainable green and digital transition by securing a stable and strategic supply of CRMs. The benchmarks set for domestic capacities are at least 10 % for extraction, 40 % for processing, and 25 % for recycling. Furthermore, according to the draft regulation, the Union’s annual consumption of each strategic raw material at any relevant stage of processing should not exceed 65 % sourced from a single third country.
How is SUPREEMO facing this challenge?
The innovative solutions to be developed in the SUPREEMO project will set the first pre-commercial Rare Earth Elements (REEs) production value chain at TRL7 by utilising European primary resources as feedstock with production capacity of 20 tonnes of Rare Earths Alloys annually.
What impact can we expect from our work?
⬆ Increasing the recovery efficiency of critical metals from low-grade carbonatite ores
? Targeting low-cost enabling technologies
♻ Improve the health, safety, social and environmental performance of the operations
Read the European Council release here.
