Europe focuses on lithium and rare earths. Exit to the clouds

Announced and expected for months, on March 16 the European Commission introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act, a bill that, as stated in the announcement, aims to “ensure safe and sustainable supply chains for the EU’s green and digital future.” The main goal is to achieve greater internal autonomy in the procurement of those raw materials whose demand, already high, is expected to grow, because they are needed for wind power generation, hydrogen storage and batteries. At the moment, Europe imports about 80% of the basic raw materials it needs and the main supplier is China, from where we buy 93% of our magnesium and 86% of our rare metals.

According to new EU regulations, by 2030 10% of the annual consumption of each critical raw material within the bloc must be extracted and 40% refined there. 15% shall come from recycling. The maximum allowed import percentage for each material is 70%. Aside from the numbers, which may be subject to changes during the approval process, the problem is that the regulation essentially calls for member states to reopen their mines and ramp up extraction. Indeed, the proposal offers faster authorization times and simpler procedures for filing exploration permits.

It’s a beautiful contradiction That in favor of a green transition, we should turn to what a recent report by the Blacksmith Institute says is the second most polluting industry on the planet. In addition to drilling, it involves breaking rock. In addition, a mixture of chemical reagents such as sulfuric acid and nitric acid is used to obtain the desired metal. Treated water comes out contaminated with acids, heavy metals and radioactive elements and often ends up in the environment.

In the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, one-sixth of environmental disputes drawn are related to mining activities. The most promising countries in terms of extraction are Finland and Sweden, where large deposits of rare earths and lithium have been discovered. The main sources of these elements are found in Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, France and Romania.

New European mining season Work resumed well before the bill, sparking protests and mobilizations that in some cases put extraction promoters in a difficult position. In Portugal, the municipal council of Vila Real was able to bring before an administrative judge the English mining giant Savannah Resources, holder of a license to exploit one of the most promising sites, Mina do Barroso, for allegedly invading municipal territory. The extraction of the large Swedish deposit of rare earths Nora Karr is on hold due to opposition from residents and farmers, who in 2016 were granted the withdrawal of the concession by Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court and the submission of a new environmental impact assessment.

The site is located near the Natura 2000 area and above Lake Vattern, Sweden’s deepest and second largest lake, which supplies 250,000 people with fresh water. Spain’s Extremadura region has long been considered a “land of sacrifice” with more than 200 open-pit mines and new extraction projects on the horizon, where lithium has also been found underground.

Anti-mining groups managed to mobilize a large part of the population, in particular in an attempt to stop the authorization of the San José Valdiflores mine, a lithium mine less than two kilometers from the city of Cáceres, whose historical center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are also tremors in Tréguennec, the coastal region of French Brittany, the protected areas area, the migration corridor, and also Lithium.

The desire to diversify the EU’s supplies extends to its borders, through association agreements with the countries of the Western Balkans, particularly Serbia and Albania. The latter is also at an advanced level in the process of joining the European Union and eventual entry into the union would facilitate trade exchange in the country rich in mineral resources.

Eyes on the Bolgiza Vineyard, concession to oligarch Samir Mani. In Serbia, thousands of people have taken to the streets for weeks (among them tennis star Novak Djokovic) against the extraction of lithium at the Jadar site by the Canadian company Rio Tinto, one of the three extraction giants in the world. In announcing the cancellation of all permits, Prime Minister Brnabić accused Rio Tinto of providing communities with insufficient information about the project. This is precisely one of the points at the heart of criticism of the proposed EU law by environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth, under which the document would revoke the rights of communities facing the impact of extraction operations.