GeoERA´s Contribution Towards Resilience in Europe’s Raw Materials Supply Chains

The well-being of society and the interdependencies of national economies depend heavily on reliably functioning supply chains as the COVID-19 pandemic proved this long-known statement in everyone's daily life. None of the supply chains can do without the mostly mineral raw materials. The United Nations sees raw materials as the key component for achieving all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The European Green Deal (COM(2019) 640 final) of the European Union as well as the Paris Agreement cannot be achieved without raw materials. The IPR Global Resources Outlook 2019 [1] foresees an increasing demand for raw materials worldwide regardless of all efforts to further close the raw material cycles. At the same time, the demand for responsible procurement under ethically, socially and ecologically sound conditions is becoming more and more stringent.

The four GeoERA Raw Materials projects EuroLITHOS, FRAME, MINDeSEA and Mintell4EU share expertise, information and focus on European on-shore and off-shore resources as a first step to take our share of responsibility to ensure responsible sourcing from domestic sources [2]. It is among the tasks of the GeoERA raw material projects to know and evaluate in a comparable way the raw materials of the geology under our feet and to visualize these results in accessible databases, maps and publications.

Results will be presented and discussed on the example of selected raw materials that are particularly important for the energy transition to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050.