Mining moves more material each year than all natural terrestrial processes combined, while crushing and refining the extracted ores consumes some 2% of global energy production. The energy transition sharpens this paradox, as replacing fossil infrastructure with renewables demands a many-fold increase in the supply of copper, lithium, rare earth elements and other critical raw materials, which secondary supply cannot deliver on the timescales involved. Europe, notably, has one of the world's longest mining histories, yet limited investment and low public acceptance due to environmental and social costs have left the geology of many districts unexplored by modern methods. This session convenes the technical and conceptual advances needed to explore differently in Europe and worldwide.

We thus invite contributions on non-invasive, low-impact exploration for societally acceptable resource sources: novel geophysical acquisition and inversion, including passive, airborne and drone-borne methods; remote sensing from satellite through UAV to drill-core scales, including hyperspectral imaging and rapid geochemical characterisation; and mineral-systems or knowledge-driven frameworks that turn sparse observations into testable targets.

Innovative approaches to holistic data integration and prospectivity mapping are equally relevant, as a fusion of diverse legacy and new data is needed to generate predictive targets. We especially encourage submissions that take this interdisciplinary approach even further: to integrate societal and environmental licence to operate into target prioritisation, monitoring tools that ensure accountability across the exploration and mining lifecycle, and work identifying overlooked primary and secondary resources in legacy mining areas.