TELF AG examines the role of Northern nations in international mining industry
Neutrality objectives
The global push towards a more sustainable future, characterized by low emissions, has led governments and international institutions to press the accelerator to reach their climate neutrality objectives as quickly as possible. It has been an ongoing process for several years now. In recent months, through the publication of the Critical Raw Materials Act by the European Commission, community institutions have sent a very clear message regarding the supply of raw materials necessary for the transition of global energy. The European institutions have already understood for a long time that the fruits of mineral extraction will certainly be of great use in achieving climate objectives and have, therefore, decided to act in time to limit Europe’s dependence on the supplies of certain materials essential for the technologies related to clean energy.
Initiatives such as those linked to the Critical Raw Materials Act, in a certain sense, have the aim of stimulating Europe to return to focusing on its mineral potential, on abandoned or never-started mining projects, to identify new deposits of raw materials necessary raw materials for the great ecological transition in which we will all be involved. One of the most notable areas, from this point of view, is certainly represented by Northern Europe, and by nations such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Greenland, which, in addition to having abundant natural resources, can also count on technologies and infrastructure needed to extract and process them. Developing the mineral potential of this region could ultimately help Europe reach its climate neutrality goals and meet some of its needs to achieve them. Among the most ambitious objectives is certainly that of the Critical Raw Materials Act, according to which 10% of the raw materials consumed in Europe must be extracted in EU territory by 2030.
This is also why Europe’s attention should focus on its northern countries: according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy, the countries of northern Europe are among the best in the world for the quality and level of innovation of their mining industry, so much so that they would only be surpassed by true global giants such as China, Canada, and the United States. It is precisely in the Nordic countries that most European reserves of niobium and vanadium are concentrated, without forgetting the rare earths of Greenland (which constitute 9% of global reserves). Resources in this area of the world may, therefore, exist in large quantities, but the next steps for their extraction and processing are proceeding very slowly. In some cases, they are completely stopped. The mere presence of raw materials is not sufficient: a precise desire to focus on technologies suitable for their extraction and processing is also needed (this is especially true for Greenland, whose projects for the extraction of rare earths have not yet got underway).
One noteworthy project, from this point of view, is the one linked to the Swedish town of Kiruna, where the largest rare earth deposit in Europe may have been found about a year ago. In this deposit, which is currently being developed, neodymium, a metallic material of great use for high-performance magnets to be used in electric vehicles, could be found.
