The European Union is under pressure to secure critical minerals and rare earth elements that are essential for its “green” energy transition.
These mined materials are the building blocks of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels, and the digital technologies behind the EU’s push to net zero by 2050. While copper, cobalt and lithium are considered “critical,” rare earth elements are a class of geological deposits that cover 17 chemically similar metals.
These go into more than 200 high-tech products. Without a stable supply, the EU risks falling short of its economic and environmental goals.
The problem? Everyone else is after the same thing — and the EU is not particularly well endowed with deposits. That means the bloc has to look elsewhere for them, which carries its own share of geopolitical, ecological and societal impacts.
“It’s tricky [for the EU] if the supply is controlled by other countries,” Maarten Koese, a critical minerals researcher at Leiden University, told The Parliament.
Most critical minerals are found in China, and in African and Latin American countries. China is a particular heavyweight in this regard, producing some 60% of the world’s rare earth elements and processing nearly 90% of them. This makes China a strategic chokepoint for global supply chains.
These minerals are prized due to their unique properties. Lithium, for example, powers high-density batteries, cobalt stabilises them, and other rare earth elements enhance the performance of EV motors and wind turbines. These elements are also essential for smartphones and microchips.
EU efforts to secure supply chains
Over the last few years, the EU has launched several initiatives in hopes of securing its supply chains and reducing its dependence on China.
The European Raw Materials Alliance, launched in 2020, aims to boost domestic mining. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) was introduced three years later to further reduce reliance on non-European suppliers, promote recycling and streamline the approval process for new mining projects within the bloc.
Researchers say recycling is key, but you need to have supplies before you can reuse them, and for the EU that “will take quite some time,” Koese said.
The regulatory burden is in part meant to ensure compliance with labour and environmental standards. There is a limit to how many shortcuts a new mining project can take without undermining EU standards.
“The EU has robust regulations,” Brooke Moore, a policy analyst at European Policy Centre, told The Parliament. “These are being challenged by a desire to streamline the process.”
Human rights and ethical concerns
Around 70% of the world’s rare earth elements are mined in areas plagued by violence and instability. In countries in Africa, where much of the world’s cobalt is mined, child labour, dangerous working conditions and human rights violations are rampant.
“They’re not bringing positives to the community. They’re fuelling the ongoing civil war,” Emily Stewart, head of policy and EU relations for Global Witness, a human rights NGO, told The Parliament, referring to mining projects.
A study by Queensland University found that about half of the world’s reserves of these kinds of minerals are located under protected ecosystems. More than half are on or near indigenous lands.
Regardless, the EU relies on minerals from regions with troubled human rights records. In September 2023, for example, the EU signed a deal with Namibia to secure access to rare earth elements, despite the country’s mixed record on labour standards.
Though regulations such as the CRMA call for responsible sourcing, watchdogs say that enforcement is difficult, and mining deals can exacerbate the risk of exploitation. They are also historically sensitive, given that many such agreements involve countries that were once colonies of European empires.
“[These deals] can be seen as a kind of neocolonial practice,” Moore said. “It could really backfire when it comes to looking good compared to China.”
Unlike the EU, China comes to the negotiating table without the colonial baggage in Africa and does not make the same kind of environmental or labour demands on its would-be mining partners.
“We have for too long considered that decarbonising meant relocating outside of the EU, and this was wrong,” Thierry Breton, the former European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, said last year.
Environmental consequences
While these minerals may contribute to a reduced carbon footprint on the end-user side or in a product’s lifecycle, their extraction and processing don’t come without impact. Toxic waste, and air and water pollution are all factors — as well as greenhouse gas emissions, which came to 10% of the global total in 2018 and is likely to rise.
In all of its scenarios, the International Energy Agency sees a boom in demand for critical minerals.
On a more local level, EU-funded cobalt mining in the DRC, for example, has led to deforestation and water contamination. Those downsides help explain why it is difficult to expand domestic mining operations in the EU, despite regulations requiring domestic sourcing to reach at least 10% by 2030.
Mining operations face opposition in many places they try to set up shop. In Portugal, activists have mobilised against lithium mining in the Trás-os-Montes region.
“The EU is putting itself up as a leader in climate change,” Moore said. “At the same time, it’s outsourcing pollution and emissions to third countries.”
True sustainability, she added, is not only about replacing the combustion engine that runs on fossil fuels with a lower-carbon electric battery, but about “reducing our resource consumption.”
This article has been updated due to discrepancies between information cited and supporting links.
