When it is introduced in the new year, the European Critical Raw Materials Act needs to avoid the temptation of autarky, writes J. Peter Pham. The European Union, like the United States, cannot achieve the strategic objective of more secure access to critical materials by trying to “go it alone”, he argues.
Ambassador J. Peter Pham is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC and previously served as the United States Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and Sahel Regions of Africa.
With the energy supply disruption and price rises from Russia’s war in Ukraine fresh in her mind, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced her 2022 State of the Union address a European Critical Raw Materials Act to ensure that Europe avoids “becoming dependent again, as we did with oil and gas”.
Two months later, at COP27, she announced the doubling of the continent’s renewable energy capacity. The two goals are fundamentally linked.
The entire REPowerEU initiative advanced by the Commission to speed up the transition to renewable energy and end dependence on Russian fossil fuels is predicated on securing prodigious quantities of critical minerals.
A single 3 Megawatt (MW) wind turbine, for example, requires approximately 335 megatons (mt) of steel, an iron alloy, 4.7 mt of copper, and 3 mt of aluminium, in addition to about a ton of the rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium.
And there are the major amounts of copper and other metals required to transmit this energy to where it is needed.
The EU is even more dependent on Xi Jinping’s China for its rare earths (98% according to one Commission report) than it ever was on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for the natural gas it consumed before the war (40% according to a Columbia University study).
When it is introduced in the new year, the European Critical Raw Materials Act needs to avoid the temptation of what classical political scientists termed autarky, which is not only ill-suited to achieving its objectives but sets Europe up for frustration and, ultimately, failure.
The political attractiveness of sourcing these important inputs from within the continent, rather than relying on imports, is clear—although it is worth remembering that all politics is local. Securing public and media support for new mining projects could prove a huge challenge.
An even greater challenge, however, is posed by physics and geology.
An exhaustive 2021 study by the NGO Transport and Environment on the raw material requirements for just the typical electric vehicle (EV) battery with 60 kWh capacity – such as the ones found in Tesla’s Model Y – include more than 180 kg of critical minerals, excluding the battery casing, binder, and other components.
This staggering amount includes approximately 52 kg of graphite, 35 kg of aluminium, 29 kg of nickel, 20 kg each of copper and steel, 10 kg of manganese, 8 kg of cobalt, and 6 kg of lithium.
While a British Geological Survey report last year identified 509 known deposits or occurrences of cobalt in 25 European countries, currently the only European country to produce cobalt ore—and an infinitesimally small quantity at that—is Finland.
For now, the continent remains dependent on imports for its cobalt, 70% of the global production of which is sourced to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, almost all of which undergoes at least intermediate processing in China.
The inescapable reality is that the European Union, like the United States, cannot achieve the strategic objective of more secure access to critical materials by trying to “go it alone”.
The Mineral Security Partnership brings together the EU, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and South Korea—to build secure and sustainable supply chains. This is an important initiative.
Beyond even this circle of advanced, democratic countries, criteria could be developed for partnering with other foreign countries and companies, given the totemic significance of the issue.
A core principle should be to recognise the sometimes subtle, but significant, differences between state-owned enterprises and multinational corporations, as I noted in a report earlier this year.
Cutting out nation-states deemed unacceptable is an understandable political choice – but the West cannot afford to take the same approach to the broader market or the private sector.
There is no purely righteous path, but the task is essential and urgent. A pragmatic approach that will secure access to the critical minerals needed is the only truly sustainable path to Europe’s greener future.
Subscribe now to our newsletter EU Elections Decoded
Source link : https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/opinion/limits-of-europes-drive-for-critical-minerals-autonomy/
Author :
Publish date : 2022-11-24 08:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.