THE CONTEXT
WHAT ARE CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS? (CRMs)
Raw materials are crucial to Europe’s economy and essential to maintaining and improving our quality of life. Securing reliable and unhindered access to certain raw materials is a growing concern within the EU and across the globe. To address this challenge, the European Commission has created a list of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs). CRMs combine a high economic importance to the EU with a high risk associated with their supply. Examples of CRMs include rare earth elements, cobalt and niobium.
Periodically, the European Commission publishes a list of CRMs based on a criticality assessment at EU level on a wide range of raw materials. The first list, published in 2010, contained 14 CRMs. The revised list published in 2014 included additional CRMs reaching a total of 20 CRMS. The next list is expected to be published by mid-2017.
The list of CRMs should help:
CRM TABLE 2017
Antimony | Baryte | Beryllium | Bismuth | Borate | Cobalt |
Coking coal | Fluospar | Gallium | Germanium | Hafnium | Helium |
Indium | Magnesium | Natural Graphite | Natural Rubber | Niobium | Phosphate Rock |
Phosphorus | Scandium | Silicon metal | Tantalum | Tungsten | Vanadium |
PGMs | HREE | LREE |
Since the establishment of the Raw Material Initiative by the European Commission and the publication of the first list of Critical Raw Materials, many European projects have addressed (part of) their value chains and several initiatives have contributed to gather (part of) the community into clusters and associations. In parallel, this has led to the generation of significant knowledge, which has been disseminated in a great number of documents.
Many databases have also been developed to help gather this information, but they have sometimes duplicated exsiting work. Past, ongoing and recent networks and projects such as ERECON, CRM_InnoNet, MSP-REFRAM, but also Minerals4eu, MICA, MIN-GUIDE, PROSUM, Smart Ground, INTRAW, cycLED, etc., have produced several in-depth studies that have created a good level of baseline information on several CRMs. A few R&D&I actions also address some specific steps of the value chains of CRMs (FAME, Optim’ore, IntMet, CloseWeee, REE4EU, Infinity, INREP).
In addition, several associations have contributed to structuring the community, covering nearly all of the fields related to raw materials and including CRMs in particular. The European Commission itself has initiated several activities including the further development of the Raw Materials Information System to facilitate its needs with regards to the European Union Knowledge Base on Raw Materials with links to the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials and to the European Innovation and Technologies Knowledge&Innovation Communities (EIT – KICs), amongst others.
Latest news
Events
Presentations from the 3rd EU critical raw materials event now available!
It was a good opportunity for the raw materials community to
The 3rd edition of SCRREEN’s Critical Raw Materials event is now open for registration
The 3rd edition of the Critical Raw Materials event will be
SCRREEN WEBINARS: Current situation of the use and substitutability of CRMs
Background Raw materials are crucial to Europe’s economy and
3rd International Critical Metals Conference
The 3rd International Critical Metals Conference, organized by
CRM Day 2019
The Critical Raw Materials Alliance is happy to announce
Registration now open: DEMETER concluding symposium
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Registrations are open for PROMETIA’s 5th Scientific Seminar!
This year’s PROMETIA Scientific Seminar will be held on 13-14
Register for the 2ND ANNUAL CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS EVENT
The second event, aptly named ‘CRM in our everyday
Canada gets to kow about the SCRREEN project at Extraction 2018!
This event is organized by the Metallurgical and Materials
CEB 2018: Circular Economy of Batteries Production and Recycling
CEB2018 covers topics such as raw materials, electrode