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EU mas­ter plan for raw mater­i­als: innov­a­tion is the key

07.10.2013
In response, the High Level Steer­ing Group of the European Innov­a­tion Part­ner­ship (EIP) on Raw Mater­i­als released a Stra­tegic Imple­ment­a­tion Plan (SIP) describ­ing how we can act to ensure a sus­tain­able sup­ply of raw mater­i­als to the European eco­nomy and make Europe a world lead­er in raw mater­i­als explor­a­tion, extrac­tion, pro­cessing, recyc­ling and sub­sti­tu­tion by 2020. The SIP out­lines detailed actions which the parties involved — EU coun­tries, com­pan­ies, research­ers and NGOs – can use to foster tech­no­lo­gic­al and non-tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tion in our raw mater­i­als value chain, as well as in the inter­na­tion­al arena. These include a wide range of ini­ti­at­ives such as new cost-effect­ive explor­a­tion con­cepts and tech­no­lo­gies, bet­ter recov­ery and recyc­ling of demoli­tion waste and find­ing sub­sti­tutes for crit­ic­al raw mater­i­als such as the indi­um used in touch screen tech­no­lo­gies. European Com­mis­sion Vice-Pres­id­ent Ant­o­nio Tajani, respons­ible for Industry and Entre­pren­eur­ship and a lead­er of the High Level Steer­ing Group, com­men­ted: ​“Innov­a­tion in raw mater­i­als – be it in min­ing, pro­cessing, recyc­ling, or sub­sti­tu­tion – holds the key to future growth and jobs. With today’s pro­pos­al we under­line that Europe is cap­able of address­ing these import­ant chal­lenges, draw­ing on our innov­at­ive EU research cap­ab­il­it­ies, as bolstered by Hori­zon 2020. This will help our industry both cre­ate jobs and pro­tect the envir­on­ment.” In order to secure a sus­tain­able sup­ply of raw mater­i­als, Europe is con­fron­ted with a num­ber of chal­lenges along the entire raw mater­i­als value chain — explor­a­tion, extrac­tion, processing/​refining, recyc­ling as well as sub­sti­tu­tion. The SIP aims to address all actions neces­sary to achieve the object­ives and tar­gets, includ­ing research and devel­op­ment along the value chain, raw mater­i­als know­ledge, exchange of best prac­tices, revi­sion of selec­ted legis­la­tions, licens­ing steps, stand­ard­isa­tion, and policy dia­logues. Con­crete tar­gets of the SIP include the launch of up to 10 pilot pro­jects to pro­mote tech­no­lo­gies for the pro­duc­tion of primary and sec­ond­ary raw mater­i­als, to find sub­sti­tutes for at least three applic­a­tions of crit­ic­al and scarce raw mater­i­als as well as to cre­ate bet­ter frame­work con­di­tions for raw mater­i­als in Europe. The SIP also lists actions to improve Europe’s waste man­age­ment frame­work con­di­tions and excel­lence, and to rein­force EU know­ledge, skills and raw mater­i­als flows; by devel­op­ing an EU Raw Mater­i­als Know­ledge Base and poten­tially set­ting up a EIT Know­ledge and Innov­a­tion Com­munity (KIC). Actions are also pro­posed to sup­port an inter­na­tion­al co-oper­a­tion strategy, at bilat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al level. Some examples of ini­ti­at­ives pro­posed with­in the 24 action areas pro­posed by the SIP include:
  • New cost-effect­ive explor­a­tion con­cepts and tech­no­lo­gies provid­ing high qual­ity data and inform­a­tion, includ­ing high res­ol­u­tion 3D geo-data at 150‑4000 meters depth.
  • Devel­op­ing solu­tions for a bet­ter recov­ery and recyc­ling of con­struc­tion and demoli­tion waste, par­tic­u­larly in the most prom­ising tar­gets, such decon­struc­tion of non-res­id­en­tial buildings.
  • the sub­sti­tu­tion of indi­um in trans­par­ent con­duct­ive lay­ers, such as those used in touch screen devices, flex­ible elec­tron­ics, sol­ar energy and OLED light­ing (organ­ic light-emit­ting diode used to cre­ate digit­al dis­plays in devices such as tele­vi­sion screens, com­puter mon­it­ors, port­able sys­tems such as mobile phones, hand­held games con­soles and PDAs)

Next steps

A pub­lic Call for Com­mit­ments to be issued at the end of Octo­ber 2013 will allow all poten­tial stake­hold­ers to express their con­crete inten­tion to con­trib­ute to the imple­ment­a­tion of the SIP. A Com­mu­nic­a­tion will fol­low in 2014, to explain how the European Com­mis­sion, Mem­ber States, industry and aca­demia intend to imple­ment the SIP.

Back­ground

European Innov­a­tion Part­ner­ships (EIP) were launched under Innov­a­tion Uni­on to accel­er­ate the mar­ket take up of innov­a­tions address­ing key chal­lenges. The EIP on Raw Mater­i­als’ object­ive is to reduce raw mater­i­als import depend­ency by improv­ing sup­ply con­di­tions from the EU and out­side and provid­ing resource effi­ciency and altern­at­ives in sup­ply. It also aims to bring Europe to the fore­front in raw mater­i­als sec­tors while also mit­ig­at­ing their neg­at­ive envir­on­ment­al and social impacts. It is import­ant that we move from today’s lin­ear eco­nomy, where we mine, man­u­fac­ture, use and throw away, towards a more ​“cir­cu­lar eco­nomy”, where one industry’s waste becomes another­’s raw mater­i­al. Build­ing such a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy will be essen­tial to EU indus­tri­al com­pet­it­ive­ness and resi­li­ence in a world of increas­ing com­pet­i­tion for scarce resources. The EIP will play an import­ant role in achiev­ing this trans­ition and will provide valu­able les­sons on how to boost recyc­ling and re-use of valu­able mater­i­als for the integ­rated ​“resource effi­ciency & waste policy review pack­age” which the Com­mis­sion will present in 2014. The EIP will also sup­port the devel­op­ment of prac­tic­al ways to reduce the impact of min­ing activ­it­ies on the envir­on­ment. Draw­ing togeth­er EU coun­tries, com­pan­ies, research­ers and NGOs, it ulti­mately aims to con­trib­ute to the object­ive to increase the share of industry to 20% of the EU’s GDP by 2020 as well as the object­ives of the flag­ship ini­ti­at­ives ​‘Innov­a­tion Uni­on’ and ​‘Resource Effi­cient Europe’. The Stra­tegic Imple­ment­a­tion Plan is avail­able for down­load aside. Source: European Commission
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