The European Green Deal aims to make the EU’s economy sustainable. The transition towards a climate neutral economy is highly resource intensive, and many challenges lie ahead to materialise this Green Deal.

Raw materials are a crucial enabler of the transition to a climate-neutral economy. Indeed, this transition is highly resource intensive and strongly relies on Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) such as cobalt, rare earth elements, tungesten, niobium, tantalum etc.

In this regard, a broad cluster of EU Horizon 2020 projects, combined with several projects funded by development cooperation institutions, teamed up to analyse these challenges during an interactive seminar in the Flemish parliament in Brussels (March 12, 2020), just before the explosion of the Corona crisis. The organisers invited an inter- and transdisciplinary panel of experts to discuss several key issues across the metal supply chain. The policy recommendations put forward by these experts were further debated with the audience.

A full report, including an executive summary, a link to all presentations and the Q&A with the participants, is now available:

https://kuleuven.sim2.be/the-green-transition-challenged-by-the-metal-supply-chain