As Europe seeks to curb its dependence on China for rare earths, plans to mine the continent’s biggest deposit have hit a roadblock over fears that mining operations could harm endangered beetles, mosses and mushrooms. A two-hour drive southwest of Oslo, in the former mining community of Ulefoss home to 2,000 people, lies the Fensfeltet treasure: an estimated 8.8 million tonnes of rare earths. These elements, used to make magnets crucial to the auto, electronics and defence industries, have been defined by the European Union as critical raw materials.
“You have rare earths in your pocket when you carry a smartphone,” said Tor Espen Simonsen, a local official at Rare Earths Norway, the company that owns the extraction rights. “You’re driving with rare earths when you’re at the wheel of an electric car, and you need rare earths to make defence materiel like F-35 jets,” he added. “Today, European industry imports almost all of the rare earths it needs — 98 percent — from one single country: China,” he added.
“We are therefore in a situation where Europe must procure more of these raw materials on its own,” he said. In its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) aimed at securing Europe’s supply, the EU has set as an objective that at least 10 percent of its needs should be extracted within the bloc by 2030. No rare earth deposits are currently being mined in Europe.
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Due to environmental concerns, Rare Earths Norway has already been forced to push back its schedule. Now it aims to begin mining in the first half of the 2030s.
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