Critical Raw Materials: Books

As the world accelerates towards a renewable energy transition, the demand for critical raw materials (CRMs) for energy generation, conversion, and storage technologies is seeing a drastic increase. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, this book provides a novel perspective on the discussion about material dependencies of energy technologies. It examines CRMs use in fuel cells, an emerging energy conversion technology, and discusses governance strategies for early-stage fuel cell development to predict and avoid potential issues.

Earth has become a huge mine, with a greater quantity and variety of fundamental mineral resources being extracted year after year. Technology, from electric cars to everyday electrical equipment, consume vast amounts of scarce raw materials. On a planet with limited resources, are these minerals being properly assessed? Will there be enough raw materials to meet the demand of a world population on track to reach 10 billion people? What will be the consequences of accelerated resource depredation? Will the planet one day become 'Thanatia', a resource-exhausted Earth?

Governance of the World's Mineral Resources: bBeyond the Foreseeable Future provides in-depth information on the geological scarcity of mineral resources. The book demonstrates the urgent need to implement sustainable utilization of mineral resources, in order to ensure that these resources will be sufficiently available for future generations too. The availability of resources, especially for modern technologies, is an increasingly important issue.

This open access book summarizes research being pursued within the FENIX project, funded by the EU community under the H2020 programme, the goal of which is to design a new product service paradigm able to promote innovative business models, to open added value to the vessels and to create new market segments. It experiments and validates its approach on three new concepts of added-value specialized vessels able to run requested services for several maritime sectors in the most effective, efficient, economic valuable and eco-friendly way.

The constant increase in the consumption of mineral resources, as well as the growing awareness of their exploitation, is causing deep concern within the scientific community. This concern is justified by the fact that the energy transition will increase the pressure on these resources, as renewable energies require an increased and more diversified quantity of mineral materials. This book presents an overview of the exploitation of these mineral resources, where the natural, regulatory and environmental constraints interfere with economic, financial and geopolitical interests.

Is the shift to renewable energy and digital devices going to free us from severe pollution, material shortages, and military tensions? Rare metals are essential to electric vehicles, fighter jets, wind turbines, and solar panels, and also to our smartphones, computers, tablets, and other everyday connected objects. But consumers know very little about how they are mined and traded, or the environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs of this dependence.

This book serves as a guide to materials researchers and industrial end-users for finding effective approaches to shortages of specialty materials. The lessons in the book are also appropriate to those who use materials and for those involved in manufacturing supply-chain management and industrial design. Instructs the reader on how to select the most effective strategies to deal with materials supply-chain failures.

This book explores a disciplinary matrix for the study of the law and governance concerning mining and minerals from a global perspective. The book considers the key challenges of achieving the goals of Agenda 2030 and the transition to low-carbon economies and the circular economy. The perspective encompasses the multi-faceted and highly complex interaction of multiple fields of international law and policy, soft law and standards, domestic laws and regulations as well as local levels of ordering of social relations. What emerges is a largely neglected, unsystematised and under theorised field of study which lies at the intersection of the global economy, environmental sustainability, human rights and social equity.

The Material Basis of Energy Transitions explores the intersection between critical raw material provision and the energy system. Chapters draw on examples and case studies involving energy technologies (e.g., electric power, transport) and raw material provision (e.g., mining, recycling), and consider these in their regional and global contexts. The book critically discusses issues such as the notion of criticality in the context of a circular economy, approaches for estimating the need for raw materials, certification schemes for raw materials, the role of consumers, and the impact of renewable energy development on resource conflicts. Each chapter deals with a specific issue that characterizes the interdependency between critical raw materials and renewable energies by examining case studies from a particular conceptual perspective.