Abstract
Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, countries worldwide agreed
in the Paris agreement to keep global warming below 2°C compared to the
pre-industrial era, ideally below 1.5°C. The EU set out the goal to
reach carbon neutrality by 2050 - a goal for which the energy sector
will play a central role, as the production and use of energy is
responsible for more than 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. To
transition to low carbon energy production, photovoltaic and wind
turbines, coupled with energy conversion technologies such as
electrolysers, fuel cells, and batteries, are believed to be key
solutions. But these technologies require substantial amounts of scarce
raw materials with EU import dependency and environmental and social
problems connected to extraction and refining. The vulnerability of the
EU energy sector became apparent in 2022 at the example of its
dependency on Russian oil and gas. The supply chain for clean energy
technologies could be equally vulnerable and jeopardise the achievement
of EU climate targets.
A plethora of studies dealing with resource scarcity has been performed.
These studies, however, differ in their results regarding the most
critical materials and often only provide vague recommendations on how
to increase the resilience of the production and supply chains. Hence,
it is of interest to synthesize the findings of major studies from
renowned institutions, identify commonalities as well as differences,
filter out areas with need for immediate action and create an overview
of critical materials in climate technologies.