A new Joint Research Centre (JRC) study presented at the 9th Conference of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan), concludes that the EU is vulnerable to supply bottlenecks of some materials needed in wind, photovoltaic and electric vehicles technologies. Such materials are for instance rare earths – neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr) and dysprosium (Dy) – used in permanent magnets for wind and electric vehicles technologies, as well as for graphite (C) required in electric vehicles rechargeable batteries. Moderate supply issues are seen for indium (In), silver (Ag) and silicon (Si) required in the photovoltaic technology as well as cobalt (Co) and lithium (Li) requisite in electric vehicles. In order to tackle resilience to supply shortages, the report suggests to increase EU production of raw materials, to recycle, or to use substitute materials, an option supported by EuCheMS.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/