The most frequently used word to describe the market situation was – crisis. “Soon access to raw materials of any kind, iron, aluminium and especially to critical elements, is going to be a huge problem,” said Jerzy Lis, rector of the AGH University of Science and Technology, at a forum in Karpacz during a panel discussion on the impact of critical raw materials on security and the economy.
He explained that there is an ongoing struggle for raw materials in the world, some of the disputes are reinforced by the ambitions of parties who want to control raw materials, such as China, India or – in his opinion – NATO, and the crisis is set to escalate because new rare elements are needed for the green energy revolution.
It takes about nine times more minerals, including neodymium, to produce a wind farm with the same capacity as a gas-fired power plant, and about six times more minerals are needed for an electric car than for an internal combustion car, pointed out Tadeusz Gorewoda, director of the Metallurgy Centre at the Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals. China has held the monopoly of rare earth mining for several years, owning up to 70 per cent of the extraction and 90 per cent of the refining. Experts spoke of total domination. Experts also estimate that Europe and the US are 10-15 years behind Asia in terms of investment in elements.
The race is on in the US to enter into contracts for the exploration of what are known as ‘new materials’. The country seeks to reverse the effects of shifting production to China, and the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, signed into law by Joe Biden in 2022, directs massive funds to the exploration and processing of rare earth materials. European companies may try to bid for contracts, said Alexander Kaufman from the Huffington Post.
Experts admitted that the availability of raw materials determines the location of technological investments. ”As long as we do not have a semiconductor industry in Poland, Poland can only sell critical raw materials,” observed Professor Lis, so the lack of these raw materials is not an immediate problem for Poland.
