Rare earths have also been used widely in enabling technologies and their main applications include:
– Cars: Electric motors are the most prominent application where rare-earth magnets are used in electric motors that will change the entire automotive engineering field from fossil-fuel-driven vehicles into electric-based engineering.
– Wind generation: The manufacture of the wind turbine generator aligns directly with the EU vision of renewable energies.
– Electronics: Semiconductors and other electrical components mainly use these rare earth elements.
– Dependency: One more aspect for Europe would be diversification of supply chains:
– Low mining and processing capacities: Europe has invariably been a net importer and has not established any infrastructure for the mining and processing of rare earths.
– Chinese dominance: The Chinese have developed quite a strong asymmetric manipulation of rare earths so that no other competing supply chain will have the chance to develop outside China.
– Constraints of mining and processing: The processes of mining and processing rare earths are very intricate and costly, and thus, this would hold a huge disadvantage for any European player when compared to very price competitive Chinese players.
In this regard, the EU has progressed and initiated a lot of different activities:
– *** Critical raw Materials Act***: It aims to reduce dependency on China due to its provisions on domestic sourcing and recycling…