As it rushes to ramp up domestic production amid an intensifying global scramble for essential elements like lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth metals, the European Commission has drawn up a list of mining and processing projects it wants to see up and running by the end of the decade.
“We do not want to replace our dependence on fossil fuels with dependence on raw materials,” Vice-president responsible for industrial strategy Stéphane Séjourné told reporters in Brussels today. “Chinese lithium will not be tomorrow’s Russian gas.”
