Identifying future availability of secondary raw materials (RIA) -

Expected Outcome

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Improve knowledge base of EU and third country secondary raw materials (potential, resource estimation, production and refining);
• Promote the utilisation of specifications of the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC) to Anthropogenic Resources approved in 2018[1];
• Facilitate and accelerate commercial exploitation development of EU secondary resource recovery projects EU;
• Support identification of the key factors, including socio-economic factors, drivers and barriers affecting development of a recovery project, and enable comparison of different options and projects;
• Develop reports on future trends in raw materials markets. The trends should be linked with change of demand related to the transition to a low-carbon and circular economy;
• Facilitate identification of supply and demand bottlenecks of future secondary raw materials supply;
• Dissemination and exploitation of projects outputs is tailored for EU institutions, Member States and industry dealing with raw materials;

The action is expected to contribute to the implementation of the following actions of the EU action plan on Critical raw materials:[2]

• Develop the EU raw materials intelligence, strategic planning and foresight capacity by 2022;
• Map the potential supply of secondary raw materials from waste and stock in the EU including its regions and help identify viable recovery project for funding by 2022.

Scope

A successful transition to a climate-neutral, circular and digitised EU economy relies heavily on a secure supply of raw materials. In order to strengthen EU autonomy and reduce over-dependency, we must boost domestic sourcing, both for primary and secondary raw materials.

Actions should be based on a common understanding of relevant terms and codes, and develop an understanding of anthropogenic resources and derive the needed aspects for classification of recovery projects and to develop criteria for a transparent, consistent and objective classification, needed to establish a comprehensive resource classification approach.

Actions should acquire new data on secondary raw materials via in situ sampling from different regions across the EU, collect existing data and present in a harmonised UNFC format. The action should build on and advance further the work of UNECE – UNFC expert group on Anthropogenic resources regarding the classification of secondary raw materials and the work of H2020 project PROSUM[3] regarding collection of data and information on secondary raw materials. The action should develop a proposal for EU statistics for secondary raw materials.

The action should focus on the following streams of secondary raw materials, with particular attention to critical raw materials: waste batteries, WEEE, mining waste, slags and ashes, and construction and demolition waste.

All the data and information generated through these actions should be shared in open formats on a free of charge basis with the European Commission, for its own use and for publication.

The action should envisage clustering activities with other relevant selected projects for cross-projects co-operation, consultations and joint activities on cross-cutting issues and share of results as well as participating in joint meetings and communication events. To this end proposals should foresee a dedicated work package and/or task, and earmark the appropriate resources accordingly.

The action should also contribute to improving the awareness of relevant external stakeholders and the general public across the EU and in non-EU countries of project’s partners about the importance of raw materials for society, the challenges related to their supply within the EU and about proposed solutions which could help to improve society's acceptance of and trust in sustainable raw materials production in the EU.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 3-5 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Social Innovation

[1]https://www.unece.org/energywelcome/areas-of-work/unfc-and-sustainable-resource-management/applications/unfc-and-anthropogenic-resources.html

[2]COM (2020) 474

[3]http://www.prosumproject.eu/

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