Niobium both are essential components for the production of high-tech electric Last Database batteries, as capacitors and superconductors, imported respectively in 78% from Chile and 85% from Brazil4. Nor can we lose sight of the Last Database weight of copper, which largely covers Chile, Bolivia and Peru, or bauxite and iron ore in the case of Brazil. In turn, European countries are also suppliers of critical raw materials, such as strontium (in Spain) or hafnium (in France), as well as cobalt, bauxite, beryllium, bismuth, gallium, germanium, indium or borate, added to Potential Last Database deposits detected through the Copernicus program.
To the shortage Last Database of suppliers and sources, it should be added that the demand for these raw materials is going to increase in the coming decades, as in the case of lithium, whose estimates are that it could be multiplied practically by ten, going from 43,000 tons in 2017 to 415,000 tons in 2050. For this reason, it is understood that critical Last Database raw materials may be subject to possible tensions and shortages in the coming years and, at the same time, represent an opportunity for the countries that hoard them, since, if Last Database they can industrialize these sectors and provide them.
With greater added Last Database value, could benefit from the transitions underway. As the eu has expressed in different documents on the matter, the ideal is that there is no dependence on any country or supplier of more than 33%, and therefore, in addition to launching an Last Database Action Plan on critical raw materials and reviewing its industrial strategy –approved prior to the pandemic and revised as a result of the shortcomings observed–, has tried to identify in which areas there are greater risks, and with which countries, in addition to Last Database determining the key sectors and axes. Regarding the latter, as the European Commission has made.