Improving the resilience of the complete clean energy supply chains – from raw materials to advanced materials, manufacturing and end-of-life

Organizer

• International Energy Agency's Expert Group on Research and Development (IEA-EGRD)
• European Commission's Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC)
• hosted by the Directorate for Energy, Mobility and Climate of the JRC

The energy transition, which is taking place globally in order to achieve the Paris 1.5 degrees target, is bringing a shift of paradigm for our energy system: the main focus is shifting from the fuel to the technology, the manufacturing of components for the clean energy technologies, and the materials. That's why it is said that the energy transition is a materials transition.

But, clean energy materials, such as lithium, graphite, manganese, nickel and cobalt for our batteries, rare earth metals for our wind turbines generators and electric vehicle motors, etc, are scarce and sometimes heavily concentrated in few countries and regions, creating dependencies and increasing the risk of disruption of the relevant supply chains, putting the progress of the whole energy transition into risk. Against this background, the governments have come up with measures and policy initiatives, such as the Critical Raw Materials Act in the EU and the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, as well as the Critical Materials Strategies in many countries (EU, US, Australia, Japan, etc).

Both the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), have analysed the materials demand and supply bottlenecks of the clean energy technologies' value chains and have offered landmark reports0F1,1F2 that underpin with robust scientific evidence the debate and support the needs of policy-makers and decision-makers internationally. At the same time, it became clear that, in addition to policy, administrative and regulatory measures, research and innovation can and must play a central role in strengthening the resilience of the clean energy supply chains. This Workshop aims exactly at examining the role of Research and Innovation in the clean energy materials and supply chains, debating issues where policy-making requires robust scientific evidence and support, and offering solutions for improving the resilience of the complete supply chains – from raw and refined materials, to their processing, manufacturing of components, assemblies and systems, till their end-of-life and recycling.

The Workshop will bring together renowned experts from across the globe dealing with the clean energy materials and supply chains.

Objectives:

• to provide a better understanding of the state-of-the-art solutions available for managing and increasing the resilience of the clean energy materials supply chains,
• to define the R&I needs for addressing the policy challenges related to the clean energy supply chains, and assess ways towards fulfilling them.

Agenda

Participant Information

Deadline for the registration will be no later than December 6th. Please register here to participate online. Your email address will be then added to the EC's environment (tenant) on TEAMS in order to assure your access to the authentication in the guest portal. Please read the instructions about joining the EC M365 Environment and accessing the virtual room (available on the registration site). The TEAMS link to the virtual room will be shared with you after the registration.

If you would like to inquire about the possibility to attend the workshop in person, please email to JRC-PTT-C7-WORKSHOPS@ec.europa.eu.