Science4Parliament Podcast – Episode 9 – Geoscience and the Critical Raw Materials Act with Dr Aoife Braiden
SPEAKERS
Denis Naughten, Dr. Aoife Braiden
Denis 00:00
Welcome to the Science4Parliament podcast the first podcast which aims to foster the relationship between science and decision makers and show how research and innovation are vital to the equitable and sustainable functioning of our societies and economies. My name is Dennis Naughten, and I'm your host. This podcast, as you know, helps to highlight the work of innovative people who are trying to bring the work of science and policy closer together. Today, I'm delighted to welcome back Dr. Aoife Braden, geoscientist and research manager with the Geological Survey of Ireland. Aoife you're very welcome back to us today, Aoife has experience in geoscience research, and she has explained to us how she uses this to support policy and legislation in her work, particularly in the whole area of geothermal energy that she spoke about previously. So, during our conversation the last time Aoife, I also found it interesting that you touched on the issue of the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act, and why it is important to us. So I'd like to maybe elaborate on that further. And I know there's you were involved recently during a panel discussion on the Critical Raw Materials Act that you convened at the European Geosciences Union 2024 General Assembly. What went down at that assembly? What is it about these critical raw materials and why are they so important? But before we do that, as you know, I ask all of my guests to pick two conversational lighthearted questions. Now, I already asked you for two numbers the last time which were three and six, and we let you weigh with just one number this time.
Aoife 01:40
Okay, I’ll go for nine.
Denis 01:41
All right, number nine. So, Aoife, can you tell us what are critical raw materials? And why are they so important to our economies?
Aoife 01:50
Okay I might maybe start actually with just raw materials in general. So, just to bring it back for anybody who's not familiar with this space. So generally, we will consider raw materials to be metals, industrial minerals, aggregates, but it can also include things like rubber and wood. So obviously, from our side from geoscientist side, we don't look at the kind of rubber and wood in that area. But if you consider the world around us, and anybody who's listening to this, if you're drinking your coffee, or sitting at your desk, or listening to it on a laptop, or a phone, anything that doesn't grow, comes from the Earth in some way. So it's mined or quarried, it might go through a lot of processing, you might not recognise it while you're sitting on your laptop for that as the raw materials that it is, it's not exactly like something, for example, we would have food tracing. So you can go into a supermarket and you can find a steak. And in Ireland, you might even have a picture of the farmer that it came from. And you can recognise where that came from and what it was and traceability, it's not quite the same with resources. You look at your mobile phone, or the mug you're drinking your coffee from. And those resources have come from somewhere. But it's not very obvious where and often it's lots of different places.
So when we look at raw materials, you can break that down into things like critical raw materials, and what the European Commission are referring to strategic raw materials. So critical raw materials are anything where they are of economic importance, and that there's a high risk of supply, though these are things that are critical to our everyday our economies. And what we're trying to do. Strategic raw materials are a slightly different, slightly subset of that. So these are things that are maybe not as economically important, or the supply risk usually is the one that that varies slightly. So there might be slightly more of them available, but they are strategic. So for example, strategic minerals that we talk about are things that are used for the green transition for space technologies, for digital and then for defense. So there's kind of four areas of strategic materials. So the critical raw materials are something, where in Europe, when we're looking at them, they are yes, of economic importance. And we're, you know, sufficiently worried that the supply into Europe could be an issue or that we are over reliant on maybe one country that's supplying these because all of these things depend on the geology and where they're coming from.
Denis 04:02
And is that usually the case with some of these critical raw materials that maybe there's only one or two sources of them in the world? And as a result of that, that's what really makes them critical, rather than actually the amount of them that's available?
Aoife 04:16
Yes. So critical doesn't mean rare. If that's what you're asking. There are there are things called rare earth elements, which is a category of elements from the periodic table, which is a slightly different thing. But in terms of the critical elements, yes, these are things that, for example, we may be getting our main source could be China, Russia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, there might be something where that area has been mining something for a considerable amount of time. They are the main producer, and maybe very good at it, and they have, you know, economic resources that they have been mining. That's not to say that they those things don't exist elsewhere. It's just we tend to use natural resources based on how easy they are to get. So back to our conversation about geothermal energy. We've exploited the things that are easy to get at, so near the surface. it's the same with critical and in general raw materials. So we're now looking, you know, it may be more complicated to do in Europe or might be slightly more expensive or it might be slightly more controversial because it's a denser populated area than if you were to clear a forest in China and open a large pit mine. So there are different elements that can make a supply critical, and it's often geopolitical as well.
Denis 05:22
Anyway, you discussed this at the recent European Geosciences Union General Assembly, and specifically in the context of this EU Raw Materials Act. So what is the act? What's the purpose behind it? Why were geoscientists discussing it?
Aoife 05:38
All good question. So the Critical Raw Material's Act came into force only last month, officially. So this is something the European Commission developed. Again, looking at this idea of critical and strategic materials, what we're trying to do in Europe, more responsible resourcing, less reliance on places that we are maybe not as happy to take resources from. So there's kind of four main areas that they're looking at. So one is strengthening all areas of the value chain, that one of the main kind of priorities, they're also looking at diversifying imports that we're not taking all our cobalt from the Congo, which is what is happening at the moment. We also want to improve the monitoring and mitigation of that disruption. So if there is, the same as we saw with our gas supplies, you know, if there is, some political conflict somewhere in the world, it can upset and disrupt supply chains. And so we need to monitor those more carefully need to understand what our own reserves are in Europe, where they are, how easy they are to get out, what's the payoff of those, and then also looking at circularity and sustainability. So this isn't all about taking new resources out of the ground. It's about the resources that we do need to take out, doing it responsibly, doing it as cleanly as we can, doing it in sustainable ways. And that can often mean things like low carbon, you know, you're not shipping things around the world, or you're using very modern technologies to take things to the processing parts, for example, and also looking at what can we replace? So if there's something that we're taking out that is particularly difficult, dangerous, the processing is dangerous? Can we replace that with something else? So it's often about new technologies working in harmony.
So the conversation that we had, the panel discussion that we had at the meeting, the reason we had it from the geoscience point of view is that a lot of the processes involved in this requires geoscientists. So for example, if you're looking at exploring for new resources, if you're looking at how do you get those out of the ground? Where do you find them? How do you process them? So that would often be say, the geochemical side and looking at working with the chemists, what do you do with those. So working with the technology people, there's a lot of modelling involved, whether that's economic modelling, or modelling of the resources or trying to work out what your potential resource and reserves are. And one of the interesting things that came up on the discussion actually, was the range of expertise that we're going to need to address this and to really implement this new act. So on the panel, we had somebody from European Commission, we had the head of the French Geological Survey and the British Geological Survey, and then a researcher from Germany who's working in this space. Her work overlaps a little bit with the geothermal space as well. And a lot of the discussion was really trying to figure out how can we as geoscientists help support the implementation of this act. The act is quite broad, so it involves all sorts of policy areas into kind of social sciences and looking at what the industry will consider to be a social licence, what public will consider to be, you know, kind of social acceptance or support for development of these kinds of projects in the local area. People often think that it's straightforward as not in my backyard. But it's not, it's a lot more complex than that. And as scientists, we often have this idea that if we just explain what we want to do better, it will all be fine, everybody will agree with us. And that's not the case.
Denis 08:50
No, can often be not the case at all.
Aoife 08:53
No, no, it's not. And, eh, because there's a lot of other complex things that come into it around trust and risk and how people perceive risk and pay off. And yes, they might like a project open near them that they their family can be employed. But what's that going to do to the environment? And so it's yeah, it can get very complex area. And we've worked with some neuroscientists in that space as well. So the whole area and what we're trying to do as geoscientists will require a lot more interdisciplinary research and a lot more interaction with economists, social scientists, behavioural scientists, policy people and policymaking side working with the whole political system. And it's not just about politicians, it's not just about convincing politicians is a good idea. Because even if a politician or a minister says this is a great idea, go for it, that then has to be implemented at the next level down and that political structure and that permanent policy structure that's in the background. And so it's a lot about working with our colleagues in the policy space to say, well, as geoscientists, here's information we can give you we can help you work out the kinds of resources that we need to implement things.
Denis 09:58
And of course, it's not just the Minister because the Minister can make a decision, but the Minister has to get that legislation passed through Parliament, he needs money to implement that, that requires a vote in Parliament. And politicians and Parliament and the public have a quite similar mindset. So it's about maybe presenting issues in a different way. And not just in terms of the impact that it's having in the communities that are where the mining is taking place. But that mining may be taking place in other parts of the world. But countries in Europe may have concerns about the sustainable sourcing of those, the ethical challenges and issues in relation to that as well.
Aoife 10:39
Yeah, exactly and I mean, we can do it. And you know, I think often the stories of people hear are often the big kind of disaster stories. There are, you know, a tailings breach or a collapse in a mine or miners caught in Chile, that kind of thing. You know, they're the ones that make the headlines. But what doesn't make the headlines is, you know, the fourth largest producer of zinc in Europe, which is in Co Meath. So I think we hear the disaster stories. And if you talk to most people, and you ask them, what's your picture in your head, if I say mining, what do you picture and they picture a giant hole in the ground, or a big tailings dam or forest being cleared? It doesn't have to be that way. That's the cheap way. And that's the way it's been done. And this goes back to my point earlier on, about maybe this is how we, you know, access the resources so far, because that was easy or politically easy, or technically easy. We need to now make decisions about well, what's going to be the playoff if we want all these technologies that we see, we're looking for in green transition and wind farms and solar farms. And, you know, we're not trying to take things out of the ground to use them frivolously just because we can. We're trying to find resources so that we can build wind turbines, we can reduce our carbon emissions, we can have more efficient technologies. And that's the tricky part because they're not the pay off. Because when you're talking to someone you say, Okay, well, would you like us to have more wind technology or wind clean energy? Okay, fine. Do you realise that that means taking resources that are not in the system to be recycled. So these are things that we never used before. These are things that we're using for new technologies that we can't recycle. We're recycling as much as we can, we can do more. And that is a key part of the Critical Raw Materials Act as well. And substitution. So if we still need some of those resources, then we need to think about how we're going to do this.
Denis 11:27
Now before we move on to that, coming back to the question. So, you picked question nine. And that is, what would your dream holiday destination be?
Aoife 12:31
Oh, this is, I know, this is not, maybe not very, what’s the word? Creative. But there's a little beach, that I'm not going to share, in Connemara. And my caravan, just over the sand dune, on the beach, maybe some warm weather, would be really nice to go with it. But yeah, looking back over to Mayo, perfect.!
Denis 12:50
So a small little bit of global warming, but not too much.
Aoife 12:55
Just a good day. It doesn’t have to be every day. I'm not I'm not built for the sun. So yeah, just just warm.
Denis 13:00
It's nice, nice to see that your dream destination would be the West of Ireland. And I'd have have a bias in relation to that. So coming back to this issue in relation to these critical raw materials and know that the European Union is now saying we need to do more in terms of recycling, those materials that are already in circulation, at present, or trying to minimise the use of some of these critical materials by getting other alternatives. But leaving that aside, the reality is we're still going to have to mine virgin materials to a far greater extent over the next five years than we probably have in the last 50 In terms of this green transition and the whole digital economy the way it's going. Now at the same time, and I suggested a minute ago in relation to climate change. But because of climate change, we're being told that by 2030, there's going to be 40%, less fresh water available globally. Now as you know, mineral based activities and mining is highly water intensive. So in terms of how the European Union is looking at the security of supply and challenges, are they looking at issues like water availability, and not just some of these geopolitical issues?
Aoife 14:16
Yeah, so those different parts of the Critical Raw Materials Act, so some of them are very, I suppose straightforward at looking at things like value chains and the business and the economics end of it. There's also a rollout of a whole load of research areas that are aimed at supporting all of those areas where the Raw Materials Act, and that is largely to do with more efficient production and processing better technologies, automation, reducing carbon footprint of the mines themselves, and any kind of related quarrying activities.
So there's a lot of money being invested through different parts of things like Horizon, Europe and different parts of the European funding programme. So some of them, for example, is funding that directly to companies, small SMEs, small, medium and large companies as well for things like demonstration and testing of new technologies that are a lot more efficient. So water that they're using, for example, in the mind, they will often clean and recycle those. And that's actually the water usage is probably not the largest issue that they're dealing with, actually, because a lot of that can be dealt with on site. And what they would often have various sediment ponds and can clean water on site and reuse and recycle it water is probably one of the easier things that we can actually recycle for other technologies, things like more efficient drilling, more efficient testing, so that you're not taking out as much rock. So these are often things where you're actually testing as you go, traditionally, you would take samples, take it away to the lab carry on with your excavation and mining. And it's all, it was all quite slow, there's a lot of technology is now being developed to do a lot of that analysis on site. So, everything is more efficient, you're taking out less, ore for what you need, the processing is becoming more efficient. Things are happening on site, which means you're not moving it. So the carbon footprint of everything that you're moving around is a lot lower, which is a, you know, more of the targets.
But yeah, so it's a lot of, for example, academic research, overlapping into the mining companies that are in this space. And actually, lots of new mining and mining technology companies that are being spun out of research centres. So, this is where researchers are seeing, researchers are seeing the opportunity to develop a piece of kit or an analytical tool maybe or software or AI. In fact, machine learning and artificial intelligence is now becoming a big thing in these areas, because it can handle so much data quickly, that you're actually making the whole process much more efficient on site. So, there's lots of areas that the Commission are investing in either pure research or kind of demonstration and innovation and o the company, industry end of it, where they're testing all these tools and really trying to reduce carbon footprint, but also time resources. Yeah, there's some big, big challenges, but big steps being made.
Denis 16:53
Yeah. But it's interesting, then in terms of what you're talking about in relation to this particular act coming from Europe in that it's a very far-reaching comprehensive act, that it's not just looking at the critical raw materials, and looking at it from a European perspective. But it's also looking at the source countries in terms of the impact there from a climate change and environmental perspective, but also in terms of the impact in the communities involved, which is quite unusual in that it is very unusual to see a piece of legislation that is so comprehensive dealing with a multi stranded approach. And it very much ties in with the whole objectives under the Sustainable Development Goals, you know, to take a whole of government approach. And how do you see in a small administration like Ireland, which is relatively easy to implement this because administrations are small, but there's going to be a lot of government departments involved in this. So you're going to have the Housing Department in terms of water, you're going to have the Planning Department, you're going to have the Department of Foreign Affairs, you're going to have the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, as well as the Department dealing with natural resources and climate change. Like this is a far-reaching piece of legislation, which will require a whole of government approach. How do you think legislators and governments are going to be able to address that particular challenge of dealing with such a multifaceted piece of legislation?
Aoife 18:25
Yes, this is where I claim to be a geoscientist and you're a politician, and you have all these answers. But you are right, and it is far reaching, but I think in a positive way. I don't think it's so big and so far-reaching as to be a problem. So what's happening already, for example, is the meeting that we had in Vienna was focused on what the geoscience community can do to support this at a national level, then what I do is I can take those conversations and talk to, for example, my colleagues in the geoscience policy division in our department, which is dealing with natural resources and environment, climate and communications, and energy and other things in there as well, that will also be part of it. But as representative or as somebody working with the Geological Survey, I can also deal with the department that's dealing with further and higher education. So, on the research side, who are heavily embedded into the European programmes and influencing calls that are coming from there, and I can, we can work on projects in international and multidisciplinary projects from that perspective. So, I think maybe back to what I had mentioned before, and the geothermal aside, the role of the likes of geological surveys here are going to be critical, because we're kind of sitting in that space in between where we can provide the technical information and advice to our colleagues that are dealing with the legislation and the regulation that will need to go with this.
But we're also developing new research projects that will keep all of that up to date, particularly on the monitoring. So one of the requirements under the legislation or under the act is to do a national inventory. So the European Union Commission, were not satisfied that countries in Europe are really doing enough to understand what resources they have here because a bit too easy for us to import everything. So, what they've done is they have set a requirement that each country has to do full inventory. Now, some countries will be ahead of that. And we've had a geological survey since 1845. And we know quite a bit about our subsurface. But there is always more to learn. And we have world experts in some of the particular rocks that we have and the types of mines that we have in Ireland. And that's certainly something that we can share internationally, and vice versa. And something like the Geological Survey has a critical role in that when you're talking about working with the other departments who we already do a lot of work with. So for example, on things like groundwater or geothermal energy, we're already working with other departments across the board, and other agencies. So for example, we would work very closely with the Environmental Protection Agency, who will be critical in this as well, because they will have various requirements for any kind of mine, and anything that needs to be satisfied under planning and environmental regulation. So I think there, I think there's lots of expertise there.
I think the critical thing would be about how do you coordinate that? And how do you sufficiently resource that so that it's really done effectively? What you don't want is that it's not sufficiently resourced at a point where you have lots of different departments doing things and then not quite aware of what everybody else is doing. And that's always a risk with these things. Where, you know, a job is given to a department and say, okay, here somebody go away and look at this. So I'd like to think that the Geological Survey can help with that. Sometimes we can only help to a certain point. And then we, you know, we hand it across the desk and say, okay, this is now on yours. But maybe that's okay, too. We need to know our boundaries. We're not, we're not experts in everything. We're happy looking underground.
Denis 21:35
Listen, Aoife. Thanks for that. And thanks for the insight into the new Critical Raw Materials Act, which I think could be potentially a template for other pieces of legislation, because of the comprehensive approach which has been taken in relation to it. I going to take you finally to ask you to take a step back and ask you a broader question. And that is, that if there was something that you discovered in your work that you think could make a real difference, or are potentially cause a problem, how would you bring it to the attention of the decision makers, the ministers or parliament? How would you go about that?
Aoife 22:14
So I suppose it depends a little bit on what it is. I think one of the issues maybe that we've had in Ireland recently, and it is a good and a bad thing, is that we have a lot of new people coming into the public sector and the civil service, particularly in areas like climate and energy. And because they're coming in, often as non-technical experts, it's about trying to, not necessarily, you know, bring them up to speed in the technical parts, but that we interact with them. And we say, well, this is who we are, what we do, and how we do it as Geological Survey, you know, and you'd like to think that the other agencies are doing the same thing. So depending on what the issue is, we would try and deal with our colleagues either in our own department or other departments. At the kind of the policy level, everybody is overstretched at the moment. And actually, probably the biggest difficulty we have is, you know, sometimes knocking on the door and saying, no, this is really important. And they're going yeah but get in the queue. You know, there's, there's another six people behind you knocking on the door telling me that it's important because they might have various different briefs. It can be tricky to get that hook, to get that first, that first person to really bite. I suppose it maybe does I won’t say over rely, but it does sometimes require a bit of personal interest maybe or some something that somebody says, yeah, no, this is this is worthwhile.
It's also on us to explain ourselves, That’s one of the things sometimes that, you know, we have to stop and think. Okay, well, as a geoscientist, if I'm talking to somebody in the policy space, I need to bear in mind that a) they're not an expert. So I can't go in talking jargon and saying but this is really obvious, because it's not obvious. And also, they have different priorities. And this is something that we learned from working with industry. Industry often works at a faster pace than academic researchers, for example. On the policy side, it is not necessarily that the pace is different, but the priority is different. And they're trying to keep a lot of people happy. We go in with a specific thing. And we say, but this is really important. You need to do what we what we're telling you to do. And they go yeah, yeah, yeah okay. Yeah, come back to you. So it can be tricky. I will say, stubbornness has got me very far. You kind of have to, if it’s something that you really feel strongly about, or you have evidence for, you know, what's coming, you just have to keep knocking on the door and either somebody else will answer the door or somebody will say, okay, I have time for you. Now, I have space for you now or now it fits. And sometimes it's about timing, because sometimes it will be a piece of legislation or something coming from Europe that it fits into, in this case, the Critical Raw Materials Act. We've been building up the expertise for a very long time. And we can say here, we're ready to help you now, we have a lot of what you need. And in fact, in Europe, we're well ahead of some of our counterparts. You know, it has a really strong geoscience community here.
Denis 24:50
So that's very interesting, because I think what you have said is very relevant to engaging with policymakers as well. And I think that our decision makers I should say, as well, be they either ministers or members of parliament, because a lot of the time it’s timing, a lot of the time, it's about how you actually explain yourself. And I would call it persistence rather than stubbornness. And it is, you're correct, you know, even if you get knocked back once, that shouldn't mean that you shouldn't try it again and again until you actually get heard. But Aoife really, I want to thank you for your time and for contributing for the second time to the Science4Parliament podcast, giving us your perspective on things in the geoscience field. And as always, listeners if you have any questions or queries, you can email me at denis.naughten@oireachtas.ie, and you can listen to all of the episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So until the next time, thanks for listening
