The European Union is the third leading country in greenhouse gas emissions and its energy dependence exceeds 50% because it does not have the materials to carry out the Green Transition. This was stated by Fernando Llano Paz, professor at the Universidade da Coruña, in an interview on RTVE.
Llano explained that Europe’s energy independence is based on the production of sustainable electricity with renewable energies. The problem is that materials such as copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium and chromium are lacking in order to build infrastructures, so we depend on third countries such as Chile (supplier of 78% of lithium) or the Congo (supplier of 68% of cobalt), among many others.
This dependence has a clear impact on sustainability, given that some of the suppliers do not have systems for environmental protection in the mining of materials. For this reason, the European Union has prepared the European Raw Materials Act, to ensure that the countries that supply us incorporate environmental care in their agreements.
Read the full report in the interview ‘Material shortages in the EU and green transition‘.