New environmental, economic and societal requirements in the EU’s transition to a low-carbon and digital economy call for innovative methods, technologies and techniques to be developed and applied in mineral exploration. To unlock the CRM potential in Europe, AGEMERA will conduct local state-of-art geological and geophysical surveys over a total of ~4,700 km2 in order to detailly map CRM resources in 6 EU countries and 1 third country (Zambia). The geophysical field trial surveys will demonstrate three novel non-invasive survey methods (at up to a TRL5) based on remote sensing and related data analysis: 1) passive seismic methods, 2) multi-sensing drone system combining magnetic, radiometric and electromagnetic sensing, and 3) muon-based multidetector density detection system. The project will use data from open-access databases (e.g., European Geological Data Infrastructure, EGDI), the data collected from the field by project geoscientists, and various geophysical survey methods to refine and improve the genetic mineral system models of the various deposit types known to contain lithium, cobalt, molybdenum, vanadium, PGMs, niobium, tantalum, bauxite and REE. The project will introduce the existing guidance for the application of UNFC for mineral resources to the partner countries through stakeholders, courses and public events. The project will survey citizens in the project countries, create a CRM educational package targeting schools and universities, publish an online CRM serious game, organise public events, as well as online news flashes, with the aim to reach 5,000,000 citizens by 2030. The project will create an open-access SoftGIS analysis and database on people’s social, cultural, environmental and economic concerns related to mining and mineral exploration. These data enable the creation of socio-economic potential maps to be used in parallel with the geological potential maps, consequently ensuring a basis for socially accepted and sustainable mining.

The CRM Act, together with other EU policies towards the green and digital objetives of the CE, and the EU current context pose some challenges and needs to the extractive and processing industries: improve and facilitate access to raw materials and reduce EU dependency; increase circularity, ensure recycling into secondary raw materials and recovery from extractive waste; ann also, the mining and processing industry must be sustainable, thus competitive, socially responsible and efficient in terms of cost, reducing energy consumption and gas emissions. BLOOM aims to develop and demonstrate extraction and processing technologies to facilitate exploitation of the primary raw critical raw materials. For this, th ecollaboration with both Ukraine and Canada is envisioned 2 and 3 partners from these countries respectively); clustering activities are envisioned through key partners and a a business case and exploitation strategy. BLOOM will tackle the challenges through its Strategic Objective which is to facilitate exploitation of the primary CRM (minerals and metals only) for the EU to strengthen the EU supply chains, by increasing the efficiency on extraction and processing with a smart and modular solids analysis system consisting on an online mineral liberation analysis, which enables the integration on mining sites of advanced control loops in different stages of the processing, based on ML and AI techniques, or data-driven extraction operations based on accurate mineralogy information from the site. These actions are oriented to lowering the costs of extraction and processing, increasing the financial viability, thus also contributing to making profitable low-grade deposits, giving access to new supplies. BLOOM consortium is composed of a multidisciplinary group of 15 partners, from 4 European countries, 2 from Ukraine, 3 from Canada and 1 from Brazil, one of the resource-richer countries in the world and lead by UPC.

NEXT proposal has been compiled by a pan-European consortium, which consists of 16 partners from leading research institutes (3), academia (3), service providers (5) and industry (5). The members come from 6 EU member states (Fi, FR, DE, MT, ES and SE) and represent the main metal producing regions of Europe, Fennoscncian Shield, Iberian Pyrite Belt and Central European Belt. These economically most important metallogenic belts of the EU have diverse geology with evident potential for different types of new mineral resource. The mineral deposits in these belts are the most feasible sources of critical, high-tech and other economically important metals in the EU. The project consortium has also a vast international collaboration network, e.g. 50% of the Advisory Board members have been invited from outside EU. In addition to the variable geology, the vulnerability of the environment and the glacial sedimentary cover in the Arctic regions of northern Europe, and the thick weathering crust and more densely populated nature of the target areas in the Iberian and Central European belts influence the mineral exploration in different ways. The social conditions in potential benefits and challenges also vary. Therefore the new environmentally sound exploration concepts and technologies will be optimized and tested on diverse mineral deposit types. NEXT will develop new geomodels, novel sensitive exploration technologies and data analysis methods which together are fast, cost-effective, environmentally safe and socially accepted. Methods developed reduce the current high exploration costs and enhance participation of civil society from the start of exploration, raising awareness and trust. Moreover, the reduced environmental impact of the new technologies and better knowledge about the factors influencing social licensing will help promote social acceptance of both exploration and mining and therefore support the further development of Europe´s extractive industry.