Fachartikel 2023

German politics on raw materials aims to influence the mineral resources sector in the long term, from the extraction to the consumption of mineral resources, with the help of strategy papers, information documents, funding programs, regulations and laws. However, for many years now, German raw material politics has not managed to present strategies and demonstrate successes that convince all stakeholders. ...

More than 100 experts met from 27th to 29th September 2023 for the conference “Environment, Energy and Raw Materials – A Turning Point in Energy and Raw Material Supply. Opportunities for the meadow industry”. It took place at the RWTH Aachen University, Aachen/Germany, and at the Energeticon in Alsdorf. The German Mining Association and the RWTH Institute for Mining, Mining Damage ...

Possible government activities aimed at securing the supplies of raw materials have lately come under scrutiny. A company levy is the obvious means of choice to finance any such actions. Would a charge of this nature be compatible with fundamental rights and the fiscal constitution? This article is based on an expert assessment prepared by the author for the Federal ...

Mining companies are the enablers of the energy transition and green future technologies, as they provide the materials urgently needed for these in increasing quantities and on a broader scale. The mining sector is a key industry with regard to many sustainability issues and is therefore confronted with complex demands from its stakeholders. Pressure is arising in particular from stricter ...

The mining industry faces a complex and pressing challenge driven by an increasing demand for raw materials and a socially demanding and globalized world. The extraction of primary raw materials has gained importance as one of the cornerstones of humanity’s sustainable development, significantly because the necessary raw materials to evolve towards a sustainable future as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt ...

The challenges posed by the many geopolitical upheavals of the last years, as well as the need to find new ways of extracting raw materials and securing the raw material base for domestic industry, have long remained without any significant echo in Europe. Deep-rooted in relevant speeches and discussions is the aware­ness that mining per se is something dirty that ...

Geothermal fluids are a proven resource for sustainable baseload energy worldwide. Recently the fluids circulated in large volume streams in geothermal power plants have also come into focus for the potential of raw material extraction, such as Lithium. Geothermal fluids are the product of high-temperature and high-pressure water-rock interaction. This results in varying degrees of enrichment of different elements. Among ...

Politics, specialist science and the mining supply industry are equally bound to tradition and committed to the future. All stakeholders are now committed to the energy transition. The state government in North Rhine-Westphalia is pursuing the goal of climate-neutral electricity generation by 2050. To this end, renewable energies are to be expanded and further advanced. In their coalition agreement, the ...

The issue of methane (CH4) has been on the European Union’s agenda for a long time and is now being pushed in order to achieve the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2050, on the one hand overzealously, but also with little knowledge about the origin and source of methane emissions in active and abandoned ...

Mine gas from abandoned mines is a special topic of European and national climate policy. It continues to threaten to escape from coal deposits that have not yet been affected by flooding. The initial support for the utilisation of mine gas for electricity generation via the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), which expires for most mine gas plants by the ...