Critical Raw Materials | EU–Kazakhstan Partnerships | Science into Action

Well, there's loads of questions in one, of course.

So first of all, let's start with understanding that Europe is in a very vulnerable position.

We've always been dependent on petrol states for our fossil fuels.

Then we try to get rid of those fossil fuels and we want to make that clean tech transition.

But At this moment, we're not only dependent on the petrol states, we're also dependent on the electrostates.

The electrostates, meaning China, basically, who has dominated the entire clean tech industry.

So they are now fully... vertically integrated and they dominate the not the mining maybe not so strictly but everything else from processing to refining to manufacturing to building the final clean tech products china has come to dominate all of that so the the question for europe is how can we set up our made in europe mind to clean tech value chains and become less dependent on China mainly because that's the ultimate dependency of course so we had a podcast episode with Ann Mettler and she put it very clearly that we've not only in a situation where we have become dependent on the fossil fuel countries, but now we're also completely dependent for our clean technologies.

And that's a very dangerous situation to be in.

For example, all our solar panels, They have inverters in those solar panels built in.

They can contain kill switches.

So that means that the Chinese regime, if they want to, they can just switch off our clean technologies in Europe.

So from that point of view, it's self-evident that we need to become more strategically autonomous in terms of our clean tech manufacturing.

But of course, You can't build clean tech without critical minerals.

And that's where we have to start talking about Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and several other countries in the world.

That's also the reason why Europe has signed memorandums of understanding and made strategic partnerships with a load of countries in the world including Central Asia with the whole idea that by signing those MOUs we would be able to attract those critical minerals so that we could have a diversified strategy that the critical minerals would then feed into our manufacturing plants so that we could build made in Europe solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, batteries, magnets and so more.

But the reality is that since we have actually signed all those MOUs, the volumes of critical minerals from those countries have not really increased.

In fact, the European Court of Auditors published a report recently, not a rock-solid policy was the title of the report, in which they clearly show that for most of the key critical minerals, the volumes have actually dropped from those MOU countries.

So rather than boosting the volumes flows of those materials to Europe, they've actually gone down.

And the reason is, of course, very simple, because it's not only Europe which is talking to these countries.

It's also the United States and China that are working with these countries.

And yes, we all know that the Chinese are much faster, much more effective in getting MOUs transformed into shovels in the ground, into real tangible projects where the minerals start flowing.

So what does Europe need? Europe needs access to critical minerals, very clearly.

Countries like Kazakhstan are, of course, endowed geologically with huge resources and reserves of almost every single critical metal you can imagine.

If you look at the energy situation at this moment in the world, Kazakhstan is producing 43% of all uranium.

So without the Kazakhstan uranium, the French nuclear plants would not be functioning.

Well, there's loads of questions in one, of course.

So first of all, let's start with understanding that Europe is in a very vulnerable position.

We've always been dependent on petrol states for our fossil fuels.

Then we try to get rid of those fossil fuels and we want to make that clean tech transition.

But At this moment, we're not only dependent on the petrol states, we're also dependent on the electrostates.

The electrostates, meaning China, basically, who has dominated the entire clean tech industry.

So they are now fully... vertically integrated and they dominate the not the mining maybe not so strictly but everything else from processing to refining to manufacturing to building the final clean tech products china has come to dominate all of that so the the question for europe is how can we set up our made in europe mind to clean tech value chains and become less dependent on China mainly because that's the ultimate dependency of course so we had a podcast episode with Ann Mettler and she put it very clearly that we've not only in a situation where we have become dependent on the fossil fuel countries, but now we're also completely dependent for our clean technologies.

And that's a very dangerous situation to be in.

For example, all our solar panels, They have inverters in those solar panels built in.

They can contain kill switches.

So that means that the Chinese regime, if they want to, they can just switch off our clean technologies in Europe.

So from that point of view, it's self-evident that we need to become more strategically autonomous in terms of our clean tech manufacturing.

But of course, You can't build clean tech without critical minerals.

And that's where we have to start talking about Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and several other countries in the world.

That's also the reason why Europe has signed memorandums of understanding and made strategic partnerships with a load of countries in the world including Central Asia with the whole idea that by signing those MOUs we would be able to attract those critical minerals so that we could have a diversified strategy that the critical minerals would then feed into our manufacturing plants so that we could build made in Europe solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, batteries, magnets and so more.

But the reality is that since we have actually signed all those MOUs, the volumes of critical minerals from those countries have not really increased.

In fact, the European Court of Auditors published a report recently, not a rock-solid policy was the title of the report, in which they clearly show that for most of the key critical minerals, the volumes have actually dropped from those MOU countries.

So rather than boosting the volumes flows of those materials to Europe, they've actually gone down.

And the reason is, of course, very simple, because it's not only Europe which is talking to these countries.

It's also the United States and China that are working with these countries.

And yes, we all know that the Chinese are much faster, much more effective in getting MOUs transformed into shovels in the ground, into real tangible projects where the minerals start flowing.

So what does Europe need? Europe needs access to critical minerals, very clearly.

Countries like Kazakhstan are, of course, endowed geologically with huge resources and reserves of almost every single critical metal you can imagine.

If you look at the energy situation at this moment in the world, Kazakhstan is producing 43% of all uranium.

So without the Kazakhstan uranium, the French nuclear plants would not be functioning.