Europe’s largest rare earths deposit found in Sweden

Well, this sounds like a fortuitous event, good thing the world is switching to electric this and electric that.

Still, I'd bet they kept this on the down low for quite a while till they improved their investment strategies. Regardless less reliance on China is completely a good thing. Makes me wonder if there aren't these same types of deposits elsewhere that we haven't found yet.

China currently provides the bulk of the EU’s supply.

Europe's known deposit of rare earth elements — key for building electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines — has been discovered in northern Sweden, mining company LKAB announced today.

The Swedish company found a deposit of rare earth metals exceeding 1 million tons of rare earth oxides.

"This is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements in our part of the world, and it could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition," said Jan Moström, the company's president and CEO.

No rare earth elements are currently mined in Europe, with China providing nearly 98 percent of the EU’s supply.

According to the European Commission, demand for these elements is expected to increase more than fivefold by 2030, as they are needed for building digital and green technologies.

Given current permitting processes, it could take between 10 and 15 years for operations begin at the Kiruna mine, where the deposits were found, said Moström.

He called on Brussels to speed up and streamline those processes as part of its Critical Raw Materials Act, which is slated to be announced on March 14.

"Politics must give the industry the conditions to switch to green and fossil-free production," Sweden's Energy and Industry Minister Ebba Busch said in response to the news.

I hear the Sweed's have weapons of mass destruction...

originally posted by: EmmanuelGoldstein
I hear the Sweed's have weapons of mass destruction...

I always wondered if Dubya and Dick were on ATS...

If you know about it,
and we know about it,
china has known about it for years.

they're already setting up plans to mine it- but it might not make sense to execute them there at this time.

a reply to: putnam6

I heard about this but given how much a jar of jam costs in Sweden will this even be economical for the rest of the World to buy into if they start charging equally inflated prices for there minerals haha.

That said overall good news, China will have to lower costs and increase the flow of rare earth minerals if it wants to keep control of the market for them once it loses it's monopoly and that is good news for the cost of electronics for the rest of us that can then be made cheaper and hopefully eventually retail for less than they currently do relative to rate of earnings as well as make them more affordable to poorer populations.

Let's hope they extract them with minimal ecological impact or old Greta will throw a fit again and no one wants that.