A look back on the World Materials Forum 2023

The theme of this year's World Materials Forum in Nancy, France, was on breakthrough technologies for efficient and responsible new green demand patterns. The 9th edition of the event saw presentations on minerals criticality, battery technologies, recycling, and more. With a strong line-up of speakers at an amazing venue, here are a few of the things that stood out for me.

UNEP International Resource Panel Co-Chair Janez Potocnik delivered an impressive keynote on the need for a different mindset and approach to sustainability and sustainable growth. If we do not have the right frame of mind and do not ask the right questions, we will get nowhere. We need to move the conversation from maximizing production to maximizing fulfilment of human needs. For example, we do not need cars, we need mobility; we do not need refrigerators, we need to be able to store healthy food longer. An inspiring talk with many great insights and I am sure others find it inspiring as well. We all walk out inspired. Where the shoe pinches, is execution. To quote Northvolt 's Peter Carlsson : “It’s easier to find lithium than to change people’s minds”. Will we attend the same talk next year and look back on another year of inspired thought instead of action?

A further couple of presentations and remarks that I took away from the event:

• Copper was recently recognized as Strategic Raw Material (SRM). An SRM is a material that does not exceed Critical Raw Material (CRM) thresholds, but is of key strategic importance to the EU. It is clear that copper may not cross some of the thresholds, but that the material can become a problem in the near future. McKinsey's @Frank Bekaert also showed a striking difference in demand for "green" copper in EU vs US, which may influence primary and secondary market dynamics moving forward.
• Regarding recycling and circularity, Mr. Bekaert rightly pointed out that we can only recycle what is there. Steel boomed a long time ago, so recycling feedstock is available. For relatively new metals at scale, such as cobalt, this feedstock is not available at sufficient scale. We can only recycle now what’s there from past growth. For steel and copper this is around 50% of demand possible from recycling. For other materials we need to make realistic assessments to manage our supply chains well and not further decrease resilience.
• Hydrogen technology and hydrogen steelmaking were an important contributor to decarbonization of heavy industry. Henrik Henriksson presented the state and plans of Stegra 's progress and outlook for carbon-free steelmaking in Sweden. Whilst this is a fascinating frontrunner of effective use of hydrogen, it was interesting to hear a call for supporting a broad variety of green tech, not just the accessible or hyped ones.
• Several battery producers stressed the importance of managing materials supply chains well. There is a lot of focus on automation and AI. These are important elements of an effective operation, but in practice represent only 15% of costs to produce batteries. Around 70% of costs comes from materials. High product requirements and a strong cost-driven market, make attention to efficient, resilient, and sustainable materials supply even more important. In this regard, Zeta Energy Corp. 's Michael Liedtke stood out as one of the few who stressed the need for supply chain resilience and integrated value chains. In that light, lithium-sulphur battery technology can be interesting as these plants are less sensitive to location and supply chains can be short.
• On the topic of battery chemistry, there is a lot going on in the industry at the moment. A key thing to remember is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Battery chemistry strategy very much depends on where, when, and to whom you are selling your technology.
• Steel is a prime example of recycling and circularity potential. It was both interesting and scary to hear that most (Western) countries are net steel scrap exporters and only China is a significant net steel importer.
• Finally, developing and executing on the required technologies and policies lean heavily on a skilled and informed workforce. In his keynote, Mr. Potocnik brought this home by stating that the lack of capacity and knowledge with public leaders leads to conflicting policies that hinder the energy transition. I could not agree more. We can set goals and we also need the tools to reach them.

The European, and at times even French, orientation in the discourse was not a surprise. There was a clear focus on supply chain resilience and localization due to the current geopolitical climate. Some of the speakers also provided a good reality check regarding Europe's competitive outlook. Next year I hope the outlook will be more positive, with more tangible actions, at this amazing venue.

#CriticalRawMaterials #CRMA #batteries #strategy