Lithium as a battery metal is becoming increasingly important in the global energy transition for mobile and stationary storage.

The European Union has significant deposits of economic value. However, most of these are still in the exploration phase; only one deposit is being mined, but not for the use of lithium as a battery metal.

This means that the EU is facing major challenges with regard to its ambition to significantly increase its level of self-sufficiency in the coming years.

Together with GeoSphere Austria, the newly founded Federal Institute for Geology, Geophysics, Climatology and Meteorology, the EU research project GREENPEG is holding a symposium and workshop in Vienna on April 22-23, 2024, to explore the state of knowledge we have gained, where the industry and geological services of the EU Member States have been involved so far and which framework conditions for the valorization of deposits in Europe promote and restrict them.

The event is free of charge.

Here you can find the conference program of both events.

"Do you speak English - Honey I do". That was the song in the German hit parade almost 50 years ago. A song that conveyed how you can fall in love with more than just the English language. Nothing has changed to this day, except that the "lingua franca" has become more of a professional language than ever before. And as such, it is also playing an increasingly important role in the natural sciences.

As part of its work with "young careers", GREENPEG partner GKZ invited a group of first-year geophysics students led by Ms. Darlene Ann Kilian from the Bergakademie Freiberg to its office to discuss the work of the GKZ and its members, with a particular focus on the GREENPEG project. The project is concerned with optimizing exploration technologies and methods for pegmatites as carriers of important metals for the energy transition. The 10 men and women listened with equal interest to Managing Director Wolfgang Reimer's explanations and his "knowledge of languages" from 30 years of professional life on six continents. - However, he found his sweetheart in Dresden - in Saxon!

As an innovation in the EU-funded H-2020 GREENPEG project (GA 869274), the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) has developed a state-of-the-art piezoelectric seismograph (PE) as a valuable contribution to pegmatite exploration. The instrument utilizes the piezoelectric effect which describes the conversion of mechanical pressure, such as vibration or strain, into electrical energy, or vice versa. This technology has been leveraged to detect quartz, in particular for gold exploration, since the 1970s. NGU applied newest electrotechnology and data acquisition and processing to customize it for granitic pegmatite exploration. The pilot was deployed in different settings e.g. at the GREENPEG demonstration sites in Tysfjord, Norway, and could successfully detect buried quartz deposits, confirmed by drill cores. In the Tysfjord/Drag pegmatite field, the quartz core of the NYF pegmatite (Niobium-Yttrium-Fluorine) was detected at a depth of 5–10 m and underneath a 1-2 m thick quaternary overburden using minimal invasive explosive charges of ca. 100g. At a second site in Tysfjord/Håkonhals the quartz was found at even 15–25 m depth embedded in the host rocks amphibolite and gneisses, while using an 80 kg drop-weight with minimal environmental impact.

Figure 1. The NGU developed piezoelectric seismograph was deployed at the GREENPEG Tysfjord demonstration site in Håkonhals and Drag. A) shows a sketch of the developed system and B) the recorded and pre-processed signal produced from C) an 80kg drop-weight as seismic source

Since this novel piezoelectric seismograph is exclusively sensitive to the presence of quartz, it has a much lower ambiguity compared to other geophysical methods applied in pegmatite exploration and is a sustainable and cost-efficient method for this type of exploration, both as a stand-alone method or in combination with other methods on brownfields and greenfields.