Sourcing the European energy transition from domestic resources – vision or wishful thinking? The one-day conference (April 25) questions Europe's raw materials supply security in the context of its economically valorizable raw material potential and of current geopolitics. It examines the existing and future framework conditions for mining projects and their downstream value chain (regulation, financing, permitting). The conference also focuses on the work of the European geological surveys for the territorial mapping of critical raw materials and highlights the potential for cooperation with Africa. On April 26th a site visit is offered to Bergby exploration project of United Lithium Ltd. In 2023 Sweden is taking over the EU Council Presidency. Sweden is one of the most important mining countries in Europe with great raw material potential for managing the energy and mobility transition and securing the raw material supply for future technologies. The conference is co-hosted by GREENPEG, the Swedish Mining Association SVEMIN and the European Technology Platform on Sustainable Mineral Resources (ETPSMR) and will take place in picturesque city of Uppsala, 20 minutes by train from Stockholm Airport. Participation is free of charge.

GREENPEG partners have been invited by Lithium Americas Corp. to verify individual methods of the GREENPEG toolset at their exploration sites in Ontario, Canada. Of particular interest for both sites is to test the new method of the regional trace-element-in-quartz mapping to establish the province-scale chemical zoning of the Allison Lake pegmatite field to vector towards areas with lithium-mineralized pegmatites and to establish the genetic relationship to the nearby Allison Lake Batholith. The field campaign will follow the joint annual meeting of the Geological Association of Canada, Mineralogical Association of Canada, and Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits held in Sudbury, Ontario, May 24-27, 2023, in which several GREENPEG partners will participate. In the frame of the conference, GREENPEG is organizing the session “Lithium in Pegmatites: Mineralogy, Petrogenesis and Classic to Innovative Exploration Techniques” together with Tania Martins from the Manitoba Geological Survey and Lee Groat from the University of British Columbia.

GREENPEG partners GKZ and University of Oslo (UiO) established a master student project cooperation with the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy of Mozambique and the Mining Academy Freiberg to study the applicability of GREENPEG exploration tools for pegmatites in tropical environments, i.e. in Mozambique. During the first stage of the cooperation, the master student Violeta Bunzula applies for Erasmus scholarship to perform petrological studies of pegmatite ores at the UIO and the initial field inspection in Mozambique is planned for the second half of April 2023.

Photo: The QuartzCorp - in front of the Drag community center (from left to right): Stein Fridfeldt, Christian Hadley, Axel Müller and Thomas Guillaume

GREENPEG invited 20 undergraduate and MSc students of energy engineering and social sciences to learn about value chains in the mining and energy industries during a one-week excursion through North-West Spain and Portugal in September 2022. These are students whose training does not normally deal with the topic of securing raw materials.

The aim was to raise awareness of the relevance of raw materials (not only metals but also aggregates and industrial minerals) and the role they play in society, in particular to manage the major challenges of our time such as the energy transition and climate protection as well as the development of advanced technologies. The one-week bus tour included the Mitruku Wave Energy Converter in the Bay of Biscay, Aldeadávila Hydropower Plant in the Province of Salamanca, as well as the Arañuelo solar farm for the energy sector and Saloro´s Barruecopardo tungsten mine and the Gonçalo Li-Pegmatite quarry in the Guarda district in Portugal for the mining sector.

The Iberian Peninsula has rich deposits of raw materials for the energy transition, but their extraction is also the subject of a lively debate among those affected. In order to better understand the positions of both sides, GREENPEG invited several representatives from both sides including associations, research, mining developers and politics to a Round Table at the University of Salamanca. On the agenda were nine questions that dealt with the challenges of sourcing the energy transition, implementing the European GREEN DEAL, but also the socio-economic challenges and user conflicts in this regard. Each question was followed by a poll of all participants for their views. Find out more about the Focus Group Meeting Spain in our December Newsletter Special and on Youtube.

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Photo: The QuartzCorp - in front of the Drag community center (from left to right): Stein Fridfeldt, Christian Hadley, Axel Müller and Thomas Guillaume

While on tour with her collegues and 16 students from five European countries as part of the GREENPEG Focus Group Meeting Spain our project manager Carla Pueyo Lloret was interviewed by “Hoy por Hoy Provincial Cáceres of the radion station Cadena SER. Carla explains the aim and objective of the Focus Group Meeting and the special relevance of raw materials that contribute to Spain´s ambitious investments in renewable energies. Listen to Carla on the radio in the following link: Hoy por Hoy Provincial Cáceres

Photo: The QuartzCorp - in front of the Drag community center (from left to right): Stein Fridfeldt, Christian Hadley, Axel Müller and Thomas Guillaume

The International Clustering Workshop aims to stimulate new inter-regional clustering activities and project ideas among the participants, with a focus on raw materials value chain. The workshop is led by the H2020 MINE.THE.GAP project which consists of 9 experienced clusters across Europe. The clusters will be the guiding hand through the process. In addition, the co-organiser H2020 GREENPEG project will provide support by sharing their innovative technologies for exploration and potential follow up research ideas. Companies, research institutes and other relevant actors in the raw materials sector are welcome to bring your ideas over and join the discussion. The workshop also provides a great opportunities to network with people interested in solving problems through innovation.  The workshop is a physical meeting held in English. It is free of charge to all those who wish to attend. More information will be soon updated on the MINE.THE.GAP website. If you have further questions, please

Photo: The QuartzCorp - in front of the Drag community center (from left to right): Stein Fridfeldt, Christian Hadley, Axel Müller and Thomas Guillaume
Photo: The QuartzCorp - in front of the Drag community center (from left to right): Stein Fridfeldt, Christian Hadley, Axel Müller and Thomas Guillaume

GREENPEG coordinator Axel Müller met The QuartzCorp (TQC) management including Thomas Guillaume (CEO), Benny Hallam (VP), Robert Kvamme, Christian Hadley and Oscar Nijs at Drag in northern Norway, to discuss the latest developments of pegmatite-deposit-adjusted exploration tools and preliminary exploration results related to the Tysfjord GREENPEG demonstration site. TQC is one of the major stakeholders of the GREENPEG project.

Among the discussed topics was the chemical quartz quality of Tysfjord pegmatites. Regional quartz chemistry mapping in the frame of GREENPEG revealed that the quartz chemistry of Tysfjord pegmatites is surprisingly consistent regionally being of very high chemical quality. These results increased the total volume of inferred quartz resources. Since spring 2022, TQC is upscaling mining at the Håkonhals pegmatite mine due to strong increasing demands of the specific quartz quality of the Tysfjord pegmatites. Thus, the news about increased resources was highly appreciated by TQC.

At the same day, QC organized the annual “dugnadsdag” (volunteer day) to support the Drag community by improving the village’s public facilities. This year, about 30 TQC employees together with other volunteers from Drag painted the kindergarten, fixed the lights of the village’s football field, repaired hiking tracks, among other things. This annual TQC volunteer day is very much appreciated by the local community because results can be seen immediately and increases the public acceptance of TQC.

The 2022 Living Planet Symposium organised by European Space Agency (ESA) took place on 23–27 May 2022 in Bonn, Germany with record-breaking numbers of more than 5000 participants. The event joined representatives from space agencies and international organisations and corporations, business and enterprise leaders, and world-class scientists from across the world. They have all come together to discuss how Earth observation can contribute to science and society, namely its role in advancing the comprehension of our planet and how it is being affected by climate change. With 240 science sessions, the symposium covered distinct thematic areas from Earth’s core, cryosphere, land and atmosphere.

The GREENPEG project participated with a Poster Presentation on Wednesday, the dedicated Climate Day, showing how the project results are essential for sustainable natural resources and energy, namely for the exploration of LCT pegmatites that are considered a major source of critical raw materials for the energy transition. Moreover, the work presented by the GREENPEG team, entitled “Exploiting Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data for province scale exploration: the GREENPEG project case studies”, highlighted the collaboration and integration of different instruments, namely between the Copernicus Sentinel Series. The work was very well received by either geoscientists or by data analysts and software developers, all recognizing the importance of the use of satellites as a non-invasive tool of the exploration chain.

The EC regards GREENPEG's contribution relevance with the following commitment: "The EU’s mineral potential remains under-explored, and the budget for exploring for metallic minerals in the EU remains low compared to other regions in the world. The future availability of raw materials from domestic sources is determined by the success of mineral exploration projects,... which requires geological knowledge and technological feasibility as well as social, environmental, political, and legal acceptability. As such the GREENPEG Consortium felt very excited to know that - after an intense session learning about objectives and achievements of other 16 projects funded by the Horizon 2020 and EIT Raw Materials - GREENPEG will be transferred directly onto the RMIS website."

Photo: The QuartzCorp - in front of the Drag community center (from left to right): Stein Fridfeldt, Christian Hadley, Axel Müller and Thomas Guillaume

The part of the IFU GmbH within the GREENPEG project is the geophysical surveying and drone-based data acquisition. In the first period of the project, IFU focused on developing, setting up and testing the hardware for ground-and drone-based hyperspectral data acquisition. This includes the heavy-duty drone system and the acousto-optical monochromator for hyperspectral imaging. See video of drone-base data acquisition here.

Events

OCTOBER 30-31 2023, ROVANIEMI, FINLAND - EU SUPERCLUSTER LAPLAND GEOCONFERENCE

GREENPEG will be presented with 3 oral and 2 poster presentations introducing into the GREENPEG toolset, geophysical exploration advances in NYF-type pegmatite deposits in Tysfjord, Norway. CONTACT US

OCTOBER 31 UNTIL NOVEMBER 3 2023, LEVI, FINLAND – 14th FENNOSCANDIAN EXPLORATION AND MINING

GREENPEG will be at the tradeshow introducing GREENPEG Nose Stinger and GREENPEG Toolset CONTACT US

NOVEMBER 13-17 2023, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – EU RAW MATERIALS WEEK

GREENPEG project presentation on 13 November 14:15 – 14:30 by Claudia Haase, NGU

MARCH 3-6 2024, TORONTO, CANADA - PDAC

GREENPEG will be at the tradeshow introducing GREENPEG Nose Stinger and GREENPEG Toolset CONTACT US