Critical Materials and Energy Transition: Selected Problems

The presentation summarizes research on the production, use, and recycling of critical materials carried out in Professor Kraslawski’s group.

It explains how the energy transition depends on critical materials, especially rare earth elements, for renewable energy, electric vehicles, batteries, and other clean technologies.

The presentation highlights key risks in rare earth supply chains, including geographic concentration, dominance in production and processing, export restrictions, stockpiling, price volatility, and limited substitutes. It also shows that ambitious decarbonization scenarios could greatly increase demand for materials such as tellurium, indium, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements.

Recycling and circular economy strategies are presented as important solutions, but they are not sufficient on their own to prevent future material shortages.

The presentation also emphasizes cleaner mining, tailings reprocessing, electrification, fuel switching, the use of renewable energy, and efficiency improvements as ways to reduce environmental impacts.

Finally, it argues that the energy transition must be socially just, because its benefits and burdens are not shared equally across countries, communities, and income groups.

Introducing Professor Andrzej Kraslawski

Professor Andrzej Kraslawski is a Professor of Systems Engineering at LUT University in Finland and Professor at the Institute of Systems Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His work brings together systems engineering, sustainability, circular economy, critical materials, and water and waste management. Over the course of his career, Professor Kraslawski has held academic positions in Finland, China, Poland, Russia, France, and Germany.

Professor Kraslawski has built an extensive scientific record with over 300 articles and conference papers. He has supervised 20 completed doctoral dissertations. He has led many international and European research projects in sustainability, wastewater treatment, resource management, and safety. He collaborated with a wide range of international research funding bodies, including the European Commission and the European Research Council.