Born in Italy, Ph.D. in environmental engineering, in 2009 Simone Manfredi joined the European Commission (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC), where he acts as coordinator of the Raw Materials Information System (RMIS), the EC’s reference knowledge platform on sustainable raw materials supply and value chains. At the JRC, Simone also supports a number of projects in the area of waste management, circular economy, resource efficiency, sustainable consumption and production.
Thanks for joining the conversation, Simone. What is the Raw Materials Information System (RMIS), and what key objectives does it aim to achieve?
Simone Manfredi: The Raw Materials Information System (RMIS) is a commitment in the 2015 Circular Economy Action Plan, led and maintained by the JRC. RMIS acts as the EC’s reference knowledge platform on metals and minerals from primary and secondary sources, as well as a vital interface between European stakeholders and the EU-level policy community.
It plays an important role in facilitating knowledge needs identified by EU policy on raw materials, such as the 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). RMIS covers the entire value chains of raw materials and takes into consideration the materials’ full life cycle. It provides knowledge on raw materials and associated value chains in the context of sustainability, including supply risks and circularity. It facilitates the availability, coherence and quality of key data & analyses needed to:
- Fulfil existing and emerging priority needs identified by the EC, such as in relation to critical and strategic raw materials (and their value chains), as well as with regards to advanced materials;
- Provide prompt responses to emerging knowledge needs arising from, for example, the fast-changing geopolitical context;
- Identify areas where further research and investment is needed through foresight analyses on supply and demand.
Through the RMIS, the JRC RMs team coordinates various knowledge dissemination initiatives, such as the development of technical reports, briefs, the biannual RMIS Newsletter, as well as the organization of the yearly RMIS Workshop gathering stakeholders from policy, research/academia, and industry.
RMIS integrates a vast amount of data from different sources. Could you walk us through the process of data collection and validation? How do you collaborate with different stakeholders from academia, industry and policy?
Fulfilling RMIS development priorities and providing effective support to policy making requires a solid knowledge network within and beyond the EC. The RMIS knowledge network includes a wide variety of stakeholders, which act as knowledge and data providers to the RMIS itself, e.g.:
- Various EC Directorates (GROW, TRADE, ENV, INTPA, RTD, DEFIS, ESTAT), Agencies of the European Union (e.g. HaDEA and EEA), as well as selected EU Delegations;
- EU-funded projects, in particular projects under the Horizon Europe scheme working closely with the DG RTD and with HaDEA;
- European and Member State level institutions providing data at European level (e.g., EIT RawMaterials, OFREMI, DERA, EuroGeoSurveys (EGS), Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres (BRGM)) and with support of the national/regional geological surveys, and other relevant entities collecting raw materials related data and information;
- Stakeholders along the value chain, e.g. industry associations, companies, research institutes, research programs;
- Non-EU country entities, e.g. the United States Geological Survey (USGS), US COMTRADE;
- International bodies (e.g. UNEP International Resource Panel (IRP), OECD, UNECE);
- Commercial services.
Representatives from these organisations and entities are active part of the broad RMIS Knowledge Network. Data collected from these entities are systematically checked, validated and included in the underlying RMIS database, supporting RMIS different analyses and thematic sections. Equally, the RMIS increasingly feeds into these organisations and their activities; creating mutually beneficial interactions.
In addition to bilateral discussions, the yearly RMIS workshop continues the well-established dialogue amongst key stakeholders. The event aims at identifying most relevant knowledge outputs, with a particular emphasis on EU-level projects that can help fulfil key knowledge needs. It also aims at facilitating the integration of such outputs into the RMIS, as well as towards increasing their visibility and relevance for policy support. A specific RMIS section provides an overview of the most prominent EU projects on raw materials and how these are linked to RMIS and contribute to its development priorities.
Which raw materials related areas/topics does RMIS cover?
RMIS covers – in an integrated and impactful manner – a broad range of thematic areas, including: policy & legislation; sectorial and technology demand; supply risk and autonomy; criticality and resilience; circular economy and secondary raw materials; economic and trade-related analyses; material flow analyses, environmental and social sustainability, governance and competitiveness.
To the extent possible, information and analyses are also aggregated into summaries which in RMIS are referred to as “profiles”. These profiles are available for individual raw materials, individual countries and individual strategic sectors and technologies. Each profile includes various quantitative/numerical indicators, as well as GIS-based maps and visualisations.
To facilitate the understanding of the various indicators and analyses provided, as well as their relevance for policy, RMIS systematically includes “methodological notes” and thorough lists of data sources. Each topic and thematic section included in the RMIS can be accessed from a dedicated “RMIS Topics” page.
In line with current EU policy, RMIS classifies materials into critical, strategic and advanced categories. What are the key differences between these classifications?
Raw materials form the basis of Europe’s economy to ensure jobs and competitiveness, and they are essential for maintaining and improving quality of life. Although all raw materials are important, some of them are of more concern than others in terms of secure and sustainable supply.
RMIS adopts the EC official classification that classifies raw materials into critical and non-critical. Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are defined as those that possess both high economic importance and high risk of supply disruption. Every 3rd year the EC carries out a criticality assessment at EU level on a wide range of raw materials. This exercise, led by DG GROW, has been supported by the JRC RMIS team since 2017. The latest list (2023) identifies 34 CRMs, as well as 16 Strategic Raw Materials (SRMs). SRMs are a subset of CRMs that are considered particularly important to achieve the objectives of the twin green & digital transition (e.g. Gallium, Germanium, Cobalt, Copper). An extensive RMIS thematic section addresses all of these aspects.
The 2024 CRM Act of the EC makes clarity among these groups of materials and identifies strategic objectives (and associated knowledge needs) in relation to three so-called “pillars”: developing the CRMs value chain; boosting the diversification of supply; and fostering sustainable sourcing and circularity.
The RMIS team is currently also undergoing analyses with respect to so-called “advanced materials”, with a view to assess the extent to which these can be used to replace CRMs. Advanced materials, which are referred to as “intentionally designed and engineered materials”, can in fact reduce supply risks by reducing reliance on CRMs in the supply and value chains of technologies in strategic areas for EU’s policies. This is expected to strengthen Europe’s autonomy and competitiveness in emerging technologies required for the green and digital transition. The Communication on ‘Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership’ (COM (2024) 98) aims to create a dynamic, secure and inclusive ecosystem for advanced materials in Europe that ensures leadership in research and fast-tracks innovations to the single market. A specific RMIS thematic section addresses all of these aspects.
The RMIS country profiles provide insights into national raw materials landscapes. What specific indicators are included, and how do these profiles help in understanding the global resource flows and developments?
Knowledge is essential at country levels, including in the context of trade, to facilitate the strengthening of international partnerships and in the rapidly changing geo-political context. To this end, the RMIS Country Profiles provide in-depth quantitative understanding of various aspects and areas, including:
- Investment and Regulatory Framework
- Competitiveness
- Trade and Trade Policy
- Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency
- Governance and Social Sustainability
- Environmental Sustainability
Geographical coverage includes EU27, EU enlargement, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, as well as a number of additional countries that are particularly important for strategic / geopolitical reasons, such as Ukraine, Greenland, USA, Canada, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan. In total, nearly 120 Countries are covered.
Balancing sustainability risks with supply security is a key challenge. How does RMIS integrate environmental and social sustainability aspects with supply risks assessments?
RMIS provides extensive information about environmental and social sustainability aspects along raw materials supply and value chains. This includes various pages related to e.g. green energy & transport, sustainability of the extractive sector, responsible sourcing, climate change & decarbonisation, air pollution and industrial emissions, land use and soil, as well as a direct link to European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA). Also, existing RMIS raw materials’ profiles and country profiles include a cluster of indicators related to sustainability consideration and assessment.
Especially with respect to raw materials’ profiles, indicators related to sustainability complement various other indicators related to supply risk and economic importance, the two key parameters based on which the triennial list of CRMs is derived. Also balancing considerations related to supply risk with sustainability are the analyses included in the page “Environmental impacts along the supply chain”, which provide extensive information on the environmental consequences arising from recent supply disruption episodes.
What type of data does RMIS provide on circular economy strategies, including recycling and secondary raw materials?
RMIS includes various thematic sections related to circular economy and secondary raw materials – being these at the core of the European twin green and digital transition.
At international, EU and country specific levels, the RMIS team contributes to the development of methodologies and indicators targeting the circularity of products and materials. For instance, building on the so-called “End of Life Recycling Input rate” (EOL-RIR) index, the novel index Circular Input Rate (CIR) assesses circularity performances of materials in a specific sector. It captures the contribution of all circular economy strategies such as recycling, reuse and remanufacturing.
The RMIS team also collects and provides data then used to develop Country profiles, which cover environmental and circularity aspects such as waste generation, use of recyclable materials or environmental performances.
At sector or process level, based on the best available data from both literature and industrial stakeholders, the RMIS team performs material flow analyses (MFA), life cycle and socio-economic assessments to report on the generation, use and potential recirculation of secondary materials (e.g. for batteries and vehicles). These analyses provide also an overview of the end-of-life management processes, including their efficiencies and potential ways to improve the current state of play towards higher efficiency and competitiveness of the sector.
With rapid shifts in geopolitics and technology, how does RMIS work to maintain accurate foresight in such a dynamic landscape? What are the main challenges?
The continuously and rapidly changing geopolitical scenario makes it utterly important – yet challenging – to conduct forward looking analyses that are able to assess EU supply risk and future demand especially for critical and strategic raw materials.
The RMIS responds to these challenges with a number of analyses, including forecasts, which provide accurate quantitative understanding of the consequences of the rapidly evolving geopolitical and technological context, with focus on key materials, value chains, countries. These include:
- Supply risk analyses for key critical and strategic raw materials that are mostly affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine (potash, titanium, rare gases, platinum, palladium); as well as trade-related country fiches for key affected countries (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan).
- In-depth analyses of raw materials in vehicles
- In-depth analyses of raw materials in the battery value chain
- Supply chain analyses and material demand forecast in strategic technologies and sectors in the EU (2023 foresight report)
- Trade-related analyses that assess the consequences of most recent trade-restriction measures adopted by countries such as China and the US.
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