S2 E54: Dr. Peter Tom Jones on Mining and Sustainability: A Complex Relationship

Dustin Olsen (00:01)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. I'm Dustin, course, joined by my co-host Daniel. And today we got a special guest. His name is Tom Jones. He is the director of the SIM2 Institute. ⁓ And so Tom, welcome to the show.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (00:21)
Thank you for having me here.

Dustin Olsen (00:23)
Absolutely. ⁓ Tom, you are, so you work for an institute, you're a metallurgist, and we would love just to get a quick summary of a bit of your background and the work that you're doing today.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (00:39)
I'm a metallurgist but I'm also an environmentalist so when I studied at Kailöven a long time ago I studied for environmental engineering and in those times I was authoring ⁓ lots of books and articles on the transition to a climate neutral society on transition management, climate mitigation, climate adaptation so I've always had this ⁓ climate

background but I also then started doing a PhD in stainless steel metallurgy so slowly I got into the metallurgical field.

And then slowly I started to try to combine these two fields of environmental engineering and metallurgy on this climate mission statement that I've always been making to try to produce the metals that we need to save the climate. Because that's our mission statement. We try to produce critical metals in an environmentally friendly way because we know we need these metals for all our clean tech applications.

Of course, we also see now that we're using the same metals for AI and for defense applications. That was not my original idea when I started this work. The idea was to produce rare earths for electric vehicles, lithium for lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles or stationary energy storage. It was not my idea to produce lithium for drones, for example.

Dustin Olsen (02:09)
That's really fascinating. So you have probably a very unique perspective when it comes to not only the metallurgy, but the sustainability. And I would imagine you're even influencing some policy that goes into all of that. ⁓ From your vantage point, what do most investors or policymakers or even mining executives, what do they fundamentally misunderstand still?

about these minerals.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (02:41)
I can't speak about the situation in States but in Western Europe we do see that the general population does not want mining.

Daniel O'Connor (02:43)
you

Dr. P. Tom Jones (02:51)
They might know that we need mining, but they don't want mining. And that is, of course, a huge paradox. We've been able to export our industrial production in general, but also our mining activities to the rest of the world. And in an open free trade world, that was all very easy, of course, because we could let someone else do the dirty work, the extraction and the processing and production of radars, for example, from the Baotu region.

Daniel O'Connor (02:52)
you

Dr. P. Tom Jones (03:21)
China, we could allow the Chinese to produce those rare earths in that region and they would have the environmental and social impact of that production and that was all far away from us. We would just buy the intermediates or the finished goods containing the rare earths and that was all very easy. That was a neoliberal world that we lived in for decades since Margaret Thatcher invented the concept. But then ⁓ since the first rare earth crisis in

Daniel O'Connor (03:27)
.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (03:51)
2010-11, we see that this world is slowly moving away and now we live in a system where yes, our strategic autonomy is really in jeopardy and suddenly we realize that we are completely dependent on a couple of third countries for essential materials that we need for our cleantech transition and now also for AI, digital and military transitions.

Daniel O'Connor (04:15)
Okay.

⁓

Dr. P. Tom Jones (04:17)
So we've exported

our moral, social, environmental responsibility to the global South, I would say, because with EZ, we gave them the damage.

And now we have to realize that we have to re-show those activities. But the problem is that, of course, our Western populations, especially in densely populated regions, they don't want these mining activities. And in that way, I have sometimes made a very…

Very difficult statement that Europeans can be very hypocritical because we want the nice flashy electric cars and we want smartphones, but we don't want the mining and the processing to take place in our own backyard. We want someone else to do that. And yes, for me, that is a hypocritical situation.

Daniel O'Connor (05:09)
It's a contradictory ⁓ situation. you know, first I want to just mention that I think ⁓ your institute and what you all are doing as a center of excellence is fabulous. I think it has a bigger impact than you all may even know. So ⁓ we're honored to have you and we're also always pleased to update.

our growing community about some of the work you all are doing in Europe. You know, there's so many different ways that we can go with this, but there definitely is a shift. You would agree, right, that the West, whether it's United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, ⁓ are making moves to reclaim these supply chains. You would agree with that, right, that there's a trend

a new reality.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (06:04)
Yes, are certainly attempts to build the concepts and the frameworks. And in Europe, we have the so-called Critical Raw Materials Act that was created by the European Commission, which basically says that we in Europe need to domestically mine 10 % of our CRMs, process 40 % of our CRMs, and recycle 25 % of our CRMs, so that we are less than 65 % dependent

any single third country. So that is the Critical Role Materials Act that has been created in Europe and we've actually contributed to that narrative, to that storyline. But now of course we are at the time when that CRMA also needs to be implemented and that is always the difficulty in Europe in particular. We're very good in making plans and acts and reports and facilities and task forces.

but we are struggling to actually implement these plans.

proof of the pudding is in the eating as always. So under the Critical Role Materials Act we have identified 47 strategic projects and these strategic projects they need to show that they have a serious contribution to solving the CRM conundrum in Europe. They could be about mining, refining, recycling, even substitution of critical metals. So we've identified 47 of those projects but if we look at the reality of how many of those

are now actually coming to fruition then we see that it is ⁓ very very difficult for any of those in fact some of the projects that have been given the label to be strategic now suffer even even more resistance than before they deemed to be strategic so you can even say maybe it's been a handicap to be called strategic rather than to get support

Because in the end, and that's the difference between the states and the European Union, guess, in the European Union, it's not the EU which provides the…

the license to operate for a mining operation. So the mining permit is not provided by the European Union. The mining permit needs to be provided by the individual member states or even a region within the member state. And so the European Union can say that we have to accelerate the provision of these mining permits to a period of 27 months. That was the timing that has been put forward. But in reality, it is the member states or the regional

Daniel O'Connor (08:23)
you

Dr. P. Tom Jones (08:49)
authority which needs to execute that and if they face significant problems in terms of social resistance or if they don't have the people qualified people to actually

make those processes happen, then the permit will still not be provided. And that's what we are seeing now that these strategic projects, yes, they're there on paper, but they're not there in reality. And the other thing, of course, is that we're also struggling economically to make some of these projects economically viable, because in many cases, present global market prices are too low for those European projects to be economically viable.

Daniel O'Connor (09:31)
So,

know, Tom, on that note, and there's, there are different pathways that we can go based on what you just shared. There's structural issues. There are environmental issues. There are, know, sort of NIMBY, not my backyard issues. And the EU is not organized to really deal with that in an efficient and effective way. And we get that. They, if we look at the,

⁓ So upstream, there are these challenges. ⁓ How much of that is structural, meaning ⁓ the rules, the laws just don't work well together versus the lack of will and maybe talent pool? mean, how much or is it just synergistic and it all blends together to create a problem?

Dr. P. Tom Jones (10:33)
Well, if we refer to talent pool as regards mining, I'm sure there is indeed a lack ⁓ of talent because we have never really engaged with mining activities for critical metals the last decades in Europe. Very few new mines have opened in Europe. It's not a very attractive study at university anymore. So we see that a lot of mining schools have actually closed down in many big European universities. Also in my university, it closed down several years ago.

lack of talent but I think the main issues are still the psychological resistance to mining activities in Europe which are deemed to be environmentally destructive.

people just don't want it. That's the harsh reality. It's not the case in every single part of Europe. There are regions in Europe where there is more support for mining activities. we also made a documentary about that region some years ago. That film was called Made in Europe from Mined to Electric Vehicle. And we focused there on the Nordic countries in Europe, Sweden and Finland in particular. And we went to, for example, the Kiruna and

the itic regions of Sweden which are above the Arctic, Kiruna is above the Arctic Circle and there you have this famous village called Kiruna that has one of the biggest underground iron ore mines in the world and there the local population is actually quite supportive for those mining activities because they are structurally dependent on that activity. They even moved the very big ⁓

Sami inspired church in Kiruna recently because they had to move part of the village because there were problems with the underground mine in that area. So they moved part of the village and there was no resistance to that activity. it's not that everyone in Europe is against those mining activities everywhere. Those people they have grown up in a mining region and their jobs are directly or indirectly related to that mining activity. And they also work for a company that

has very strict social and environmental engagement strategies so what they do is really top of the of the class in terms of environmental responsibility in terms of health and safety in terms of salaries in that region for example they have a problem that teachers and nurses are leaving their jobs to go and work in the mine for that state company because the salaries are much better so that's that's one example

where it is possible. I'm not saying there is no resistance whatsoever to that mining project because I also interviewed for that documentary some of the Sami reindeer herding people which are indigenous people in Europe and the Sami reindeer herding are clearly categorically negative towards mining activities because it affects their way of life and we can understand that.

But not all Sami are against that mining project because also a lot of those mining, also a lot of those miners are actually Sami people themselves, but they're not the reindeer herding Sami. There are different types of Sami people. just to give you one example that in the Nordic countries, there is a better attitude towards mining projects. But if you go to the south of these countries, you go to the south of, or the middle south Sweden, then you will see that the perception towards mining changes completely.

and that is now in the context of Greenland and the discussion about rare earth deposits in Europe and in Greenland. It's a very relevant discussion because in fact we have had several European projects in the past which worked on some of these European deposits.

and there is one famous one in not in the north of Sweden but more middle south Sweden which is Norrachar and Norrachar is an eudialite rare earth deposit world-class deposit with especially heavy rare earths that are in that deposit and that one single Norrachar mine

could supply most of the heavy rare earths that would be needed in Europe. But that project is not coming to fruition because there is huge local opposition from the Swedish population. you see in the same country, you have radically diverging opinions about mining activities. have the north where people are by and large very favorable. Then you have Norrachar, south of Sweden, which could solve the entire rare earth problem of the European Union. But that mine is simply not

not opening up because of the resistance and that's not Nimbi it is Nimla. Nimla is another acronym which stands for not in my leisure area because in that case it's mostly people with a second house

summer house that live in the center of the East and they have a summer house to go to in the weekend and holidays and they're very oppositional towards that mine because it's in such an area. We see the same thing in Finland by the way, some big Finnish mining projects are also in the lake area in the south and there you have huge oppositional movements towards those potential projects also by people who are living in Helsinki but they have a second house in this lake area. Whereas when you go to the

Daniel O'Connor (15:40)
Yeah. ⁓

But…

Dr. P. Tom Jones (16:09)
north of Finland, in Skivitsa for example, there people are very favorable towards mining.

Daniel O'Connor (16:15)
By the way, just as a side note, you know, I did a lot of business in ⁓ Denmark, Copenhagen, and quite a few folks I knew had second homes in the center of Swedish forest areas. And so, yeah, they like the natural settings and they want to keep it that way. So that's very fascinating. And that's, you know, that's just one dynamic of the problem. The biggest bottleneck's not even there.

If you look at what China has put together, the state enterprise and operation that scales everything from upstream, midstream, downstream, the biggest choke point, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is the separation and refining. And we'll get into recycling in a minute. ⁓ Maybe recycling can help us transcend this crisis. We'll see. You're an expert.

But let's talk about at a high level, the choke point of processing. You know, we started this in October 2024, and we have a network of experts, and they told us this is the biggest problem. And we would look at the media, and the media was constantly, it's mining, it's mining. That's part of it. But can you talk about the separation refining problem? Why is it a problem? Why don't people get this? Why don't they understand this?

Dr. P. Tom Jones (17:46)
What we can learn from the Chinese is that they have been very smart in developing fully vertically integrated strategies which include the extraction, the mineral processing, the refining and production of the alloys.

metals, the alloys, the magnets, and then the final product, the wind turbine or the electric vehicle containing the magnet motor or generator. So Chinese have indeed done the whole vertical integration. They've spent decades on subsidizing that and making sure they have trained people to do so in every single part of the value chain. But in Europe and the same in the States, of course, we don't have this

integrated vision we think in terms of silos, so we might think about a Magnet production facility, but then we don't think about the steps that are needed before the magnet production and yeah, when we speak about rare earths, it's such a complicated supply chain, so indeed it starts with the rare earth deposit and the mining to produce the concentrate and then to transform the concentrate

to produce a concentrate and transform the concentrate in a solvent extraction separation facility to separate the individual rare earth oxides, which is a very complicated activity which not many companies master.

the United States as far as I know this is not the case yet. And then we have ⁓ the production of the metals, individual metals of the rare earth. So from the oxides we need to go to the metals, that's very complicated electrolysis that is needed. Then we need to combine those rare earth metals into alloys. Then the alloys feed into a magnet production facility which is also very complicated technology that not many companies really master, especially if you talk about sintered magnets rather than bonded

magnets and then finally we have the introduction of the the magnets into the the motor and the motor into the EV so it's many many different steps and indeed in the United States now we see quite a lot of attention for opening reopening the mountain pass mine and for investing in magnet production but it's of course also crucial to be able to separate the rare earths and that's not one of the few strengths we do have in Europe

in terms of solvent extraction separation capacity. And so we actually have three companies that are capable to do so. have Solvay that have an existing facility in La Rochelle in France. We have ⁓ a near-performance material Silmet in Estonia who can separate light rare earths in their facility using a nitrate route. And then we have now the upcoming company Karester who

actually mainly consists of ex-employees of Solvay who are really trained for 30 to 40 years into solvent extraction expertise and Carrester is now building in the south of France a big separation facility for for air earth starting from both ⁓ concentrates from mines in different parts in the world but also from recycled magnet powders that they can introduce into that

So they will be capable to separate all rare earths and the focus of that particular new plant will be on the separation of the heavier earths, the dysprosium, the terbium.

the Cimmerium, which are the really important ones, not only for EVs but also for missiles and your F-35s. So the separation of rare earths in Europe actually, we have a good situation there. So we can do it, we have the skills, we have the equipment to do so. But then of course it's not finished yet.

Once we have the rare oxides separated individually, we need to do the electrolysis to get them into the metal form and then combine them into alloys. There we have one company which is actually now American, it's a British company, Less Common Metals, which have their base in Ellesmere Port, that's the region I come from actually, in the northwest of UK. But they're now also building an extra facility next to the Carresterre

Daniel O'Connor (22:04)
Yep.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (22:18)
plant in the south of France. So we will have the solvent extraction and the alloy, the metal and alloy production in the south of France. But I understand that that production will then go to go to the states for magnet production. So that's not really the story about made in Europe, buy in Europe and produce in Europe where the rare earth metals would then also feed into the magnet plants. For example, Vakuum Schmelzer in Germany that produced

eventually these high quality sintered neodymium iron boron magnets. So yes we have parts of the value chain but it's not always fully integrated and yes we're still short in Europe in terms of the rare earth deposits and mines so we have several deposits in Finland, in Sweden, in Norway

and then the more contested ones in Greenland. That's the Tan Breeze project of Greg Barnes, who is now also related to American owners, understand. So he's from Australia, but it's now becoming an American project. We have the other big famous project of Kwannefeldt in Greenland. That is a Steenstrupine rare earth deposit. in reality, none of these are producing. So these are still in many ways PowerPoint.

Daniel O'Connor (23:31)
you

Dr. P. Tom Jones (23:42)
project. So we don't have one single operational rare earth in Europe. At least you have the mountain pass mine in the States. But of course, as we all know, that's light rare earths. And the true trade war between China and the States is about the heavy rare earths, because those are the really critical ones and less abundant.

Daniel O'Connor (23:43)
Yeah, yeah, they'll do.

Yeah.

And as we all know, those are monopolized

by China 98 % or something like that. Now, and that was ⁓ really, really helpful and ⁓ just flowed through and hopefully everybody appreciates how you just delineated those challenges. And we agree with you, by the way. And we include ⁓ your Institute as part of a center of excellence of the midstream. So Europe.

is critical in the midstream. I have a question, but a comment. What will be fascinating is to see how this unfolding more market-driven industrial policy will pull Europe in as a contributor. Europe may not be in charge of its own destiny because of some of the challenges that you have raised. And I I pose that as a challenge for Europe. Now let's talk about recycling. Look, isn't it true?

that ideally we could find ways to get 25 % of this feedstock recycled. What's in our way? Why aren't we just doing it? I mean, come on, the environmentalists have to line up with that.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (25:21)
Well, it's indeed a big problem. Recently we made another film, not on rare earths, but on the lithium supply chain. So there we looked at the mining, refining and recycling of lithium containing lithium ion batteries. And I think the example I'm going to give now is also quite relevant for critical metals in general, including also for rare earths. But we all know that recycling batteries

should be part and parcel of a comprehensive critical raw material strategy. So if you have critical metals in your technosphere you need to recycle them because it means you need to mine less and you're more strategic autonomous. So if you look at the battery recycling situation in Europe at this moment it is catastrophic. All the potential battery recycling companies like Umicore

RUBI, SOVER and now also BASF one by one they have pulled out of the battery recycling investment business. So all the plans that they had for building big battery recycling plants 50 kilopounds per annum of recycling capacity one by one these projects are put on hold or even scrapped entirely.

So the big battery recycling players in Europe are seemingly giving up on battery recycling. Now, of course, the question is, why is that the case? It's a complex story, but a very problematic story, I would say. Well, first of all, problem number one is there is no sufficient feed for these potential battery recycling plants.

because all our end of life batteries and all our battery scrap that is processed into black mass is at this moment being sold to China and Korea for processing there. So we're leaking our black mass, it's moving away from European potential recycling centers and going to China and Korea where it's processed.

Secondly, if we would have battery recycling plants in Europe, we would be producing lithium hydroxide, nickel sulfate, cobalt sulfate, manganese sulfate, battery grade. Now the problem for those companies would be that they would not find an off-taker for those recycled products. They would be relatively expensive. ⁓

And the problem there is that we don't have in Europe a lot of PCAM or CAM facilities, so precursor cathode active material facilities and cathode active material facilities. So if they would recycle and they produce the recycled products, they wouldn't be able to sell them because there is no capacity for the next step in the battery supply chain. And thirdly, of course, the economic uncertainty is massive.

see the present prices for certain commodities that are coming from China are so low that they can't produce.

those recycled products at that cost. So the operational cost would be simply too high. So it means it's a business which is economically at this moment not viable unless it would be heavily subsidized by the European Union or by member states, which we don't tend to do. We don't tend to massively subsidize production or provide OPEC or CAPEX support. So the reality is battery recycling at this moment is not

Dustin Olsen (29:02)
Thank

Dr. P. Tom Jones (29:08)
competitive and that's the paradox because on the one hand we get criticized if we defend the mining industry that we should focus more on recycling the environmentalists correctly saying I agree with that we should massively recycle but if there is no business case for the recycling activity to happen then it will not happen and we are still dependent on imports so coming to the the magnets is also

complicated story because we know that the magnets are not always integrated into the motors in such a way that it is easy to get them out of these motors. So we've had some studies with companies here in Europe that often show that the cost of getting the magnets out of the motor is actually too high compared to just buying virgin rare earths from China. So again, also for magnet recycling,

massive challenge to demanufacture the end of life products, get the magnets out and then recycle them. Of course there are situations where you have huge wind turbines, you have bulky

magnets, large volumes, not a different story there, it can be more economical. But if you're talking about a Toyota Prius, for example, then you will see that it's very challenging to recycle the magnets cost-effectively. Again, it's the paradox, we should recycle more. ⁓

But it's not happening because the costs of that activity are too high and the political financial support from the European Union or from the member states is not sufficient. We don't know this concept of output based supports or minimum prices in Europe. You have that now with Trump in the States. have minimum prices for rare earths that are much higher than the market prices.

You have minimum content requirements, or actually quite high. You have OPEX-based supports. In the former Inflation Reduction Act of Joe Biden, you had these very clear output-based reports. So per kilogram of produced metal or recycled metal, you get a certain…

remuneration, which allows you to compete with the Chinese. But in Europe, we don't have anything of that. We're talking about it. We're talking about potentially integrating it. That's also the new plan now of the EU, the resource EU plan that has been recently launched. So they talk about starting to use minimum prices and some kind of output based support, but it's not there yet. So, yes, that's the problem of the European Union.

Daniel O'Connor (31:53)
Yeah.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (31:58)
That's great, but in times of a war, as we have now, in times of a very tough race, we are very slow in reacting, very slow in changing the financial structure and mechanisms in order to allow private actors to be cost effective. And that is holding us back, of course. we should recycle, but we're not doing it because it's not economically viable.

Daniel O'Connor (32:26)
Yeah, yeah, no, and what?

Dustin Olsen (32:28)
So a

quick question academically, you said mining was losing favor, programs were closing in institutions ⁓ from metallurgy, recycling. Is there interest in those programs or are those also suffering interest as well?

Dr. P. Tom Jones (32:49)
Yes, the metallurgic schools also suffer from interest because we clearly have a perception problem, that's quite clear. Students prefer to learn about self-driving cars or artificial intelligence or robots or that kind of automated technology. So we see ⁓ across the European universities that the metallurgical schools are also suffering from having local students.

what we typically have is that a lot of the PhD students will come from abroad and not from the EU but from much further away from countries for example like Turkey and Iran where they have a tradition of metallurgy and you have a really good metallurgist in those countries so there we still see a lot of master thesis students from those countries that try to come to Europe then for the PhD programs

But that's also now getting more more complicated because we have all kinds of difficulties to get people into our programs because they're blocked by the migration. ⁓

problems that we see. So we have single permit procedures that make it, for example, very difficult to recruit a PhD student or a young postdoc from outside of Europe to Europe. It takes six to 12 months to get the person to come to come and work, for example, here at Kailua. We've often seen that we've lost high quality students or high quality postdocs that have already been trained really well. And we try to get them into our

research center here in Leuven and we've lost them because the procedure took so long that they gave up eventually.

Dustin Olsen (34:35)
So which is interesting that that's the case. So the EU on one hand is saying we want to mine 10%. We want to process 40%. We want to recycle 25%. But yet, you don't have the talent pool to necessarily pull from and getting people to come into the EU is increasingly more difficult. So are there incentives that are going on? Like, do they want more salary? Like, how are we going to like turn this around?

Dr. P. Tom Jones (35:04)
Well we have no incentives whatsoever that's not happening we just try to be

We tried to create new narratives. think that's essential. That's also what we try to do with our documentaries. And in the future, will also make a new vodcast myself called Raw Matters. So we try to explain that if we want to transition to a low carbon, smart circular economy system, then we're going to need metals and we're going to need metallurgists and we need the geologists to do so. So we try to frame that in a positive way.

I think we are gaining some traction and we are getting ⁓ very positive visibility. For example, our Kailova Institute, SimSquare, we have 400 researchers in the field.

probably half of those would be from abroad but still we have a very large group of high quality researchers, very interdisciplinary from geologists to all kind of different engineers to chemists to people from economy, psychology, law faculty, environmentalists, environmental chemists so we have broad range of people across the board and we, I think with Sims Square, we are capable of showing the importance of producing the metal

for the cleantech storyline but the only problem that I have now is that my storyline is now being spoiled in a certain way by the fact that we are seeing that the same metals that I'm always talking about rare earths, lithium, copper and so on are now increasingly being used for

the wrong activity, so to speak, to kill each other. we see this whole quest for rare earths now to produce missiles and F-35s. That's also the reason why Trump is so interested in Greenland. Well, one of the reasons apart from the control, it's definitely also about the

the fact that there are some good rare earth deposits including deposits with heavy rare earths, eudialite based deposits in Greenland and with climate change this is very cynical I would say because in the former Greenland of a couple of decades ago it's unthinkable to mine there it's just simply too cold, too expensive, too difficult no infrastructure, no energy, no roads, no ports it's too difficult to mine those deposits but now with

with climate change. It's like climate change itself is being weaponized. It's like we want climate change to happen so that the ice melts in that area so we have better access to those ports, we can build roads and then we're producing those rare earths not to produce clean transport which is my goal, clean transport and clean energy for direct drive wind turbines, for electric bicycles, electric vehicles but now we're going to use those

precious heavy-air earths to produce missiles to kill each other that was not my original intention and that's more difficult for me to sell also to to my my kids for example at home

Dustin Olsen (38:20)
Yeah, that's really interesting ⁓ that, yeah, there's just a lot of contradiction in this space and I hope that we can figure it out. ⁓ So if, to kind of wrap up our show here, you've given us a lot of great insight and information into ⁓ what's going on over in Europe. ⁓

If you could maybe just summarize for us, you know, looking into the future, ⁓ what do you hope that people truly understand about metallurgy and what they avoid in the future so that we can have these breakthroughs that we can be more self-sustaining?

Dr. P. Tom Jones (39:11)
Yeah, I think it's really for Europe and probably a lot of that is also relevant for the States. We really have to change the narrative. So we are seeing that a lot of deindustrialization has happened in Europe. And in a way, we are decarbonizing and reaching our climate goals in Europe.

which is good, but why is it happening? It's because basically we're exporting our production. So we've exported our production, we have massively deindustrialized, we are seeing that chemical industry, the steel industry, the car industry, they're all suffering. Companies are pulling out of Europe, companies are going bankrupt. So we're losing that industrial base.

But that's clearly not the way to decarbonize. We should decarbonize by

reindustrializing and transforming the dirty industry of the past into a clean tech based industry. So I want to see the car industry to be transformed into a green EV and electric bus industry. I want to see the traditional petrochemical industry to be transformed into the ecological chemistry and cleaner chemistry and biochemistry. So I don't want the chemistry industry to die. I want the chemistry

Daniel O'Connor (40:25)
Thanks

Dr. P. Tom Jones (40:34)
industry to transform and the same for the steel industry. So we want to move towards low carbon steel production and in fact in Europe we do have the capabilities to do so but again it's this economic paradox that producing greener steel is more expensive than producing dirty steel and if you then compete in open markets with China who can dump their heavily subsidized CO2 rich steel on the European market at low price

then of course the green steel production in Europe will not come to fruition and we're seeing that now that a lot of the plans we had to produce this green and clean steel and chemistry is not happening because of the economics and that's what I want to bring to people in our documentaries and in our vodcasts and in every interview I give that we need to develop a consistent storyline where we produce metal

and chemicals.

and final equipment that is needed to transition to this climate neutral circular economy. But we can't just say we want on the one hand this climate neutral economy and on the other hand we don't want industry in Europe. Then we're just hypocritical. But not only that in the present new world, in the world where we see more fortresses and less openness and less collaboration. In that world of fortresses it's also dumb stupid.

to be strategically completely dependent on the rest of the world for your basic needs. So that's a story I try to bring and I'm trying to make it clear that we need high ESG standards all the time. That's the only way to win over population in a place like Europe. But on the other hand, we also have to be somewhat realistic if we have…

too high demand that are even contradicting the thermodynamic limits, second law of thermodynamics, for example, yes, in that case, then we will have the perfect production process or better than what is

thermodynamically possible, but it will not happen in reality. It just be a PowerPoint idea and a bad PowerPoint idea. So we need to be realistic about what is possible and we need to have a consistent storyline. And let's produce the metals for the clean tech applications rather than for F35s.

Dustin Olsen (43:12)
Absolutely. And great insight. And if I were to maybe summarize this, if you enjoy your way of life, you probably want to get involved in what Europe really needs in terms of mining, processing, and recycling. Otherwise, your way of life is dependent on other countries, in fact. So ⁓ Daniel, anything you want to end with?

Daniel O'Connor (43:37)
Yeah, no, first of all, we're honored to have you. We'd love to have you again as the dynamism happening around the world unfolds. Just a brief ⁓ elevator pitch for Raw Matters. We want to support you with that, as well as the SIM2 Institute. What can companies and organizations come to SIM2 for? And when does Raw Matters start?

and we're happy to support you.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (44:09)
We're finishing the studio now and we're getting ready for the first recordings. And in terms of our research, we are active across the board. ⁓

hydrometallurgy work, solvent extraction is our unique selling proposition. I have the pleasure to work with the most cited hydrometallurgist and solvent extraction expert in the world, Professor Kuhn Bineman. So if you have problems with your solvent extraction process, you can come to us and we can see if we can solve it, especially for rare earths where we have our true expertise.

And if you think in terms of new documentaries, that's a question I often get as well. I would love to make a documentary about the rare earth paradox like we did for lithium because it's even more complicated and it also brings Greenland into the picture and many more different steps than we see for the lithium battery supply chain. But the problem with making documentaries of course is the same as for everything you need funding.

funding and that's coming at a premium nowadays because with all the competition we see from China, the reality is that the research funding in member states in Europe is drastically being reduced and we see universities are in trouble all over Europe trying to secure the funding to keep the size of the research groups that we have. So this is a common problem in Europe.

That also means that budgets for making documentaries are coming at the premium as well. So if you have any ideas there, then I was open because I would love to have a documentary where we show the complexity of the rare earths to finally explain to Mr. Trump that there is a difference between rare earths and critical metals because… ⁓

Daniel O'Connor (46:01)
Yeah.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (46:03)
Trump

and also many journalists will not understand the difference between the broad group of critical metals and a very specific group of the 17 rare earth elements. So I would like to make a documentary for Mr. Trump to explain the difference between rare earths and light and heavy earths as well and on the other hand the broader group of critical metals. I think it's time we have such a product to show to the world on its way.

Daniel O'Connor (46:29)
think I will just share quickly, we will try to help you with that endeavor. We do have ⁓ followers that are in Washington and I do believe that Washington DC needs to have a direct collaboration with SIM2. So we're gonna work on that. ⁓ Dustin.

Dustin Olsen (46:48)
Absolutely. Tom, thank you so much for joining our show and sharing your wealth of knowledge with us. And to those who are listening or watching this podcast, give us a thumbs up wherever you are listening or watching to this and subscribe to the show so you don't miss a future episode. Tom, thanks again. And like Daniel said, we hope to have you again on the show and get an update.

Dr. P. Tom Jones (47:13)
was my pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me.