Post by pling on Jan 6, 2016 19:04:53 GMT
Fra bluemining.eu, 06. januar 2015
Breakthrough Solutions for Mineral Extraction and Processing in Extreme Environment – Blue Mining (2014-2018)
- Earth provides natural resources, such as fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for human life. As the global demand grows, especially for strategic metals, commodity prices rapidly rise. Thus there is an identifiable risk of increasing supply shortage for metals identified as critical to Europe’s economy. Hence a major element in Europe’s long-term economic strategy must be, to ensure security of supply for these strategic metals. In this rapidly changing global economic landscape, mining in the deep sea has gone from a distant possibility to a likely reality within just a decade.
- The overall objective of Blue Mining is to provide breakthrough solutions for a sustainable deep sea mining value chain. This means to develop the technical capabilities to adequately and cost-effectively discover, assess and extract deep sea mineral deposits up to 6,000 m water depths as this is the required range where valuable seafloor mineral resources are found. The control over these three capabilities is the key for access to raw materials, for decreasing EU dependency on resource imports and for strengthening Europe’s mining sector and their technology providers.
- The extreme conditions found on the deep-ocean floor raise specific challenges, both technically and environmentally, which are demanding and entirely different from land-based mining. Today, European offshore industries and marine research institutions have some global advantage through their significant experience and technology and are well positioned to develop engineering and knowledge-based solutions to resource exploitation in these challenging and sensitive environments.
Breakthrough Solutions for Mineral Extraction and Processing in Extreme Environment – Blue Mining (2014-2018)
- Earth provides natural resources, such as fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for human life. As the global demand grows, especially for strategic metals, commodity prices rapidly rise. Thus there is an identifiable risk of increasing supply shortage for metals identified as critical to Europe’s economy. Hence a major element in Europe’s long-term economic strategy must be, to ensure security of supply for these strategic metals. In this rapidly changing global economic landscape, mining in the deep sea has gone from a distant possibility to a likely reality within just a decade.
- The overall objective of Blue Mining is to provide breakthrough solutions for a sustainable deep sea mining value chain. This means to develop the technical capabilities to adequately and cost-effectively discover, assess and extract deep sea mineral deposits up to 6,000 m water depths as this is the required range where valuable seafloor mineral resources are found. The control over these three capabilities is the key for access to raw materials, for decreasing EU dependency on resource imports and for strengthening Europe’s mining sector and their technology providers.
- The extreme conditions found on the deep-ocean floor raise specific challenges, both technically and environmentally, which are demanding and entirely different from land-based mining. Today, European offshore industries and marine research institutions have some global advantage through their significant experience and technology and are well positioned to develop engineering and knowledge-based solutions to resource exploitation in these challenging and sensitive environments.