Europe Has Zero Minerals 

Hi guys, Two map corrections for this video: -Chile is not on the map of copper producing countries (it is the largest copper producing country in the world) -Crimea is twice shown as being part of Russia (it is part of Ukraine)

Funny how a game called civilization made this abundantly clear throughout the series. When I played it, I came to realize how important resources were and happily invaded the ai to obtain it, never realizing how this happens for real as well. Politics is shaped around the access to resources

My understanding is that China has 90% of the world's production, not supply. Rare earths are everywhere, they are just incredibly expensive to harvest, and it is usually not cost effective at first. The Chinese state invested heavily in rare earth production to get over the initial cost-revenue deficit, but hypothetically any country could do this. Sparcely populated countries like the US, Australia, Canada, and Russia are well positioned for this, but it is one of those rare economic things that

There are also plans to open up Lithium mines in southwestern Spain (Extremadura). The regional government there also fought hard to have the Lithium processed on site, rather than have it shipped elsewhere. Some European incentives could have helped make that happen faster.

The potential use of gold by some nations and the reasons why people might choose to invest in gold, such as its historical value, potential as a hedge against inflation, and diversification benefits. However, it emphasizes that investing in gold carries risks and may not be suitable for everyone, and investors should consider their investment objectives, risk tolerance, and financial situation before making any decisions.

"The European Union only has 6.8% of the world's landmass, so it makes sense that it has fewer raw materials." China has 6.3 and the US 6.1 so who exactly were you comparing too?

I honestly just wanted to point out the map you used, there's a great attention to details. Even French Guyana is shown as part of the EU

Not a European but here in America we used to produce rare earth elements but the massive problem is the environment disaster that goes along with production

Several point of interest: 1. China account for 95% of the world Rare Earth supply was based on a study back in 1980s which several things has drastically changed, in 2000s, the official reserve number is 528 million tons, while in 2009 that number decreased to 185 million tons 2. Additional survey on previous uncharted area such as the EEZ of Japan has proven there are abundant rare earth supply, as the demand and price increase, we should expect to see more and more previously unknown mining area within horizon. 3. The word 'reserve deposit' is a somewhat tricky terms, within EU border, there are in fact quite some large scale LREEs deposit, in Northern Spain and Poland and North sea as well as EEZ of Portugal but due to environmental regulation or government policy, mining in those area are either economic non viable or forbidden and therefore excluded in the data 4. Rare earth indeed provide China a leverage, but so far not a very effective one, the 2015 TWO rule out in EU, Japan favor against China limitation on element export, and lets not forget China rely 100% on ASML EUV lithography systems that is why the the embargo on China in 2019 nearly bankrupt the tech giants. 5. the Belt and road initiative has engulfed China own fiscal strength as well, their intention is to expand influence indeed but there is a reason why World Bank of the West did not invest in those developing countries either the ability to repay the investment or simply geopolitical stability, take Congo as an example, they recently revoke the copper mining right of a Chinese firm after the Chinese promise of funding on local hospital has not meet the schedule.

china : start monopolizing minerals eu : you cant do that, that is always our thing to do

Interestingly, mining as an industry died in the 1980's and 1990's in the UK. But there WERE mines in Britain for lots of different elements and compounds. In fact I believe gypsum is one of the few raw materials still mined here. Copper and tin were famously mined in Cornwall right from the earliest days. And to my knowledge mining only stopped here because it became "uneconomic", with mines across the globe opening up where there were cheaper labour costs, government subsidised minerals etc. So may be, with all the rare earth metal needs, and even the need for copper, mining for elements will return to the UK???

Corporations in US & Europe , 1980s : omg let's build all our shit in China so that it's super cheap US & Europe, thirty years later: omg now all our shit is made in China *surprised pikachu face*

Isn’t Chile a copper producing country? I know they have massive copper mines

Europe and countries in the west, followed by Russia actually have the largest reserves of raw materials, minerals and rare earth metals than anywhere on the planet but they have refused to mine them so far because it’s a very dirty and environmentally disastrous business (except for South America and Australia), but Europe should focus on mining them if absolutely necessary and they should also focus on mining near earth asteroids which have more resources than the earth could ever have, pretty sure Greenland alone has the potential to be among the top 5 mineral rich country in the world.

6:36 Germany has also quite a lot of Lithium in the Oberrheingraben which could (in theory) be "mined" extremely efficiently and carbon neutral or even negative. Europe has a lot of material but the cheap prices for those materials from China make them uneconomic to mine.

Europe needs to grow a pair and start their own mining instead of grandstanding about their environmental policies while still funding other countries who mine it to sell to them.

The most important are iron (for steel), alumina (for aluminium), silica (for silicon) and carbon. Fortunately these are widely available. Rare earths and many other more exotic materials are replaceable, albeit sometimes at a cost.

Yes, well the info the makers of this video work with are where things like rare earth minerals are currently mined, not necessarily where they are located. There are decent amounts of things critical rare earth minerals in Europe. They aren't being mined however, and given the environmental impact it's not particularly politically popular in those parts of Europe where they are located.

in theory, recycling would and should be one of the many things to do in europe, but in practice, it may not be that easy, especially when it comes to recycling anything seemingly hitech, where components would use very specific metal alloys in varying quantities, which may make them difficult if not impossible to separate and reuse, as opposed to just melting some copper wires or steel bars.

“Europe has no minerals” Spain, Sweden, Denmark (Greenland), Estonia: lol are we joke for you?

Couldn't one also argue that Because Europe has been so reliant on imports it hasn't spent as much money on locating domestic deposits? There's a large amount of lithium that was discovered in Cornwall (Southern England), surely other countries in Europe will begin to find large deposits now that EV are being prioritized?

Mining use to be more common in the west but has been outsourced to other countries due to the pollution is causes and increased safety means increased cost. There was a rare earth mineral mining facility in Nevada that was shut down. Rare earth minerals are not that rare, just difficult to obtain and very expensive if you care about things like pollution/the enviroment, workers rights, and not cutting corners (which China doesn’t care about those things.)

Didn’t Sweden just discover the biggest rare earth mineral deposit in Europe, that could satisfy up to 30% of Europe’s demand?

I really hope to see that Europe can become a leader when it comes to recycling those materials. You mention export controls by China, I hope we will have even stricter export controls ourselves since we need to be so much more careful with the raw materials we do have and with our scrap. I think in the past we have often shipped electronic waste to other non-EU countries, I would hope that this will not occur anymore. I think a first step should be to create giant storage facilities/piles for old electronics if we don't already have them, so that we can store old solar panels/e-waste for 20 years if we have to until recycling catches up. If we are really serious about recycling rare earths it should be prohibited to export certain types of electronic waste.

We don't need your fancy minerals. We got mineralwater!

Worlds biggest iron ore mine in Sweden just made a MASSIVE rem find!

"Copper Producing Countries" Not a single mention of Chile, who has been sitting in a pile of copper for the past 60 years.

The only solution is to massively scale up material sciences, to the point where you could turn "trash" into a new, viable product.

Please STOP using the Mercator map projection. Use a 3D globe next time in your graphics. The Mercator map projection is grossly inaccurate.

Improvement of recycling only works if the initial product design incorporated the recyclability, and the downstream recycling industry has the capability to process these products. All these would have added to the cost and complexity, while China product design and supply chains may not even care much about this aspect of recyclability so that can offer cheaper products.

I just came here to say *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *NOT ENOUGH MINERALS* *YOU REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS*

Basically you can mine every resource anywhere on earth but there are significant differences in ore richness so mining a poor source would be possible but much more expensive and thus not competetive on the global economy

2:55 both "natural rubber" and "natural rubber"?😉 Love your videos. Great information on some really important topics.

says Europe, repeatedly shows maps of the EU.

Most people got it wrong. It’s not who has rare earth in their ground, it’s about who can refine them to the purity level that you can use for certain products. For that,China has the technology and patents that other countries doesn’t

With Europe facing the consequences of relying on foreign sources for its power, specifically Russia, and them now facing a very cold winter, I can't help but wonder if in the process of trying to save the planet, we've neglected to save the people living on it.

I’ve heard the EU has enough Critical raw materials, but due to investment and ecological regions they don’t want to develop mining.

The extracting process of the rare earth element(including lithium) is one of the most polluting chemical processes to local environments, if not the most. Varies of highly concentrated highly toxic acids used in the process guarantee a minor amount of them will pollute the nearby rivers/underground waters. Most of the rare earth elements (REE) are heavy metals which can be bio-accumulated in the local area. Most of these toxic acids and REE have no safe amount, and anything above zero is damaging. In China, the cancer rate (when adjusted for age) is highest in areas when REE is mined and extracted, even significantly surpassing areas with open pit coal mines or areas with large petrochemical plants and steel-making plants. All of the above areas are governed by the same standard and environment agency. You can set a "limit" for these pollutants and control the decrease in life expectancy to an acceptable level. Life expectancy can be compensated by increasing the standard of living and health care from the money that REE brings in. These "limits" will make REE costs significantly higher than in China. From my engineering capstone project completed in 2019, it will be around 30-50% above the 2019 price with Canadian or EU standards. REE is quite abundant around the world, even Japan has a large deposit. I remember reading somewhere that Europe has a large deposit of REE are Spain and Poland. There are obviously national security reasons not to rely on China to supply close to 100% of REE. But also, I don't think anyone would want REE mining and extraction near them. Unless they are poor and desperate to the point that they don't get basic, adequate health care by western standards.

Thanks for putting sources in the description, so we can have a look on those datas too Just discovered your channel, the fact that you put source is an extra point Keep on going

As everyone who looks into this matter knows, rare earths are not rare. They are difficult and expensive to extract and process and as a result, expensive. For example, the mined ore often contains radioactive material which must then be disposed of. Europe and the US don't want these problems so they outsource to China.

Took fast look to Finnish survey data and sure there are some minerals. Not sure how much it counts on world scale.. Iron, Chromium trioxide, Sulphur, Copper, Nickel, Zinc, Cobalt, Lithium dioxide, Lead, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Palladium (from largest to smallest)

Thank you so much for such quality videos 🔥🇪🇺 Congrats from France 🇫🇷🇪🇺

Interesting not a single mention of Silver. It's used in every electronic device. Solar panels use a lot of it. The EU might just want to add that to the list.

Adam Smith, in his works 'The Wealth of Nations' actually predicted that 200 to 250 after his time, there would be new sources of gold found. There is more to it, but I want to keep this short. Anyways, in my opinion, that was the most accurate prediction ever made, beating out Nostradamus. However, a lot has actually been found in the asteroid belt, along with all the other minerals, like copper and titanium, so if we want to gain access this, then we'll need to start sending robots to mine the belt, one good thing seems to be that the gold found in, for whatever, on the surface. Being soft, and on the surface, the gold can be easily mined, as well there seems to be *A LOT* of not just gold, and even silver, enough silver to rewire, at least, the U.S. electric grid for a better energy flow. However, be warned, as he also mentioned one component of the downfall of the Spanish Empire, when they.....uh.....he said 'found' which was true, the Spaniards did 'find' gold in the New world, as it was, you know, sort of being already minded by somebody else- (nervous cough) Anyways, when the gold came back to the old world, the Spaniards started to spend that gold, which was the problem, there was far too much, and far too few hands, eventually devaluing the metal. If we mine that gold, we technically don't need it to reach Earth, as we will know it exist, and can get an exact amount in the first phases, down to the smallest gram of gold, which on such a scale has never been down before, while working on ways to send it back to Earth, devaluing the gold. I can see how countries like China could exploit this, weakening other nations gold and silver based economies. The point being is, that though Europe may have no minerals, space dose, and in the belt is easy pickings, I can see how this could lead to very real wars.

This is wrong. Sweden found one of the biggest rare earth mineral deposits recently.

China was the centre of the world civilization historically and now it feels the dragon is waking up again from its slumber.

China produces a lot of rare earths because nobody wanted to develop separation processes. Today there is a lot more of technology for this in a safer way and China is highly polluted as a trade off.

How do you list the copper producing countries in 2:25 and miss Chile, the biggest producer of them all?

"Developing partnerships with the key suppliers" can't you just call it for what it is -- "Imperialism"?

Strange how Chile, Argentina and Australia have together 105% of the Lithium of the world

Greenland "am I joke to you?!" chucks a piece of glacier at continental Europe

Its amazing that you made this video without ever mentioning the giant Russia!

Gotta appreciate the irony of green energy actually being really bad for the environment in many cases. Carbon emissions are just one factor but it's all the tree huggers seem to care about.

You are missing that Greenland is part of EU, and has huge mineral potential!. Great videos by the way ;)

China is just a civ that got really lucky with their early settlement because late game they got all the modern strategic resources

i find it dumb how for example europe starting to struggle with resources yet they still havent started a space industry, theres so much free resource in space to collect , way more than you could ever get on earth and its better for the earth, the only way is up and resources on earth are finite

Weer een mooie productie!

It should be noted that the race to “clean” energy is fueled by oil😂 and the demand for oil will not decrease in future years even if all cars were to be made electric. Oil is used for more than just energy, things like plastics and other petrochemicals. Also those batteries for those “clean” cars aren’t recyclable.

Gotta love the hand-waivey "we'll just recycle them" answer lol. With what, magic? That isn't how any of this works.

Why is there so much focus on Europe when less than eight percent of humanity lives there?

Not true, Portugal has big lithium deposits and Sweden has precious metals, that could be mined. The future of energy is very likely nucleair for most, not green energy.

This is some rare qualify content, appreciate from China. ♥️🇨🇳😘

EU needs to invest more into recyckling

So what you are saying is that we Europeans should go back to the age of colonialism and secure the necessary mines. Okay. Got it.

A very simple solution: stop building bird chopping wind turbines and build more nuclear power plants.

Europe has trillions of tons of minerals, the problem is getting at them cheaply enough. In 200 years when oil has gone there will still be the ultra rich racing around in petrol cars because they'll be the only ones rich enough to pay 10,000 euros a litre.

Norway has the "Mohns Rygg" formation being explored for subsea mining. Seafloor mining may be the future especially in volcano active area belonging to Norway, Iceland, Azore/Portugal, Italy etc.

Thanks for sharing. Great video. As a highly civilized, wealthy and free Union, we have obligations to reach out and create trade agreements that benefits both trading partners. The closest is the African Union. This development in trade will benefit both economy and security. If we look at South America, Mercansur is both historically and linguistically a good opertunity for both parts! It seems like short term profit is valued over a balanced Earth. Hopefully this trade agreement negotiation will be brought back soon,

Сhina: Develops. U$: Сhina back! EU: What? Oh, ok, ok master - Сhina bad! Me: ...

you forgot coal in your comparison. And different to coal you can recycle copper up to 100%.

Actually Europe still have minerals. In Spain they have discovered their old tin mines contain a previously undesirable mineral worth mining now - Lithium. Its not everything, but its a decent concentration.

Another reason why nuclear power makes sense to me. The world will use exponential amounts of raw resources for wind and solar. Ressources that future generations will need

and from this, we easily get the conclusion that the european union (and not europe, as it is constantly used in this and many other video) has to be on good term with one major nation that is not mentioned here, but has large landmass, massive mineral wealth, and actually a country partly (in some aspect mostly) in europe, russia. oh, wait, the eu does the complete opposite of this obvious and literally no brainer step. hmm...

Sweden has the worlds largest uranium deposit, and that same deposit is also the worlds 4th largest vanadium deposit. There is also huge amounts of nickel, potash, REE, coper IRON, and graphite, all in Sweden.

It's absolutely not true, Europe is full of minerals they just don't extract them because its cheaper and cleaner to import them.

This is a reason Swedens future importance as a supplier for Europe of Rare Earth Minerals cannot be understated. Local politics have hampered the usage of the vast quantites of important minerals for decades, but that is changing. In the next few years Sweden is set to become the main producer in Europe of Rare Earth Minerals, covering about 30% of the total need - from just one mine alone. Now, if the green party that despite being very small has influenced politics to a great deal, doesn't get any parlimentary seats in the upcoming election (which can happen, they are very close to the edge of not being allowed to enter parliment at around 4,1-4,3% of the votes and the limit being 4%) then things can get really wild. Sweden could become the most important supplier of several minerals, metals and uranium (coupled with thorium for that sweet sweet 4'th gen nuclear option the world is hoping for) that could single handedly revert the european energy crisis - for between 500 and 1500 years depending on if Europe uses 3'th gen or 4'th gen nuclear power.

Europe has these raw materials. It's just expensive AF to mine. Also, Europe is made up of 30+ different countries. China, Russia, and USA are Huge landmass countries.

Many projections made today are based on looking in the rear vision mirror, which is expected, but often provides us with the wrong answer if we project out too far. If a commodity becomes scares its price goes up and new supply sources become viable.

A few Years ago, in Serbia, there has been Discovered a Huge Mine of Lithium, but People living there said no, so they canceled the Mining. Also, there has been a discovery of Huge Lithium Deposits in Germany!

For those countries (think Lithuania, and Sweden) that side with Taiwan ($180 billion GDP) as a trade partner over China ($18 trillion GDP), China's recent announcement might pose a challenge. On December 24, 2023, China implemented an export ban on rare-earth mining and manufacturing technology. This move was actually in response to the recent discovery of a massive rare earth mine in Wyoming, USA. Currently, there is only 1 company in the US that is focusing on rare-earth mining, and it formed only in recent months from substantial US govt funding. Europe, wishing you good luck in navigating this situation.

RIP Hank, you would've hated Europe.

Europe MUST conquer world 🌍 for minerals 😮

I think one of the things that this analysis misses is that it is possible for us to get access to these materials from known areas, but the cost of mining and processing would need to be be off set by demand. prior to the discovery in china, the US which is generally considered mineral poor, made almost all of the worlds "rare earth metals"

Yes indeed, the key point you mentioned comes at 4.00, to paraphrase; the key to this is the critical political will to mine and develop these minerals. I live Downunder, where the political will to develop anything under the ground is lacking. We have some of these, but not the will, yet.

Well half true, Norway and Sweden are some the most mineral stacked countries in the worlds.

they can't fart minerals, they could never do that, they have always bought them and they will always buy them. what a video

´´when faced with problems, turn to the past for answers``- a sentimental european who knows history

Yup. Politics does make a large degree of the difference, adjusted for land size. There's plenty of rare earths all around. The issue? Many Western nations so heavily restrict, if not ban it, that no one bothers. Just like how there's plenty of oil. But "Ew, oil extraction. That's icky. We need to go green." ... while buying Russian oil. And begging the Saudis for theirs. Yes. Sure. Right. Restrict your own supply and production while empowering dictators and repressive regimes.. What a lovely idea.

Sweden is a good example of Politics. We have lots and lots of important minerals, but the Feminist government ruling with Environmentalists have shut down every attempt at opening new mines. Even though the new mines would uphold EU's new environmental standards on mines. Let alone in South we don't have any electricity because the same Feminist government shut down nuclear plants to "save the world". So new factories can't really open anyways, or mines, due to energy issues. Politics will fuck the World more than anything, especially when it's Left Radical Politic like most of Europe is plagued with.

On the 3rd point, geopolitics, EU could easily have decided to integrate with the BRI but alas it gave in to US pressure to decouple with China. Only time will tell if that was the right move.

The G7's plan to rival China's BRI is an absolute joke

This is wrong. Europe has minerals. We just don't want to expend them. Why should we empty our deposits when the 3rd world is happily selling theirs to us and we sell them the processed and refined products back for many times the value of the original mineral? If they run out, we will still have our own deposits.

Its called healthy competition. The US could build a mutually beneficial relationship with China, but that would mean cutting down on military consumption. The other option is war. Of course, Europe could develop nuclear energy, but that would not be as profitable as oil, gas, solar and wind.

You really need to update your sourses for this video. Both Sweden and Norway have reasently discoverd large deposits of thees rare earth materials,

1. Australia is a politically stable, educated, westernised nation. 2. Australia is huge. You could fit the entire EU into it. It is the last large habitable but low populated place in the world. It is the only real county left on the world with growth potential. 3. Australia has MASSIVE natural resources. It has the world's largest resources of gold, iron ore, lead, rutile, tantalum, uranium, zinc and zircon and the second largest resources of bauxite, brown coal, cobalt, copper, ilmenite, lithium, nickel, and tungsten. It has huge deposits of gas and oil (both offshore and onshore) and most of the rare earths. It is now the worlds largest exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (80.9 million tonnes in 2021). It has 47% of the worlds known Lithium deposits., 4. Australia gets a lot of sunshine for solar power. A LOT of sunshine. 6,700 petawatt hours per annum of it. Enough to power the entire world one hudred times over. . Singapore is building a huge network of solar panels in Australia and an undersea cable. The Sun Cable project will add AU$8 billion to the economy of the Northern Territory, then exporting AU$2 billion of electricity every year. 5. Australia has huge fishing grounds ( 8 million square kilometres of exclusive fishing) with extensive fish stocks like Barramundi and Snapper. We consumed 360,000 tonnes of fish in 2021. 6. Australia has huge arable farming county - 31 Million hectares. Our beef and lamb is some of the best in the world. In 2021 out beef exports totalled 854,596 tonnes (the entire EU only exported 1 million tonnes). Our lamb exports were 284,257 tonnes. We produced 36.6 million tonnes of wheat and 13.4 million tonnes of Barley in 2021. Thats more than the entire EU. 7. Australia has one of the longest coastlines in the world, at 34,000 km. 8. Australia has more snow on its snowfields than France, or Italy or Switzerland. It has 10 deserts, including one of the largest in the world. It has huge jungles and tropical rainforests. And it’s GDP per capita in 2021 was higher than France and equal to Germany. Now it’s MUCH higher The Eu tried to do a Free Trade Agreement with us. BUT France wouldnt allow the import of Australian agricultutral producs, so no deal. The UK did a deal. The UK was smart.

There is plenty of ore in Antarctica! But the climate would have to warm up a bit... 😉

Europe and Russia have every mineral needed

Finally someone called them Minerals, not rocks

Europe is a service/import economy, which is why we like freetrade, we don't want to pay duties on the goods we import. It effects GDP

It's as if no one has heard of recycling...it HAS to be factored into new product costs and building them to make recovery easier...