NEPC calls for critical materials strategy to protect and strengthen UK’s economic security

A new report from the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) has emphasised the importance of reducing the UK’s reliance on imported critical
and scarce materials such as lithium and magnesium by increasing domestic
recovery, reuse and recycling.
The NEPC is calling on the government to implement a ‘comprehensive and robust
materials strategy’ that protects and strengthens the UK’s economic security by
taking proactive steps to avoid supply chain disruptions caused by escalating
demand for these critical resources.
A partnership of 42 professional engineering organisations led by the Royal
Academy of Engineering, the NEPC also warns how the growing global demand
for critical materials poses environmental risks through material extraction as well
as social harm that goes against global goals of mitigating climate change and a
just transition to net zero.
The Critical materials: demand-side resource efficiency measures for
sustainability and resilience report presents proactive policy and engineering
innovations in the form of 25 recommendations that are designed to reduce the
UK’s dependency on critical materials and consequently its risk exposure.
As the report explains, materials are designated as critical when their anticipated
uses go beyond the expected available supplies. These can be limited for different
reasons such as:
- they are less valuable by-products of other mining activities
- their trade may be particularly subject to geopolitics due to geographical concentration; and
- they are difficult and environmentally damaging to extract.
However, the UK (like many economies) is heavily dependent on them because
they are used across a diverse range of applications, such as electric vehicle
batteries, wind turbines, data centres and consumer electronics such as
smartphones and computers.
Demand-side measures that can help reduce the reliance on the imports and
enhance the UK’s economic security include:
- infrastructure and technology planning that considers material requirements
- during the upstream planning of future energy, transport and digital systems
- design changes that help minimise or eliminate the need for critical
- materials and design skills and cultures that enable this to happen.
- encouraging the circular use of materials that are used through recovery; and
- reuse and recycling.
Practical measures
The 25 recommendations (see below for a selection of key ones but read the report for the full list) provide policymakers with practical measures across these three
demand-side areas.
Developing a materials strategy within UK government will be complex and far
reaching, with implications for many policy areas, argues the NEPC. This is partly
due to a historic reliance on fossil-fuel-powered infrastructure and technologies.
The report calls for a shift to the use of sustainable materials consumption across
infrastructure planning and engineering design at a ‘sustained pace and scale of
deployment normally reserved for acute crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic.’
Professor Joan Cordiner FREng FRSE FIChemE, Chair of the National
Engineering Policy Centre Working Group on Materials and Net Zero, said: "The
way we extract and consume materials is unsustainable and we must address it
urgently. Our report highlights the rising demand for critical materials, driven in
part by their use in batteries, power systems and electronics. We are not the only
country that will be competing for these finite minerals and we are calling on the
new government to develop a materials strategy that addresses demand and reuse
of critical materials.
"For example, if we reduced the size of the UK’s larger electric vehicle batteries by
30%, we could cut our lithium demand by 17% and save 75 million tonnes of rock
mined for lithium by 2040 – that’s the equivalent of 19 Wembley Stadiums full of
rock."
Recommendations for government
- develop a resource strategy for critical materials, which should be integrated into the existing net zero strategy with the aim of managing the necessary trade-offs and reducing unsustainable material consumption, and especially critical materials, in the UK. This should incorporate infrastructure planning, design and market regulation, industrial strategy, trade policy and recycling and waste
- explicitly consider critical materials trade-offs and how they will be managed in future net zero strategies
- implement an economy-wide target to halve the UK’s material footprint, based on raw material consumption
- implement the National Materials Data Hub that has previously been committed to. The hub should capture data on the location, nature and recoverability of material stocks and flows to enable informed policymaking and underpin a materials sustainability strategy
- work internationally to establish monitoring and evaluation for traceability and whole value-chain data collection on the sustainability of materials (including non-greenhouse gas impacts such as pollution and social harms), such as through digital passporting, to ensure that reliable data can be used in decision-making
- national infrastructure planning for energy, transport and digital systems should incorporate assessment of critical material requirements of different technology scenarios
- drive the ongoing sharing of data on material usage in different key energy technologies (as well as in other sectors), currently held in the private sector only
- target and achieve whole-system energy demand reduction, in line with the 15% reduction target introduced as part of the net zero strategy
- review and consider policy options for minimising material demands of future digital systems, including through strategic planning and sustainability certification, with a focus on critical material consumption and e-waste management from data centres. This should be part of the foundations of a wider approach to managing the diverse environmental and energy-use impacts of digital infrastructure
- support facilities to develop and test alternatives to critical materials across a range of uses
- work with leaders in the sector to develop and resource interventions to encourage a transformation in UK engineering skills that emphasises resource efficiency, and global perspectives on sustainability. This must ensure that engineers have the training to design the ability to maintain, replace and recover critical materials into future technologies and products; and
- explore strategic opportunities for the UK in investing in domestic battery recycling capabilities and take an international approach to ensuring all electric vehicles in the UK market have sufficient capacity to be safely and sustainably recycled at end of life.
Read the Critical materials: demand-side resource efficiency measures for
sustainability and resilience report in detail and its 25 recommendations in
full here.