IRTC-Business continues and implements the work of IRTC, an international expert group on raw materials criticality. The project conducts Round Tables and publish their outcomes, with the goal to apply the concepts to company use. It supports industry in assessing its exposure to criticality issues and support decisions-making, as well as identifying mitigation measures. A webbased tool developed by the project will support these actions. The project is advised by an industry focus group representing international expertise from relevant business sectors.

Background of the project

Resource availability and its implications for various societal, economic, and ecologic issues is a crucial aspect of today’s economy. However, the relevance of material criticality for the future of energy and technology – and thus for our society – is still obscured by the diversity and, frequently, the immaturity of the evolving methodologies. The EIT Raw Materials project “International Round Table on Materials Criticality”, IRTC (www.irtc.info), has therefore been fostering an exchange of knowledge on materials criticality from different regional and methodological perspectives. The project has been joining existing platforms that offer the opportunity for information exchange related to the various aspects of materials criticality; e.g. on Life Cycle Assessment, Industrial Ecology, and Sustainable Development.

Within the IRTC project, four Round Tables were organized in Canada, Japan, China and US with the themes “How methodology determines what is critical”, “Criticality and the circular economy”, “How industry manages criticality”, and “Secondary sourcing of critical raw materials”. These Round Tables were explorative by nature and focused on the identification of key differences among perspectives, methodologies, stakeholders, and practices. The outcomes of the Round Tables are presented in the form of scientific publications co-authored by the consortium members.

IRTC-Business is using the outcomes and knowledge generated in the IRTC project to leverage the 2 discussion onto another level. Where IRTC has been looking back on existing practices related to resource criticality, IRTC-Business will integrate the lessons learned into concrete recommendations for the application of criticality assessments by companies. These recommendations will encompass the development and application of a stakeholder-specific criticality methodology and the identification of mitigation measures.

All members of the IRTC Consortium, with their established expertise in the field and a broad geographical coverage, will continue to contribute in the IRTC-Business project, supported by additional partners forming the industry focus group. The Consortium will collaborate under the same administrative structure for coordination and publication as the IRTC project, but will aim at making the results available for and accessible to industry, by including industry in the discussion and developing a web-based decision-making tool as a final outcome of the project.