T26. Geosciences for the characterization, exploration and exploitation of primary and secondary mineral resources

Present and future challenges, such as the green energy transition, are producing a major change in the economic balance of the world. The importance of raw materials that sustain the leading industrial branches implied in the change of paradigm has risen.
As a result, the European Commission has addressed its attention to raw materials (e.g., REE, Li, Ta, W) which are employed in a wide set of necessary technologies and whose production is monopolized outside Europe. These materials are classified as critical and strategic due to their supply risk and geopolitical implications. The Critical Raw Materials Act has been recently conceived to ensure a secure and sustainable supply also improving the knowledge on mineral resources of member countries. Therefore, geologists have to tackle this challenge due to their unique ability to identify, characterize, categorize and evaluate the economic potential of mineral deposits and mine wastes.
This session encourages researchers and professional geologists to submit contributions dealing with the investigation of primary and secondary mineral deposits located in Italy or elsewhere, conducted through approaches and techniques ranging from structural geology, mineralogy, geochemistry, thermodynamics, and geophysics, also applied to circularity for evaluation, valorisation, and exploitation of modern and historical mining wastes.