Recycling of Rare Metals: A Pathway Towards Resilient Green Supply Chains

Green technologies, like electric motors, contain valuable rare metals. Recycling these would represent an important step towards a green circular economy. However, the development of supply chains for recycled metals faces difficulties such as a lack of technical standardisation, low collection rates of end-of-life products and low efficiency of recycling technologies. European policymakers must address these obstacles by a targeted approach, combining requirements on data transparency and supply chain cooperation with new support schemes to accelerate the upscaling of recycling capacities. An auction-based production premium for recyclers can help to overcome the funding gap in the early stages of capacity development.