2023-09-27 21:14:50
France signed two bilateral agreements on Wednesday September 27 with Canada and Australia to ” to secure “ its supplies of critical metals, essential for the energy transition and the reduction of its CO2 emissions, announced the French Ministry of Energy Transition.
These two agreements “aim to develop critical minerals sectors, including extraction, processing and recycling projects, and to promote cooperation”the ministry said in a press release.
An IEA summit
The signing of these two agreements, on the eve of the first summit of the International Energy Agency (IEA) devoted to these resources, “is another step towards securing our supplies of critical minerals”estimated the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher, quoted in the press release.
She recalled the launch in May of an investment fund of two billion euros to facilitate France’s access to these resources used in particular to supply the four giga-battery factories currently being built in the country, or to connect future offshore wind farms.
The uranium issue
Another critical mineral, while France has relaunched the construction of nuclear power plants: uranium. “Uranium exports from Canada to Europe have increased significantly and we expect them to continue to increase”Canadian Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson said on Wednesday.
With Canada now the third largest supplier to the EU, behind Kazakhstan and Niger, exports from the coup-plagued African country could “not be as significant in the years to come”underlined Jonathan Wilkinson, who sees his country continuing to progress in the hierarchy of suppliers to Europe.
Develop sectors
The agreements signed on Wednesday are not “not commercial agreements which will secure a given volume of supply contracts on such or such metals”specified the French ministry. “The aim is to develop these critical mineral sectors in terms of extraction, processing and recycling, and to encourage industrial and university cooperation in terms of research and development”between French companies and these two countries which have the same social and environmental standards.
Ce “strategic framework” porte “on all minerals and that includes uranium”specified the minister’s office, while in parallel with the IEA summit in Paris, France is also organizing another international conference on nuclear energy on Thursday with the OECD.
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