Objective
Earth provides natural resources, such as fossil fuels and minerals, that are vital for Europe´s economy. As the global demand grows, especially for strategic metals, commodity prices rapidly rise and there is an identifiable risk of an increasing supply shortage of some metals, including those identified as critical to Europe's high technology sector. Hence a major element in any economy’s long-term strategy must be to respond to the increasing pressure on natural resources to ensure security of supply for these strategic metals. In today's rapidly changing global economic landscape, mining in the deep sea, specifically at hydrothermal vents and the vast areas covered by polymetallic nodules, has gone from a distant possibility to a likely reality within just a decade.
The extremely hostile conditions found on the deep-ocean floor pose specific challenges, both technically and environmentally, which are demanding and entirely different from land-based mining.
At present, European offshore industries and marine research institutions have some global advantage through their significant experience and technology and are well positioned to develop engineering and knowledge-based solutions to resource exploitation in these challenging and sensitive environments. However, against an international backdrop of state-sponsored research and development in sea floor resource discovery, assessment and extraction technologies, European operators are at an increasing disadvantage. Hence the recognised need to initiate pilot studies to develop breakthrough methodologies for the exploration, assessment and extraction of deep-sea minerals, as well as investigate the implications for economic and environmental sustainability.
The “Blue Mining” project will address all aspects of the entire value chain in this field, from resource discovery (WP1) to resource assessment (WP2), from exploitation technologies (WP3) to the legal and regulatory framework (WP5).
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-NMP-2013-LARGE-7
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Funding Scheme
CP-IP - Large-scale integrating projectCoordinator
2961 AW Kinderdijk
Netherlands
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Participants (20)
41812 ERKELENZ
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2070 Zwijndrecht
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30655 Hannover
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24148 Kiel
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20097 HAMBURG
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6708 PM Wageningen
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SN2 1EU SWINDON WILTSHIRE
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7491 Trondheim
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52062 Aachen
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09599 Freiberg
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2628 CN Delft
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1749 016 Lisboa
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SO17 1BJ Southampton
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1000 Bruxelles / Brussel
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2961 AW KINDERDIJK
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GU21 6EE SURREY
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2595 DA Den Haag
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2628 XJ Delft
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Participation ended
1000 BRUSSEL
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1749 016 Lisbon
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