CEPS team has just published another article based on insights from INSPIRES project. The paper on ”Understanding the barriers to recycling critical raw materials for the energy transition: The case of rare earth permanent magnets”. The article is published in Energy Reports vol. 12, year 2024 pages 1673–1682. This is an open access article under the CC BY license journal and it can be accessed in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484724004463.
The article presents the first exploratory study on barriers to developing an EU recycling value chain for rare earth permanent magnets using data from experts from the full magnets’ value chain. According to our empirical findings, major barriers include limited information about the type of magnets included in end-of-life products, lack of recycling targets, lack of ecodesign requirements, difficulty in moving products across borders, lack of certification systems, high costs involved in the recycling processes, competition with magnets sourced from non-EU countries and missing segments of the RE value chain. Addressing the multitude of barriers in place would require coordinated action across several policy fields.