EU awards €5 million grant to 18 international researchers in critical raw materials, the “21st century’s gold”

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action ForMovFluid explores how essential minerals form in the Earth’s crust
The project aims to meet the demands of the European Union by seeking to exploit deposits within its own borders
The initiative is structured as a doctoral network, which is currently actively seeking experts to carry out their studies in four countries

Cork, 04/02/2025

The new EU-funded consortium “ForMovFluid” will study how fluids transformed the materials inside the Earth’s crust. Thanks to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Doctoral Networks programme, ForMovFluid will fund the doctoral studies of 18 researchers, and train them to become elite experts in the field of geoscience.

Moreover, this project will allow us to understand the origin of the so-called critical raw materials, of vital importance for the energy transition. Over a period of four years, ForMovFluid “Marie Curie” researchers will tackle this challenge by combining cutting-edge laboratory techniques and field work in four different countries: Germany, Spain, Ireland and Scotland. This meets the growing needs of the European Union, which has recently regulated the need to move away from dependence on other countries and start exploiting mineral resources within its own boundaries.

The Earth’s crust, a ‘living’ barrier

We live in a very dynamic planet. Although we used to think of the Earth’s inner layers as fixed isolated divisions, this is not entirely true – events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions reshape our world, our landscapes are constantly evolving. Through faults and fractures in tectonic plates, fluids and gases are interacting with the rocks of the Earth’s crust, changing their composition. Understanding such processes not only helps us know our home planet better but is vital in a world where the climate crisis is changing the rules of the game. The energy transition requires certain raw materials found in the Earth’s crust, such as nickel, lithium and copper.

ForMovFluid aims to increase the current knowledge about the movement of fluids in the Earth’s upper crust and how they interact with rocks in different environments. This will help scientists understand how critical minerals are formed, and therefore know where and how to find them underground.According to Pat Meere, a researcher at University College Cork (Ireland) and coordinator of the project, fluids play a key role in the origin and concentration of economically valuable mineral deposits: ‘The movement of these fluids in the Earth’s crust is controlled by a series of physical and chemical processes operating at very different levels, from plate tectonics down to microscopic ‘rock grain’ scales.’

Picture 2: Example of “fluid flow systems” in a fieldwork area.

Essentials for ‘green’ transition

Critical raw materials (CRMs) are a set of 34 chemical elements and mineral resources vital to the European economy. CRMs are scarce, yet essential to certain strategic sectors, such as net-zero, electronics, and aerospace. As Meere explains, these CRMs are the building blocks of many renewable technologies: ‘Copper, lithium and nickel are required to make batteries, gallium for solar panels and boron for wind technologies’.

The EU currently relies heavily on ‘single source’ countries for certain critical raw materials, such as magnesium (China, 97%), lithium (Chile, 97%), iridium (South Africa, 93%) and niobium (Brazil, 92%), making supply chains extremely vulnerable. In addition, some countries have begun to restrict their exports of these materials, such as China and its production of gallium and germanium, ‘two metals essential for micro-processors’, adds Meere.

ForMovFluid aligns with the EU’s new Critical Raw Materials Act, which ambitiously aims to have 10% of critical raw materials consumption extracted within the EU’s own borders. According to Meere, ‘this requires the training of increased numbers of geoscience researchers that have the appropriate skill sets to successfully drive raw material exploration and production programmes’.

Picture 3: Skuterud Nordgruver historical mining site – Geological Survey of Norway. Map of Modum Complex from Munz et al. 1994.

The project is structured as a “doctoral network”, currently actively looking for up to 18 experts in 4 countries (https://formovfluid.eu/phd-positions/). During their doctoral studies, researchers will enjoy a unique opportunity to train in a fully multidisciplinary way by combining expertise in areas such as geodynamics, structural geology, petrology, geophysics, geochemistry and computational modelling.

The call for applications is open, any researcher who fits the eligibility criteria is encouraged to participate.

The ForMovFluid network is led by the University College Cork, Ireland (UCC) and counts on the participation of:

Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Instituto de Geociencias (CSIC-UCM), Spain
University of St Andrews, UK
Deutsche ErdWärme, Germany
SLR Consulting, Ireland
Boliden Minerals AB, Sweden
University of Evora, Portugal
Aurum Exploration, Ireland
Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, Ireland
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
AGATA Comunicación Científica, Spain

ForMovFluid is a Doctoral Network (DN) project under the framework of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the European Union’s reference programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training.

Its funding, amounting to 5 million euros, comes from both Horizon Europe’s MSCA programme and the UK’s research and innovation funding agency (UKRI).

You can learn more about the project on www.formovfluid.eu

Contact for media:

ForMovFluid Press Office

Juanjo Sáenz de la Torre and Lucía Casas

info@formovfluid.eu