Circularity of Critical Raw Materials Across Strategic Sectors: Pathways for Sustainable System Deployment

The large-scale deployment of low-carbon energy technologies depends on the secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials (CRMs) such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper, and rare earth elements. These materials are essential for batteries, photovoltaics, fuel cells, electrolyzers, permanent magnets, grid infrastructure, and other key components of the energy transition. However, rising demand, supply concentration, material losses, quality constraints, and the environmental burden of extraction and processing increasingly challenge the scalability and resilience of these systems.Circularity strategies offer new opportunities to address these constraints. Approaches such as design-for-circularity, modularity, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, advanced separation, and high-purity recycling can improve the availability, quality, and sustainability performance of secondary raw materials for energy applications. Yet these opportunities must be assessed rigorously. In particular, there is a growing need for evidence on whether recovered and reprocessed CRMs can meet the quality, performance, and reliability requirements of demanding energy technologies, and under what environmental and techno-economic conditions they can be deployed at scale.This Research Topic aims to bring together research on CRM circularity as a practical enabler of next-generation energy systems, while also considering related CRM-intensive domains such as electrified mobility, the built environment, and advanced manufacturing where they directly inform energy-system deployment. We particularly welcome contributions that integrate materials science, engineering, industrial ecology, and quantitative sustainability assessment to examine how CRM recovery, upgrading, characterization, and reintegration can support more resilient and lower-impact energy material value chains. Studies using material flow analysis, dynamic stock modeling, life cycle assessment, circularity metrics, and techno-economic evaluation are especially encouraged, particularly when they link materials-level innovation with system-level outcomes such as availability, functionality, cost, footprint, and supply resilience. Europe and the UK are the primary geographic focus, but comparative studies from other regions are also welcome where they provide transferable insights.This Research Topic encourages submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:- Circularity of CRMs in batteries, storage, photovoltaics, hydrogen, fuel cells, magnets, and grids- Recovery, upgrading, purification, characterization, and requalification of CRM-containing energy materials- Material quality, degradation, and functional suitability of secondary raw materials- Design-for-circularity, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and reuse strategies- MFA, LCA, dynamic stock modeling, and circularity metrics for CRM-intensive systems- Technical and techno-economic trade-offs among recycling, substitution, and new chemistries- Collection, sorting, reverse logistics, and traceability for secondary CRM reintegration- Comparative case studies showing deployment, resilience, and sustainability outcomesThis RT is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals including SDG 7, 9, 11, 12, 13. Multidisciplinary submissions that demonstrate the link between quantitative assessment, materials performance, and energy system deployment are particularly encouraged. Topic editors: Muhammad Shafique, Xiangming Zhou, Alberto Pietro Damiano Baltrocchi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78909/circularity-of-critical-raw-materials-across-strategic-sectors-pathways-for-sustainable-system-deployment