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1.1.1 Welcome to Module 1

Course subject(s) Module 1. Introduction

A diagram showing three elements in 1700 increasing to 36 in the year 2000

Over the last centuries, the amount of elements from the periodic table used in our every day life has increased tremendously.
Source: “Elements widely used in energy pathways”, © Armin Reller, Volker Zepf, Materials critical to the energy industry – An introduction (2nd edition), used in this course with permission.

In this module you will be introduced to the topic of critical raw materials (CRMs). You will learn what they are, where you can find them in your daily life and what role they play in our society. We will talk about the concept of criticality and you will learn to define criticality according to perspectives of different countries and stakeholders. When it comes to raw materials, the question of whether we will ever run out is often asked. You will determine whether geological scarcity is a key challenge to accessing CRM resources.

The estimated study load is 4-5 hours.

Creative Commons License
Raw Materials: Managing Resources for a Sustainable Future by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/critical-raw-materials-managing-resources-for-a-sustainable-future/ /
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