🌱 What are precious metals?
Metals that are rare and have a high economic value are often called “precious metals”. These metals can be valuable due to their scarcity or their use in industrial processes. They can also be valuable because they have been used as a currency or to store value throughout history.[i] The following eight metals are typically considered as precious: gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium.[ii]
🌱 What are precious metals used for?
Precious metals may be used as currencies or as assets for investment purposes. They are also often used in jewelry or industrial processes.[iii] Precious metals “are widely applied in [industrial] fields due to the[ir] distinct physical and chemical properties, such as catalytic activity, good electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance”. Over 90% of the precious metals used industrially are used by the electronics and catalyst industries. The electronics industry uses gold and silver “as contacts, bonding wires and switches” and palladium in the hard disk drives of computers. The catalyst industry uses precious metals as “active components” within catalysts. These catalysts are commonly "used in automobile emission purification, oil-refining, chemical engineering, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals”.[iv]
🌱 What role do precious metals play for the energy transition?
The six so-called “platinum group metals” (or PGMs) – which are platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium – are thought to play a key role in the energy transition.[v] They are, therefore, also listed on several countries’ lists of critical raw materials.[vi] Platinum group metals are, for example, used in fuel cells[vii] and found in the “computer chip[s] for the digital control of a power plant”.[viii]
🌱 Where can precious metals be found?
The overall “concentration of precious metals in [the] Earth’s crust is extremely low”.[ix] Platinum group metals, for example only “occur in mineable quantities in a very few locations globally”.[x] The largest reserves of platinum group metals are currently found in South Africa and Russia, and these two countries are also the largest primary producers globally.[xi] Given the scarcity of precious metals, it is unsurprising that “the reserves of precious metals falls short of the production globally”.[xii] As so few platinum group metals are left in the ground, “a mature recycling network and substantial recycling capacity” has been established globally.[xiii]
Learn more about different raw materials here.
[i] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/preciousmetal.asp
[ii] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/preciousmetal.asp
[iii] https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/metals/what-are-precious-metals-and-precious-metals-alloys/
[iv] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344918304166
[v] https://anemel.eu/2024/09/21/deep-dive-the-importance-of-critical-raw-materials-for-a-cleaner-future/
[vi] https://www.royalmint.com/invest/discover/platinum-news/platinum-recognised-as-a-critical-mineral-by-us-europe-and-china/
[vii] https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary
[viii] https://energiesysteme-zukunft.de/en/topics/metals-for-the-energy-transition
[ix] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344918304166
[x] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/04/what-we-can-learn-on-critical-metals-circularity-from-the-platinum-metals-group-industry/
[xi] https://rmis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/rmp/Platinum-Group%20Metals; https://www.uni-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/sites/freiex/LCA_1_Basic_Knowledge/FACT_SHEET_Critical_Raw_Material_in_the_EU.pdf
[xii] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344918304166
[xiii] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/04/what-we-can-learn-on-critical-metals-circularity-from-the-platinum-metals-group-industry/