Launched with Imperial College London as part of an energy transition acceleration program.

The global transition to renewable energy will require significant growth in the production and supply of metals and minerals vital to its generation, use, and storage of electricity. The AI boom, increased urbanization, electrification of transportation, and reshoring of mineral production are all playing a role in the growth of a fast-paced and transformative materials industry.

As part of the United Kingdom's vision outlined in its recent Industrial Strategy Green Paper, Rio Tinto announced that it has teamed up with Imperial College London to launch the Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials, part of the initiative to accelerate the development of sustainable techniques and technologies for delivering materials crucial for the energy transition.

U.K. representatives welcome the center, which will be a hub for the world's best researchers and business leaders to collaborate on transforming the way energy transition materials are sourced, processed, used and recycled by industry.

"Innovative partnerships between industry and academia are critical for the world to meet the deeply physical and complex challenge of the global energy transition," said Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm. "The Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials should become a global hub for investment and collaboration that will ultimately create the conditions for technological breakthroughs. Innovation has been a fundamental part of Rio Tinto's DNA since we were founded in London over 150 years ago. We are constantly trying to find better ways to provide the materials the world needs, and this partnership with some of the leading research universities in the world, led by Imperial College London, will support this ambition."

Leading the way

Established with an outlay of $150 million from Rio Tinto over the next 10 years, the center is also uniting leading international academic partners, including the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, University of California, Berkeley, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Australian National University, Canberra to make energy transition materials more environmentally, economically and socially sustainable.

"This investment is a major vote of confidence in the UK and will help us find new sustainable ways to deliver our renewable energy transition, supporting our ambition to become a clean energy superpower," said U.K. Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds. "Bringing together academic innovation and industry is vital to secure our vital supply of critical minerals, and create the economic growth our country needs."

The Industrial Strategy Green Paper recognizes renewable energy industries as a key sector driving positive growth, furthering the country's drive to lead the way in a green global economy.

"The Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials will co-create and fund research programmes that empower diverse, interdisciplinary teams to deliver innovative and transformative solutions with environment, society, and governance at their core. This work will transform the ways we extract, process, and reuse critical resources to make them more environmentally, economically and socially sustainable," said Professor Hugh Brady, president of Imperial College London. "The clean energy industry, an engine of economic growth, is rightly at the heart of the government's Industrial Strategy. Imperial - with its strong disciplinary foundations, highly collaborative culture, passion for innovation, and proven convening power – is well placed to support those ambitions."

The first hurdle

The center's initial focus will be on ramping up copper production, one of the lesser-emphasized potential bottlenecks to the clean energy and high-tech future.

The electrification of transportation, automation of machinery and vehicles, and an energy- and materials-hungry AI boom are expected to drive the need for more copper over the next ten years than has been mined in the whole of the last century.

Research at the center will include increasing efficiency, reducing demand, investigating sustainable extraction processes and the optimization of mine waste from currently active and defunct mines.

"The scale up of electrification needed for the energy transition requires a step-change in the production, supply and utilisation of a whole host of critical materials. It will require us to think about both the technology and the economics around the materials supply chain in new ways," said Imperial College Professor Mary Ryan. "The Centre will drive cutting-edge, industry-facing research that enables new systems-level and blue sky thinking. This approach is at the heart of Imperial's strategy."

Imperial will launch four cross-cutting schools of convergence science that build on Imperial's strengths to create research communities in key areas – with one school focused specifically on sustainability.

The center is an example of Imperial's Transition to Zero Pollution (TZP) initiative, which extends beyond carbon to human-made pollution in all its forms. TZP research unites disciplines from science and engineering, systems thinking, human health, new business models, and policymaking to create holistic solutions to manmade pollution of all types.

The university launched its first physical presence in the United States, Imperial Global USA in San Francisco, as part of a plan to develop hubs in key cities around the world that will build long-term networking collaborations with industry partners, governments and knowledge organizations.