Norway has suspended plans to open up its seabed and start giving licences for deep-sea mining in 2025.
‘Green technologies’ – including wind, solar and electric vehicle batteries – require critical minerals and metals. These include manganese, nickel and cobalt.
While these metal deposits can be extracted from the earth, many can be found on the deep ocean floor, having built up into nodules over millions of years.
As such, commercial interest in deep sea mining – which involves the use of gigantic machines to scoop deposits from the sea floor – has been gaining increasing support.
Norway, with its vast hydrocarbon reserves, took a lead role in the global race to mine the ocean floor for metals. Its government announced in June 2023 that it was proposing to open up an area of its waters roughly the size of the UK (108,000 square miles) for seabed mining activities.
In January 2024, the Norwegian Parliament gave approval for this plan, with the energy ministry drawing up a list of zones...