Dal «Bel Paese» ai minerali critici moderni: le georisorse minerarie italiane

Antonio Stoppani (1824-1891) was one of the scientists who promoted the geological mapping of the newborn Kingdom of Italy: a reliable and accurate geological map was necessary to boost exploration and mining of mineral and energetic resources, available on the national territory. In the second half of the nineteen century, the newborn kingdom required a series of infrastructures (e.g., rail-network, ports, shipyards) to be competitive with other countries that fully developed an industrial economy. This meant: metals (in particular, iron) along with energetic resources for the technological process (coal, petrol). In the last 150 years, the scenario is strongly changed and, nowadays, we have advanced knowledge about exploration, characterization, mining protocols, and treatment of mineral resources. Even the national mining legislation was improved over the time. The current scenario of the mining production in Italy is the following: the total number of mining sites is 3.980, which produce ca. 200 Mt/y of raw materials; the principal raw materials are limestones-travertines, sandstones, sands, gravels, porphyry-basalts-tuffs, clays, marbles, granites-gneiss, marl, feldspars, and salts. Since ’70s-’80s, metals are not mined any further. The new Regulation 2024/1252 of the EU Council established a framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of a series of recognised “critical raw materials”. Consequently, the Italian government promoted a new national programme in order to make critical minerals available, reducing the supply risk. It is highly likely that, in the near future, minerals of Cu, Mn, W, Co, and Ti will be subject of attention and exploration.