At the brink of a new era, the EU Green Deal is one of the frontier projects of the European Commission. The main objective is to become climate neutral by 2050. To achieve it, the Commission wants to remove combustion engines by 2035 and replace them with electric vehicles. Lithium is a key ingredient in batteries to power electric vehicles and other green technologies. The EU needs to deploy lithium at scale to hit its Green Deal goal. A group of three experts joined us on the podcast to discuss the debate around lithium, with a specific focus on lithium mining in Portugal. Our first guest was Margarida Santos, a Portuguese environmentalist who discussed the impact of lithium extraction in Portugal. Our second guest is Dominique Silva, an advisor to the Minister of Environment and Climate Action in Portugal, who gave their take on the impact and contribution of lithium extraction. Finally, our third guest, José Lopes, a representative from the EU, and Junior Advisor to Franz Timmermans shared details on the aims and purpose of the Green Deal and how the Union wants to achieve a just transition.

* UCG International Politics podcast is a course assignment prepared by the students at University College Groningen. The characters assumed by the students in the episodes are entirely fictional.