“The goal of CCMT development is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact,” Hidemichi Fujii, lead author of the report, said in a media statement. “A good way to analyze how technology in the industry is developing is to look at patent filings over time. to calculate three key indicators of CCMT development in each region’s industry: priority, mining, and scale.”

Fujii explained that the “priority” metric is the number of CCMT-related patents related to mining divided by the number of patents in the mining industry as a whole. If the inventor prioritized his CCMT research, that percentage would increase.

“Mining” was defined as the number of patents related to mining divided by the total number of patents overall. This figure shows how much effort the inventors put into developing the technology of the mining industry itself.

Finally, “size” was defined as the total number of patents representing the total amount of research and development.

“We used these indicators to analyze the mining industry in seven major countries and regions: China, Japan, the United States, Europe, Latin America, Australia and South Africa. The first four have major patent offices. , and the latter three have major mining areas,” said Fuji. “Through our analysis, we found some interesting trends.”

For example, both overall mining patents and mining CCMT patents increased across the board, but the speed and pattern of these trends differed depending on whether the country was consuming or producing resources. . The latter has shown a significant shift in R&D priorities in response to soaring prices of commodities such as rare earth metals and oil.

Further analysis showed that the development of mining CCMT patents in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Australia was driven by a relative increase in R&D related to mining technology. Japan and South Africa have focused R&D on both mining itself and related CCMT, while reducing the overall scale of R&D. Meanwhile, China and other countries are scaling up their research and development, which encourages the invention of greener technologies.

“Our year-by-year analysis showed that the Paris Agreement contributed to the overall increase in green technology in the mining sector. Rising metal prices also contributed to the number of patents in the industry,” Fujii said. I’m here.

Following these findings, the team hopes that both countries and the mining industry will implement effective policies to promote the development of CCMT in the industry.

“The differences and similarities in R&D strategies can be used as a starting point to develop country-specific science and technology policies that can combat the climate crisis,” Fujii noted. “At the same time, they can make the most efficient use of capital and promote regulations that guarantee fair wages based on experience and skills.”