The main economic, technological and environmental challenges of small mining include reducing high investment costs, reducing generation of waste and large tailings, identifying and addressing environmental impacts, and improving flexibility, automation and safety of operations. However, at the moment, there is no quick-fix available to reduce the environmental impact from mines, and it is neither realistic to expect production solutions very distant from today’s technologies. Considering that the present mining technology is based on rock blasting and mobile mining equipment for loading and transportation, the major challenge is to generate a new sustainable systemic solution that affects positively the relevant mining value chain. SLIM aims to develop a cost-effective and sustainable selective low impact mining solution based on non-linear rock mass fragmentation by blasting models, airborne particulate matter, vibration affections and nitrate leaching mitigation actions for exploitation of small mineral deposits (including those with chemically complex ore-forming phases) through a new generation of explosives and an advanced automatic blast design software based on improved rock mass characterisation and fragmentation models for optimum fragmentation and minimum rock damage and far-field vibrations. SLIM consortium is led by UPM (es), with LTU (se), MUL (at) and TUG (at) as Research Insitutions, 3GSM (at - Rock fragmentation and blasting software), MAXAM (es - Explosives), ORGIVA (es - Fluorite mine) and ERZBERG (at - Iron mine) and ARNO (es - Quarry) as validators in relevant environment. BRGM (fr), INVESTORNET (dk), MINPOL (at), and ZABALA (es) complement the Environmental and Economic assessments, the Communication and Dissemination activities and Social Awareness actions. SLIM addresses the following issue: a) Sustainable selective low impact mining (2016), it has a planned duration of 48 months and a budget of €6,979,200 requesting €6,979,200 of EU funding.

To meet the ambitious EC target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) needs to move rapidly towards full scale implementation with geological storage solutions both on and offshore. Onshore storage offers increased flexibility and reduced infrastructure and monitoring costs. Enabling onshore storage will support management of decarbonisation strategies at territory level while enhancing security of energy supply and local economic activities, and securing jobs across Europe. However, successful onshore storage also requires some unique technical and societal challenges to be overcome. ENOS will provide crucial advances to help foster onshore CO2 storage across Europe through: 1) Developing, testing and demonstrating in the field, under “real-life conditions”, key technologies specifically adapted to onshore storage. 2) Contributing to the creation of a favourable environment for onshore storage across Europe. The ENOS site portfolio will provide a great opportunity for demonstration of technologies for safe and environmentally sound storage at relevant scale. Best practices will be developed using experience gained from the field experiments with the participation of local stakeholders and the lay public. This will produce improved integrated research outcomes and increase stakeholder understanding and confidence in CO2 storage. In this improved framework, ENOS will catalyse new onshore pilot and demonstration projects in new locations and geological settings across Europe, taking into account the site-specific and local socio-economic context. By developing technologies from TRL4/5 to TRL6 across the storage lifecycle, feeding the resultant knowledge and experience into training and education and cooperating at the pan-European and global level, ENOS will have a decisive impact on innovation and build the confidence needed for enabling onshore CO2 storage in Europe.