A rare earth deposit discovered in Norway is about 80% larger than initially estimated, potentially making it one of the world’s biggest sources of the critical minerals used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence systems, according to a report by the Norwegian Geological Survey.

The revised estimate significantly raises the strategic importance of the discovery at a time when European governments are scrambling to secure supplies of minerals vital for the energy transition and advanced manufacturing.

“The deposit is about 80% larger than initially estimated,” the Norwegian Geological Survey said in its report, indicating the resource could rank among the largest, rare earth deposits identified globally in recent years.

Rare earth elements — a group of 17 metals including neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium — are essential components in permanent magnets used in electric motors, renewable energy technologies and a wide range of electronics.

China currently dominates global rare earth supply chains and provides up to 98% of key rare earth metals imported by the EU.

“The discovery could radically transform Europe’s supply chains and significantly reduce its dependence on China,” the report said.

The find comes as Brussels pushes to develop domestic sources of critical minerals under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, which aims to ensure that at least 10% of the bloc’s annual consumption of strategic raw materials is mined within Europe by 2030.

Officials and industry executives have warned that Europe’s reliance on Chinese rare earth processing and refining poses both economic and geopolitical risks, particularly as demand for the metals accelerates alongside the expansion of electric vehicles, battery manufacturing and renewable power.

Analysts caution that bringing rare earth projects into production can take many years because of complex processing requirements, environmental permitting and the need to build refining capacity.

Even so, the scale of the revised estimate underscores the growing importance of northern Europe as a potential source of critical minerals for the continent’s industrial future.

The Norwegian find returns the rare elements story to its historical roots. The first rare earth elements ever discovered were found in Scandinavia in the late 18th century at the Ytterby quarry near Stockholm in 1787.

Research on that deposit led to the identification of several rare earth elements — including yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium — and played a key role in the development of modern chemistry in the 19th century.

Scientists working in Sweden were among those whose discoveries helped expand the catalogue of elements that soon inspired the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, the inventor of the periodic table.

A fierce scientific race soon broke out in the 19th century as European laboratories competed to identify new elements emerging from Scandinavian mineral deposits.

Swedish chemists were among the leaders in isolating rare earth elements, while Mendeleev drew on the rapidly expanding catalogue of discoveries to developed the periodic table in 1869. The rivalry between laboratories helped accelerate discoveries across Europe, and one of the elements that later confirmed Mendeleev’s theory — scandium — was itself discovered in Sweden. To this day Europe refers to the table as the periodic table, but in Russia it is known as the Mendeleev Table.