Mining for a 'net-zero age': the changing place of the extractive industries in green futures and implications for a European just transition

Extractive industries are increasingly positioned as central to Europe's low-carbon future, with the mining of critical minerals framed as a key feature of the energy transition. Yet the intensification of mining raises pressing questions about how ambitions for a ‘net-zero age’ intersect with the principles of a just transition. This paper examines the European Union's new industrial policy on critical minerals alongside the contested Skouries gold‑copper project in northern Greece. The study applies discourse analysis informed by theories of the politics of the future, showing how industrial policy does more than regulate supply: it also legitimises extractive expansion by embedding mining within green transition discourses. The analysis demonstrates that visions of the future function as instruments of power that entrench extractivism and risk sacrificing key distributive, procedural and recognition dimensions of justice. In doing so, the paper offers a novel examination of the power of temporality in green discourses and the implications of the EU's mining strategy for just transitions, illuminating the trajectory of Europe's green transition as it reshapes social life in the coming decades.