BHP has confirmed that it will open its Nickel West sulphate plant in Western Australia this financial year after the development was delayed.
The delay means the first product from the plant is now expected in the second half of the 2021 financial year, a year behind the original schedule.
The facility that is located at the Kwinana nickel refinery is expected to produce 100,000 tonnes of nickel sulphate per annum during its stage one development.
Tesla reportedly in talks with Canada’s Giga Metals to establish environmentally friendly nickel mine in British Columbia as it expands battery production.
Tesla is reportedly in talks with Canadian mining company Giga Metals about developing a large mine to give it access to a ready supply of nickel and cobalt for its electric vehicle batteries.
The mine, located in north-central British Columbia, would also offer a way for Tesla to reduce its carbon footprint as it expands battery production, Reuters reported late on Friday.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
At some point, Elon Musk will hop into one of his SpaceX rockets and set up shop on Mars. His goal is to colonize the red planet as well as fill every road and highway on Earth with his electric Tesla cars, for he is a man with galaxy-sized ambitions.
No doubt he will leave an enormous statue of himself behind so that any investor in the distant future who misses his glorious presence can kneel before it, kissing the bronze feet of the dope-smoking executive who turned a low-volume maker of money-losing cars into a company worth more than all its competitors combined.
Well, he did for a few moments. The question is whether those moments will return, given Tesla’s outlandish, gravity-defying valuation. This week, Tesla shares finally cracked after one of the most stupendous rallies ever seen in the tech sector.
In July, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, issued an unusual public challenge to the world’s mining industry. Commenting during an investor presentation, he dangled the prospect of a “giant contract for a long period of time” to the firm that could supply responsibly-mined nickel.
Nickel is not particularly in short supply. According to a June report by Australia’s Macquarie Bank, previously forecast deficits in nickel for this year until 2025 are now expected to turn into narrow surpluses. This is partly owing to the impact of Covid-19 disease which has dented consumption more than supply, the bank said.
Availability, however, was not behind Tesla’s request. In a world of improving environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) standards, it’s peace of mind that’s harder to source than minerals.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
A Sudbury lithium hunter with a two large, rich deposits in northwestern Ontario thinks it has the chops to be a major supplier to the North American battery market.
Frontier Lithium has launched a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of a mine and processor for its PAK Lithium Project, north of Red Lake, to examine becoming a “vertically integrated” producer of lithium hydroxide chemicals, the company said in a Sept.9 news release.
Since 2013, the company has outlined two spodumene-bearing lithium deposits, two kilometres apart, that outcrop at surface. Frontier said it’s amenable to low-cost, open-pit mining. Lithium hydroxide is used in batteries for electric vehicles and cell phones.
Battery metals, which are used in modern energy efficient electrical products, are playing an increasingly important role in climate change mitigation and the shift towards a lower carbon-intensive future.
Battery metals, including lithium, vanadium, copper, cobalt, nickel, lead and graphite, are increasingly used in larger-scale battery storage products and in components used to transmit and distribute electricity.
Two key factors in the green energy transition are technology development and the roll-out of renewable-energy solutions, energy storage devices and electric vehicles (EVs), with solar- and wind-derived electricity generation the frontrunners in terms of green energy production.
OF COURSE, as something that has been widely touted as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, the green credentials of pure-electric vehicles have often been called into question.
A large amount of the conversation around this has revolved around the use of cobalt, which is used to aid conductivity and structural stability in lithium-ion batteries, enabling them to last for as long as they do.
However, production of cobalt is sometimes conducted in territories where a blind eye is turned to ethical mining practices, in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which produces around 60% of the world supply.
The European Union is keen to boost its green and digital ambitions, making them central to its coronavirus recovery plans. But there’s one big problem: raw materials.
Those rare-earth elements needed for the magnets in electric vehicles and wind turbines? Some 98% of the EU’s supply comes from China. South Africa provides 84% of the platinum group metals needed for fuel cells and automotive catalysts.
And Europe’s supplies of lithium—critical for battery production and therefore for electric vehicles and renewable-energy storage—come mostly from Chile.
The European Union has added lithium, used in batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs), to a list of critical materials that it plans to support locally as part of a strategy to reduce reliance on imported supply.
The group of 27 nations will need about 60 times more lithium and 15 times more cobalt for EV batteries and energy storage by 2050, analysts estimate. EU demand for rare earths, used in high-tech devices and military applications, is predicted to increase 10-fold over the same period.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the world’s increasing reliance on electronics and technology for remote work, education and communication.
Elon Musk recently made headlines again by asking mining companies to produce more nickel and promising big contracts from Tesla. However, Musk’s promise has a big catch: he only wants nickel that is produced in a responsible manner.
Musk’s plea for more nickel comes at an interesting time. There’s certainly no shortage of nickel; not now and not in the foreseeable future. The world has Indonesia to thank for this. Indonesian nickel production has grown from around 100,000 tonnes of processed nickel in 2014, to over 600,000 tonnes in 2020.
It will likely to reach 1.1 million tonnes of nickel by 2022. This sort of growth in unheard of, and will see Indonesia producing half of the world’s nickel in the next two years.
Brussels/London – The EU’s over-reliance on imports of critical raw materials threatens to undermine crucial industries and expose the bloc to supply squeezes by China and other resource-rich countries, the European Commission will warn member states this week.
Shortages of elements used to make batteries and renewable energy equipment could also threaten the bloc’s target of becoming climate neutral by 2050, a report by the Brussels executive will say.
The document is part of an urgent focus in Europe on security of imports of vital goods, as the coronavirus pandemic triggers transport disruption and growing tensions between western capitals and Beijing.
While global electric vehicle (EV) sales are back to a healthy growth trajectory, significant investment in mining capacity is required if EVs are to become anything more than a niche market, says mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland’s Clean TeQ Holdings.
The TSX- and ASX-listed company owns the construction-ready Sunrise nickel/cobalt/scandium project in New South Wales, Australia, and will require just under $2-billion to bring the project to fruition.
Nickel and cobalt, in particular, face substantial raw material challenges, at a time when EV sales growth is expected to drive unprecedented demand for these metals.
In the popular imagination, lithium is the element that powers EVs. However, as Elon Musk has pointed out, the term “lithium-ion batteries” is something of a misnomer, because they don’t really contain that much lithium.
“Although [they’re] called lithium-ion, the actual percentage of lithium in a lithium-ion cell is approximately 2%,” Musk explained at Tesla’s 2016 shareholder meeting. “Technically, our cells should be called nickel-graphite, because the primary constituent in the cell as a whole is nickel.”
More recently, Musk reiterated the importance of nickel, and made what sounded to some like an urgent plea for more of the stuff. “I’d just like to re-emphasise, any mining companies out there, please mine more nickel,” said Musk during Tesla’s latest quarterly conference call.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The Quebec government and commercial partner Pallinghurst Group are pledging up to $600-million to recapitalize Nemaska Lithium Inc. and vault the chemical company out of bankruptcy protection in a move that highlights the importance of vehicle electrification to the province’s economic strategy.
Nemaska has accepted a purchase offer structured as a credit bid from a group made up of Orion Mine Finance, its biggest secured creditor; Investissement Québec; and Pallinghurst, the Montreal-based company said in a statement Monday.
Pallinghurst is a U.K.-based mining and metals private equity investor that has also invested in Canadian graphite company Nouveau Monde Graphite.
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As policymakers have shifted focus from pandemic challenges to economic recovery, infrastructure plans are once more being actively discussed, including those relating to energy.
Green energy advocates are doubling down on pressure to continue, or even increase, the use of wind, solar power, and electric cars. Left out of the discussion is any serious consideration of the broad environmental and supply-chain implications of renewable energy.
As I explored in a previous paper, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,”[1] many enthusiasts believe things that are not possible when it comes to the physics of fueling society, not least the magical belief that “clean-tech” energy can echo the velocity of the progress of digital technologies. It cannot.
