(Bloomberg) — Lithium prices extended their yearlong rally as surging demand spurs a shortfall of the key battery material.
Prices have more than doubled in the past year, according to a Benchmark Mineral Intelligence index of lithium carbonate and hydroxide. Demand for the materials used in electric cars and renewable-energy storage has soared and, while miners are seeking to boost supply, there’s not enough to meet consumption.
Dialogo Chino
The landscape of global energy finance – and Latin American lithium mining – changed last week when China’s President Xi announced that his country would “step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy”, while also committing to end support for coal-fired power plants abroad.
The demand for renewable energy already exists: developing countries around the world have proposed 494 gigawatts in renewable energy projects through their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. In Latin America and the Caribbean alone, energy sector analysts foresee a boom in renewable energy, with installed capacity expected to more than double in the next few years.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
A top security expert predicts that a planned Chinese takeover of a Canadian critical minerals development company will trigger a full security review under the Investment Canada Act as tensions between the two countries remain elevated following China’s release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor this past weekend.
China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. wants to acquire junior Canadian battery metals exploration company Millennial Lithium Corp. for $376-million. But before the deal can close, it must pass a security screening by Ottawa.
Standing atop a pockmarked red mesa, Rod Colwell looks out at an expanse of water that resembles a thin blue strip on the horizon. The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, has come and gone at least five times in the last 1,300 years, most recently in 1905, when floodwaters from the Colorado River refilled its basin.
A mid-century resort destination, the lake has since become an environmental disaster zone. Its waters, long fed by pesticide-laden runoff from nearby farms, have been steadily evaporating, exposing a dusty shoreline that kicks up lung-damaging silt into the surrounding communities of the Imperial Valley, where rates of asthma are alarmingly high.
With the rising tide of battery electric vehicles making a splash all across the world, the most coveted natural resource needed to power our vehicles is no longer petrol but a mineral called ‘lithium’. While it’s debatable whether lithium is the most important element found in a lithium-ion battery, its extensive mining across certain global hotspots has come under heavy criticism.
The very process of mining lithium is not only energy-intensive and polluting, it may also be linked with destabilising the ecosystem nearby due to extensive saltwater depletion from the edge of the ‘salars’ through which lithium is extracted.
Less than a week after Vancouver-based Millennial Lithium Corp. asked shareholders to vote on a proposed all-cash buyout by China’s Ganfeng Lithium Corp., a second buyer has emerged and bid 6.1 per cent higher, offering $377 million in cash.
Millennial did not disclose the second buyer’s identity, but a source told the Financial Post it is Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, or CATL, as Bloomberg News reported.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Ardiden sells controlling stake in three lithium projects to Green Technology Metals
A new Australian lithium exploration company wants to tap into the global clean energy movement, starting in northwestern Ontario.
Shareholders for Ardiden, a gold exploration company operating in the Pickle Lake area, have agreed to sell up to 80 per cent ownership of its lithium projects in the region to Green Technology Metals, formerly known as Great Northern Lithium Pty.
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Several thousand people protested in Serbia on Saturday demanding a ban on planned lithium mining in the Balkan country as well as a resolution to scores of other environmental issues that made the region one of the most polluted in Europe.
The rally in downtown Belgrade was organized by about 30 ecological groups who recently gained popularity in Serbia amid widespread disillusionment with mainstream politicians and amid major pollution problems facing the region.
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Indigenous communities living around Chile’s Atacama salt flat have asked authorities to suspend lithium miner SQM’s operating permits or sharply reduce its operations until it submits an environmental compliance plan acceptable to regulators, according to a filing viewed by Reuters.
Chile’s SMA environmental regulator in 2016 charged SQM with overdrawing lithium-rich brine from the Salar de Atacama salt flat, prompting the company to develop a $25 million plan to bring its operations back into compliance. Authorities approved that plan in 2019 but reversed their decision in 2020, leaving the company to start again from scratch on a potentially tougher plan.
Birds are chirping, and the corn stands tall ready to be harvested. A cow is grazing at the roadside while a shepherd is accompanying his sheep on their way to the pasture. There’s no cloud in sight, only endless forests and huge letters reading “HELP,” mown into flat broom shrubs and visible from a distance.
This idyllic landscape near the village of Covas do Barroso is in danger of having to make way for open-cast lithium mining, ironically in the name of environment protection. The mine would extract a crucial raw material for the batteries of electric cars and thus contribute to reducing global CO2 emissions and Europe’s dependence on lithium imports.
RENO (AP) — A federal judge has denied tribal leaders’ bid to temporarily block digging for an archaeological study required before construction can begin for a Nevada lithium mine on what they say is sacred land where their ancestors were massacred more than century ago.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du refused three tribes’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the trenching planned to collect samples near the Oregon state line at the site of the largest known lithium deposit in the United States.
After the fall of Kabul, US media regurgitates a 2010 New York Times frontpage story on Afghanistan’s mineral riches based on a secret Pentagon memo and a 1977 Soviet geologic map.
Search for Afghanistan minerals and you get dozens of articles written in the last few days quoting a magical $1 trillion number including gems like The Taliban are sitting on $1 trillion worth of minerals the world desperately needs (CNN), Afghanistan: Taliban to reap $1 trillion mineral wealth (Deutsche Welle), Biden Just Handed Afghanistan’s Mineral Wealth to China (Newsweek), China Eyes Afghanistan’s $1 Trillion of Minerals With Risky Bet on Taliban (Bloomberg) and so on.
Lithium has a better claim than most commodities to be the “new oil.” It even comes with the latest geopolitical baggage.
Prices for the lithium-based chemicals that go into rechargeable batteries have soared this year as electric-vehicle sales have revved up, particularly in China. The average price for lithium carbonate, one of the two key compounds used by battery manufacturers, reached $14,386 a metric ton in August, according to Benchmark Minerals, up from $6,124 in December.
Matt Fernley is Head of Research, Volta Fund; MD of Battery Materials Review.
I wanted to talk about the Nature article on battery raw materials that’s been doing the rounds this week. The article, Electric Cars: The Battery Challenge (Nature, 19 August 2021), is an otherwise excellent discussion of a lot of the issues with sourcing materials for electric cars. Unfortunately there’s a big “but”. And that “but” is in its treatment of primary battery raw materials.
While the author, Davide Castelvecchi, has clearly spoken to a lot of experts on batteries, recycling and other elements of the supply chain, maybe he hasn’t known exactly which questions to ask, because we get a discussion almost entirely on ternary batteries with little to no mention of LFPs (and their ability to lower demand for Nickel, Cobalt and Manganese) and we also get only three paragraphs on the impact of extractive industries on the battery industry.
All the “analysis” on raw materials is effectively based on BNEF’s Long-Term Electric Vehicle Outlook for 2021 and the general conclusion, based on a quote from the BNEF analyst, is that “temporary shortages [of battery raw materials] and dramatic price swings… [will] work themselves out”.
The demand for Green Energy Metals (GEMs) as processed fine chemicals and high purity metals and alloys, ready for use in both consumer and military goods, already exceeds their supply.
A good example of this is Tesla’s decision to put back its pickup truck introduction, originally scheduled for Fall 2021, until sometime in 2022 due to a “shortage” of the correct type of battery cells.
This is explained as a shortage of processing capacity, but, in fact, is obscuring an even more important shortfall, that of the supply of mineral raw materials, such as those of lithium, cobalt, and the rare earths – the heavy rare earths.
