Based in Vancouver, Canada, Ron MacDonald is Vice Chairman & Director, Senior Council Global Markets of American Vanadium Corp.
The US government’s commitment to supporting both the renewable energy and electric vehicle industries underlines the need for the rapid development of the automotive and mass storage batteries, and has thrown the spotlight on domestic vanadium supplies.
In the not-too-distant future, will America find itself exchanging an addiction to foreign oil with an addiction to foreign batteries? Or will it create a successful battery market policy through its current efforts to bolster manufacturing while securing strategic materials? Either way, it seems certain that playing a critical role will be a little known element: vanadium.
It’s easy to connect the four dots involved: (1) US government policy is focused on reducing reliance on foreign oil and lowering CO2 emissions; (2) As a result, renewable energy investments and electric vehicles production will capture an increasingly large part of the American economy; (3) Since renewables such as wind and solar require mass storage batteries to effectively integrate with the grid, and since electric vehicles require higher performance batteries to compete with gas-burning cars; then (4) new battery solutions are vital to the US hitting its policy targets.