The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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In addition to dealing a major blow to the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on a chink in the United States' economic and security armor – an overreliance on foreign countries for the minerals and metals that lie at the frontend of American supply chains. "The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how delicate our supply chains are and that should be a wakeup call for all of us," Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said d...
Considered by market experts to be the largest single fundraising in the history of lithium-ion battery supply chains, Sila Nanotechnologies raised US$590 million during a financing that closed on Jan. 26. "Raising way over half a billion dollars is an incredible achievement but is exactly the level of investment innovators in the battery supply chain should be receiving," said Benchmark Mineral Intelligence Managing Director Simon Moores. Aptly located in Silicon Valley,...
January 8, 2021 may go down in history as the inflection point for the transition from the fossil fuel powered vehicles that transported humanity through the 20th century to the electric vehicles that will carry us into the future. This tipping point for global transportation offers a spectrum of challenges and opportunities to sustainably mine, refine, and recycle the minerals and metals needed to build this electric mobility future. Entering 2021, Tesla Inc. was celebrating...
Rising demand, tight supply, war, and a short squeeze on a China-based stainless steel titan came into perfect alignment to rocket the price of nickel to historic heights. The price for a pound of nickel soared nearly 250% over two days to a brief altitude above US$100,000 per metric ton, or US$45 per pound, on March 7. This prompted the London Metal Exchange to halt trading of the battery metal to deal with the aftermath of the largest move in the price of a metal in LME's...
With the goal of producing 58,000 metric tons of the lithium carbonate needed for the batteries powering electric vehicles and storing renewable energy each year, global miner Rio Tinto has committed US$2.4 billion to the development of Jadar in Serbia, one of the world's largest greenfield lithium projects. "Serbia and Rio Tinto will be well-positioned to capture the opportunity offered by rising demand for lithium, driven by the global energy transition and the project will...
Best known for delivering technological solutions to the oil and gas sectors for more than 100 years, Schlumberger has formed Schlumberger New Energy, a new division focused on low-carbon and carbon-neutral energy technologies. One of Schlumberger New Energy's first projects in the United States is the development of a pilot plant to extract lithium from brine in Nevada. Unlike the evaporation process traditionally used to extract lithium from brines in South America, the...
The American clean energy revolution envisioned by the Biden administration is going to require a massive supply chain upgrade – from the mines feeding rare earths, battery metals and other materials into the front end, to the manufacturers that will utilize these mined materials to build the electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure needed for a low-carbon future. In a move that demonstrates the newly elected administration's hopes that a transition to l...
Though Volkswagen does not expect any appreciable quantities of spent lithium-ion batteries for at least another decade, the German automaker has already constructed its first plant to recover more than 90% of the raw materials from these cells. Operated by Volkswagen Group Components, an independent entity formed by Volkswagen in 2019, this pilot plant that recently opened in Salzgitter, Germany aims to recycle more than 90% of the battery raw materials such as lithium, nicke...
Just a week after Tesla Battery Day 2020, where CEO Elon Musk unveiled the electric automaker's massive lithium-ion battery ambitions, the iconic electric automaker has cut a deal to buy some of the lithium it will require for this plan from a mine in North Carolina and has begun moving ahead with a Texas refinery to transform the raw lithium concentrates into the form needed for its batteries. These two moves will shorten Tesla's North American mines-to-electric vehicle...
American Manganese Inc. Sept. 4 announced further improvements to the design and capacity of its RecycLiCo pilot plant, which recovers cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, and aluminum from lithium-ion cathode material. In addition to the growing opportunity to recycle spent lithium-ion batteries, scrap from the rapidly increasing number of battery megafactories provides an immediate source of cathode material in need of recycling. According to recent forecasts by Benchmark...
Recycling metals from spent lithium-ion batteries and rare earths from outmoded computers play a vital role in the United States reclaiming its critical mineral independence, according to Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. "Until our country can start mining and refining more of these materials or develop commercially viable substitutes, we must recycle as much critical mineral and REE content as we can from existing products," Brouillette penned in an editorial recently...
First Cobalt Corp. has taken a critical step toward its goal of supplying North American and European electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery manufacturers with 25,000 metric tons of battery grade cobalt sulfate per year. With an initial investment of only US$56 million, First Cobalt's already established refinery in Ontario could be churning out enough cobalt for the batteries powering more than 500,000 EVs annually by 2022. "This is an important milestone in our efforts to...
Tesla Inc. needs an increasing amount of lithium, graphite, nickel and cobalt for the lithium-ion batteries that power its growing lineup of electric vehicles. With its own rapid expansion, coupled with every major automotive brand in the world adding increasing numbers of EV models to their lineups, securing sustainable and ethical supplies of the lithium, cobalt, graphite, and nickel that go into the batteries that power these zero-emission automobiles has become crucial....
The advent of the lithium-ion battery at the close of the 20th century has dramatically changed how we live, work and play. This revolutionary transformation, which began by allowing us to put our phones in our pockets and computers under our arms, has expanded to almost every facet of our life – from robot vacuums dutifully keeping our floors clean to zero-emission cars travelling our highways. While we might not think too much about it, when you add up all the laptops, table...
Does the United States' electric vehicle ambitions put the cart before the horse? Or, more precisely, place the EVs ahead of the raw material supply chains needed to build them? The Biden administration wants half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. This comes at a time when the European Union has called for a complete transition away from fossil-fuel-burning automobiles by 2035, and China is making its own massive push into the EV sector. This envisioned...
With the goal of delivering renewable energy to electrical grids by the end of 2023 and near-zero-carbon lithium for General Motors electric vehicles the following year, Controlled Thermal Resources has launched drilling at its Hell's Kitchen geothermal project in Southern California. "We are very pleased to kick start our drilling program and we are on schedule to deliver the project's first 50MW (megawatts) of baseload renewable power in late 2023 and an estimated 20,000 ton...
Global governments and industries are setting increasingly ambitious targets for the phasing out of fossil fuel-burning automobiles in favor of electric vehicles charged with green energy. Achieving these grand climate objectives, however, is going to require an equally bold strategy to ensure there are plentiful supplies of the new generation of energy minerals and metals critical to building this revolution in the way the world generates and uses energy. The World Bank...
The global transition to electric vehicles plugged into renewable energy sources is powering enormous demand for graphite, the single largest ingredient in lithium-ion batteries. "Graphite demand increases in both absolute and percentage terms since graphite is needed to build the anodes found in the most commonly deployed automotive, grid, and decentralized batteries," the World Bank penned in a 2020 report, "The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition." According...
Considering the almost unfathomable quantities that will be needed to power the global shift to low-carbon energy and electric mobility, copper is the most critical of the minerals and metals that have not been deemed critical by the United States or the European Union. How much demand will it take to push an abundant and widely produced metal like copper to the level of criticality? A doubling of current demand would likely be sufficient, and many analysts are forecasting...
"Please mine more nickel," these four words from Tesla CEO Elon Musk reverberated across the global mining sector and raised awareness of how fundamental nickel is to the lithium-ion batteries powering hundreds of millions of electric vehicles to come off Tesla and traditional automaker assembly lines over the next two decades. "Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way," Musk implored...
The lightest of all the metals in the universe, lithium has emerged as the namesake for the batteries powering electric vehicles down global highways and storing renewable energy for those EVs to plug into. This is on top of the countless laptops, tablets, smartphones, wearable electronics, power tools, household appliances, electric bikes, scooters, toys, and the seemingly endless list of electric devices made possible by lithium-ion batteries. "Lithium consumption for...
The envisioned green future where every North American is driving a battery-powered electric vehicle charged with renewable energy could be undermined by cobalt, a somewhat scarce and controversial metal that makes lithium-ion batteries better. "Cobalt is considered the highest material supply chain risk for electric vehicles in the short and medium term," the U.S. Department of Energy penned in an April report. This risk has automakers, lithium-ion battery manufacturers, and...
Answering Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk's call for new supplies of nickel that are mined "efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way," Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Group has struck a deal to supply the electric automaker with this fundamental lithium-ion battery ingredient from its Nickel West operation in Western Australia. "We are delighted to sign this agreement with Tesla Inc., and to collaborate with them on ways to make the battery supply chain more sustainable...
From mines to gigafactories, it is going to take a massive and coordinated effort to scale up the entire North American lithium-ion battery supply chain at a pace that meets the growing demands of the accelerating electric vehicle revolution. "To replace more of the gasoline cars that are on the road, to benefit from the promise of electrification across all vehicle types and all consumer classes, requires the supply chain to be built out in a bigger way and faster way than...
The adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy is driving increased demand for graphite, a major ingredient in lithium-ion batteries. Graphite, however, is high on a list of 35 critical minerals and metals not mined in the United States. Graphite One Inc. would like to shift America's reliance on foreign countries such as China for its graphite needs by developing a mine at Graphite Creek, a world-class deposit of graphite with some properties that make it uniquely...
