At the height of the American war machine’s realization that China controls nearly all of its raw materials, two new developments in Europe now suggest that the West has a fighting chance to secure critical metals for the future: A major discovery in Norway, and a potentially game-changing acquisition in Greenland.
With Europe expected to lead the world in electric-car sales for a second straight year, an epic rush to build a battery-supply chain from scratch is playing out across the continent.
Fueled by state support of at least 6.1 billion euros ($7.3 billion) and investment plans totalling 10 times that in just one year….
Data from Benchmark’s Lithium ion Battery Database shows battery demand in Europe – the second biggest market behind China — is set to increase at an annualised rate of 40.1 per cent between 2020 and 2025.
It’s no wonder manganese, lithium, cobalt, nickel, HPA, rare earths and copper companies on the ASX are going gangbusters.
“Unprecedented and revolutionary cycle driven by the rise of green energy and electrification…”
The commodities market is not in a so-called supercycle, rather it is at the start of an unprecedented and revolutionary cycle driven by the rise of green energy and electrification of “everything from a bus, to a skateboard and a Vespa”, according to mining legend and financier Robert Friedland.
Lithium carbonate prices have shot up by more than 40% in China in January, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
The price reporting agency said the increase was on the back of continued, surging lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery demand.
London: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to announce next week a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, five years earlier than previously planned, the Financial Times has reported.
….Johnson now intended to move the date forward again to 2030 in a speech on environmental policy he is expected to give next week.
(London) — A gang of Perth mining juniors is clambering aboard Europe’s lithium bandwagon, shrugging off the global price doldrums and betting that European governments and car makers will deliver an electric vehicle and battery bonanza.
The fundamentals for a European lithium boom seem in place. Coronavirus has put barely a dent in the European car makers’ sales of, and ambitions for, electric vehicles – and soon they will need more battery-ready lithium than the world can supply.
“Europe is the place where lithium demand is going to grow the fastest of anywhere in the world, and it has no domestic supply whatsoever,” says EMH executive chairman Keith Coughlan. “The supply-demand equation is as simple as that.”
(Bloomberg) — European governments approved the most ambitious climate change plan to date, agreeing to pour more than 500 billion euros ($572 billion) into everything from electric cars to renewable energy and agriculture.
The plan is part of Europe’s bid to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
Significantly, for a country where car manufacturing represents a significant part of the economy, no funds were directed toward fossil fuel cars. Subsidies to buy electric vehicles in Germany are so generous that some Renault models can be acquired for free.
Supplies of lithium and other minerals used in rechargeable batteries are highly concentrated in just a few countries, leaving the raw materials vulnerable to disruption as a boom in electric cars bolsters demand, according to the United Nations.
“The rise in demand for the strategic raw materials used to manufacture electric batteries will open more trade opportunities for the countries that supply these materials,” Pamela Coke-Hamilton, UNCTAD’s director of international trade, said in a statement. “It’s important for these countries to develop their capacity to move up the value chain.”
The rechargeable battery market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of about 7% during 2019-2024. The market in cathode for lithium-ion batteries, the most common rechargeable car battery, is expected to jump to $58.8 billion by 2024 from $7 billion in 2018, according to the report.
The U.K. government wants to end the sale of new diesel and petrol (gasoline) cars by the year 2035.
Grant Shapps, the U.K.’s transport secretary, said that the government’s £1.5 billion ($1.95 billion) strategy to “make owning an electric vehicle as easy as possible” was working, claiming that in 2019 a “fully electric car was sold every 15 minutes.”
