Lithium: China world superpower, Nevada superstate USA

With the ongoing shift to electric vehicles (EVs) and clean energy technologies, governments and electric vehicle manufacturers are rushing to protect their supply chains as the demand for lithium increases.

As Visual Capitalist notes, while the US lags behind in the global lithium rush, it is only now starting to realize the need to reach China's strong foothold. This infographic from Scotch Creek Ventures highlights the growing demand for lithium and the need for a home supply chain in the United States.

Global lithium production has more than doubled in the past four years to 82,000 tons in 2020, compared to 38,000 tons in 2016. Here are some of the factors driving the lithium race:

• More electric vehicles. Sales of electric vehicles have increased in recent years. Between 2016 and 2020, annual sales of electric cars increased by 297%, from around 750,000 to nearly 2.9 million cars last year.
• Drop in the price of lithium batteries. Falling lithium-ion battery prices allow electric vehicles to compete more aggressively with gas-powered cars. Since 2013, battery costs have fallen by 80% with a volume weighted average of $ 137 / kWh in 2020.
• Then there are the mega-factories of batteries. Greater battery production capacity means greater demand for critical minerals entering the batteries. As of March 2021, there were 200 mega-battery factories in the pipeline until 2030, and 122 of these were already operational. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, if all 200 mega-battery factories were running at full capacity, their annual lithium demand would be 3 million tons. This is almost 37 times the 82,000 tons produced in 2020.

Although the demand for lithium is increasing globally, its supply chain from mines to batteries depends on only a few critical nations.

Who is dominating now? In 2020, Australia, Chile and China collectively made up 88% of global lithium production. After mining, the lithium supply chain involves refining, processing and packing lithium into batteries, and most of this takes place in China.

In 2019, China produced 80% of the world's refined battery chemicals, as well as 73% of lithium-ion battery cells. In addition, of the 200 mega-battery factories scheduled to run until 2030, 148 are in China. As a result, China is far ahead of other countries in the lithium and battery race.

On the other hand, the United States is heavily dependent on imports for lithium supply, with only one lithium mine in the country. As demand increases, this lack of production could threaten US energy independence in the future. To address this issue and gaps in the supply of other critical minerals, US President Biden has also signed an executive order with the goal of building secure supply chains for strategic minerals.

But where is lithium in the United States? The answer is simple: in NEVADA

Nevada is known as the State of Silver for its rich silver mining history. Today it is the only source of lithium production in the United States.

Clayton Valley and Kings Valley, two of the largest lithium deposits in the country, are located in Nevada. The country's only production mine, Albemarle's Silver Peak Mine, produces approximately 5,000 tons of lithium annually in the Clayton Valley. Additionally, the region is among the richest closed-basin brine fields in the world by grade and tonnage.

In addition to a rich lithium deposit, Clayton Valley mining companies can also take advantage of Nevada as a jurisdiction. These include access to infrastructure, a skilled mining workforce, and proximity to a battery manufacturing base with Tesla Gigafactory. That's not all: in 2020, the Fraser Institute awarded Nevada the top spot for attractiveness of mining investments globally.

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The article Lithium: China world superpower, Nevada superstate USA comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/litio-cina-superpotenza-mondiale-nevada-superstato-usa/ on Sun, 10 Oct 2021 09:00:29 +0000.