Who produces and who produced lithium? A world ranking
Lithium is often referred to as the "white gold" for electric vehicles.
The light metal plays a key role in the cathodes of all types of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles. As a result, the recent surge in EV adoption has driven lithium production to new highs.
In the infographic below, Govind Bhutada and Sam Parker of Visual Capitalist chart over 25 years of lithium production by country, from 1995 to 2021, based on data from the BP Statistics.
In the 1990s, the United States was the largest producer of lithium, in stark contrast to the present.
Indeed, in 1995, the United States accounted for more than a third of global lithium production. From then until 2010, Chile became the largest producer thanks to the production boom of the Salar de Atacama, one of the richest lithium brine deposits in the world.
In 2021, global lithium production exceeded 100,000 tonnes for the first time, quadrupling from 2010. Furthermore, around 90% of this production comes from just three countries.
Australia alone produces 52% of the world's lithium. Unlike Chile, where lithium is mined from brines, Australia's lithium comes from hard rock mines for the mineral spodumene.
China, the world's third largest producer, has an important position in the lithium supply chain. In addition to developing domestic mines, Chinese companies have acquired approximately $5.6 billion worth of lithium assets in countries including Chile, Canada and Australia over the past decade. It also houses 60% of the world's lithium refining capacity for batteries.
Batteries have been a major driver of the exponential increase in lithium production. The future will see a further increase in this percentage, especially if the obligations to abandon heat engines are imposed. All of this will have an enormous worldwide impact on the distribution of economic power.
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The article Who produces and who produced lithium? A world ranking comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/chi-produce-e-chi-produceva-il-litio-una-classifica-mondiale/ on Wed, 28 Dec 2022 12:49:14 +0000.