President Joe Biden plans Thursday to invoke Cold War powers to encourage domestic production of critical minerals for electric-vehicle and other types of batteries, according to people familiar with the matter.
Adding minerals like lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt and manganese to the list could help mining companies access $750 million under the Defense Production Act’s Title III fund, the people said. The move also could aid recycling of battery materials, one of the people said.
NEW DELHI — India has committed to jointly invest $6 million with the Australian government to explore lithium and cobalt mines in Australia over the next six months, in a bid to firm up supplies of key minerals needed to further its electric vehicle plans.
India’s KABIL, a mining joint venture between state-run firms National Aluminium Co, Hindustan Copper Ltd and Mineral Exploration Corp Ltd, has signed a preliminary agreement with Australia’s Critical Minerals Facilitation Office (CMFO), the Indian government said on Tuesday.
The move comes at a time when India is offering $2.4 billion of incentives for companies to build battery cells locally for electric vehicles. Lithium, whose price has surged in the recent days, is a key raw material used to make electric vehicle batteries.
PARIS, March 16 (Reuters) – French mining group Eramet (ERMT.PA) said on Wednesday it could develop jointly with Suez a recycling facility in France for electric vehicle batteries by 2024.
Eramet, a major producer of nickel and manganese for the steel sector, has focused increasingly on materials for electric vehicles.
In addition to large mine deposits in Indonesia and Argentina, it sees recycling as contributing to its potential to cover 20% of the European Union’s nickel requirements, 25% of the bloc’s lithium needs and 12% of its cobalt demand for EV batteries by 2030.
The joint project would produce black mass, a metal concentrate containing nickel, cobalt, manganese, lithium and graphite that is suitable for hydrometallurgical refining.
LONDON, March 11 (Reuters) – Confiscating the assets of companies that have fled Russia since the invasion of Ukraine would shatter investor confidence for decades and take Russia back to the calamitous days of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, metals magnate Vladimir Potanin has said.
Potanin, president and biggest shareholder of Norilsk Nickel (GMKN.MM), the world’s largest producer of palladium and refined nickel, said Russia should respond with pragmatism to its exclusion from swathes of the global economy.
Hydrogen is still in the early stages as an energy industry in Canada — Canada is in the top 10 of hydrogen producers globally but makes about three million tonnes of it for industrial use. China, the world’s top producer, makes more than eight times that much.
But hydrogen was a major part of the conversation between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when they met in Berlin Wednesday.
“This is one aspect for a very long-term strategic co-operation between Canada and Germany, because we understand acutely that Canada is a country that can help us import hydrogen, which will be produced in an environmentally friendly manner,” Scholz said in German.
It is not entirely clear how Canada can quickly ramp up hydrogen production to supply Europe, or how Europe can quickly adjust its energy systems to use more hydrogen.
On March 21, the International Energy Agency is hosting a meeting in Paris to discuss options to help Europe. Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is to attend.
At the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston Tuesday, Wilkinson also pitched Canada’s hydrogen but as a “medium- and longer-term opportunity.”
“Canada has huge opportunities associated with the production of ultralow carbon hydrogen,” he said. “Hydrogen will be important for domestic use but can also enable huge international opportunities for supply to geographies including Europe and Japan.”
Wilkinson pointed specifically to hydrogen projects announced recently, including an Air Products $1.3 billion net-zero hydrogen production and liquefaction facility, a joint venture into hydrogen between Suncor and ATCO, and an agreement between Mitsubishi and Shell Canada to produce hydrogen for export to Japan.
Biden-Harris Administration, Companies Announce Major Investments to Expand Domestic Critical Minerals Supply Chain, Breaking Dependence on China and Boosting Sustainable Practices.
Critical minerals provide the building blocks for many modern technologies and are essential to our national security and economic prosperity. These minerals—such as rare earth elements, lithium, and cobalt—can be found in products from computers to household appliances. They are also key inputs in clean energy technologies like batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels. As the world transitions to a clean energy economy, global demand for these critical minerals is set to skyrocket by 400-600 percent over the next several decades, and, for minerals such as lithium and graphite used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries, demand will increase by even more—as much as 4,000 percent. The U.S. is increasingly dependent on foreign sources for many of the processed versions of these minerals. Globally, China controls most of the market for processing and refining for cobalt, lithium, rare earths and other critical minerals.
Today, President Biden will meet with Administration and state partners, industry executives, community representatives, labor leaders, and California Governor Gavin Newsom to announce major investments in domestic production of key critical minerals and materials, ensuring these resources benefit the community, and creating good-paying, union jobs in sustainable production.
There’s no silver bullet to the climate crisis, but nuclear fusion may be the closest thing to it. In the quest for a near-limitless, zero-carbon source of reliable power, scientists have generated fusion energy before, but they have struggled for decades to sustain it for very long.
JET’s goal was to prove that nuclear fusion could be generated and sustained, ITER’s aim is to produce a tenfold return on energy, or 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of fuel put in.
LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) – An EU-funded certification scheme using blockchain is being developed for rare earths as automakers demand proof that materials used to make magnets for electric vehicles (EVs) are not linked to toxic pollution.
The system will set global standards and give confidence to consumers demanding sustainable products, two of the organisers told Reuters ahead of an official announcement on Tuesday.
The Circular System for Assessing Rare Earth Sustainability or CSyARES is due to be ready in about three years, the Rare Earth Industry Association (REIA) and Dutch supply chain traceability firm Circularise said.
Tesla holds a wide lead. Tesla lectures in Paris, 1892. Stock image
Tesla deployed 27% of the world’s battery nickel, despite the fact that overall LFP accounts for more than a quarter of the kWh hours in all of its vehicles sold last year. Tesla still does not sell LFP-powered models in North America.
Despite selling half the number of BEVs than Tesla, thanks to the absence of LFP in its line-up, Volkswagen deployed more cobalt and on a relative basis more metals across its brands. That’s in part due to high-performance vehicles like the Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron, some of which come equipped with higher nickel NCM batteries where cobalt can represent up to 20% of the metal mix.
© Christopher Roux (CEA-IRFM)/EUROfusion The core of the JET tokamak machine in Culham, England.
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