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The High-CO2 Nickel Conundrum

There’s been no shortage of metals industry turmoil in the early years of the electric-car age, from ups in lithium prices that Elon Musk described as insane, to downs for cobalt springing from battery-chemistry shifts.

One of the world leaders in battery materials that will be supplying the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Stellantis sees potential for more tumult ahead, unless a serious CO2 problem is resolved in the country home to far and away the most mined and refined nickel.

Indonesia’s nickel industry is highly carbon-intensive, with one of its major industrial parks alone relying on roughly as much coal-fire energy capacity as all of Mexico. Mathias Miedreich, chief executive officer of Belgium’s Umicore, believes Chinese companies that are active in the space still lack sensitivity as to how much polluting is taking place within this part of the supply chain.

Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-20/bmw-and-mercedes-battery-partner-sees-big-nickel-supply-risk?srnd=hyperdrive

The latest buzzword in battery materials sounds like a concept borrowed from astrophysics.

But “black mass” is just a very literal description of the intermediate product from recycling either spent electric-vehicle batteries or scrap from battery plants. It’s a dark, powdery cocktail of metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel that’s emerging as a commodity in its own right.

There’s growing interest in battery recycling as the global electric-vehicle industry expands, and as carmakers and Western governments aim to build supply chains that bypass China.

Mentions of black mass in company earnings have grown — including recent instances from commodities trader Glencore and chemicals giant BASF. Three market researchers — Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, Fastmarkets and S&P Global — have launched regular price assessments of the material since April.

Read more at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2023/08/29/tech/hyperdrive-ev-industry-black-mass/

Aug 15 (Reuters) – The mining industry faces “considerable challenges” meeting larger-than-expected demand for copper, nickel and other electric vehicle metals fueled by a U.S. climate law, S&P Global said in a report on Tuesday, ahead of the legislation’s one-year anniversary.

The landmark U.S. Inflation Reduction Act offers tax breaks for EVs, solar panels and other renewable energy products made from metals extracted in the United States or countries with U.S. free trade deals. Metals from “foreign entities of concern” including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will be banned in 2025. That has sparked a race among manufacturers to lock down supply.

Demand forecasts for various EV metals have increased 12% to 15% since U.S. President Joe Biden signed the IRA last August, the report said.

“The energy transition is really heating up the pressures on mineral supplies, and the IRA is adding a lot to those challenges,” Dan Yergin, S&P Global’s vice chairman and a co-author of the report, said in an interview.

Read more at: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/miners-face-considerable-challenges-meeting-demand-us-climate-law-study-2023-08-15/

Exxon Mobil has agreed to develop more than 6,100 lithium-rich acres in Arkansas with Tetra Technologies Inc, the second move this year by the oil giant for control of assets needed to produce the electric vehicle battery metal.

Exxon’s rapid expansion into the lithium sector comes amid growing interest by traditional energy companies and others into emerging technologies that aim to boost global supply of the ultralight metal.

Tetra, which produces chemicals for water treatment and recycling, earlier this week said it had signed an agreement with a company known as Saltwerx to develop 6,138 acres of salty brine deposits in Arkansas that are filled with lithium and bromine, although it provided few additional details.

Saltwerx is a subsidiary of Exxon, according to two people familiar with the matter. Exxon acquired it earlier this year when it bought a neighboring Arkansas parcel of 100,000 acres from Galvanic Energy. Galvanic remains an independent, privately held company and is not affiliated with Tetra or Exxon.

Read more at: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/exxon-mobil-expands-lithium-bet-with-tetra-technologies-deal-2023-06-28/

Saudi Arabia is planning a second lithium processing facility, as it steps up efforts to work with western partners to develop its battery supply chain. The facility, which will use feedstock mined in Austria to produce refined lithium hydroxide for BMW, is a sign of how supply chains to process the metal are slowly developing outside China.

Read more at: https://www.ft.com/content/89b26197-87e9-4aa6-adde-797131af3d8a

The world’s fastest-growing lithium producer says it could soon gain access to the US market.

Argentina has been lobbying to get in on President Joe Biden’s electric-vehicle drive. Landmark climate legislation, called the Inflation Reduction Act, features tax credits for vehicles that have a portion of their battery metals sourced in the US or a free-trade-agreement country. Australia and Chile, the top two lithium suppliers, have FTAs with the US. Argentina doesn’t.

Officials in Buenos Aires have been working on the issue with US diplomats and believe they are close to getting Argentina an exemption, Fernanda Avila, the federal mining undersecretary, and Franco Mignacco, president of top industry group Caem, said Tuesday on the sidelines of an event in the Argentine capital.

Argentina’s push comes amid a global tug of war for key EV minerals between the US and China.

The country’s only two producers as of now, Livent Corp. and Allkem Ltd., are set to merge to become the world’s third-biggest lithium company focused on supplying the US.

Pioneering rare earth recycling company HyProMag, which was formed by researchers from the University of Birmingham’s School of Metallurgy and Materials, is to be acquired by Maginito Ltd, in a deal that aims to catalyse the further scale-up and international roll-out of technology first piloted at the University of Birmingham and forming the basis for the UK’s first full scale remanufacturing facility for rare earth magnets at Birmingham’s Tyseley Energy Park being developed later this year.

HyProMag’s core technology is the based upon the patented process – Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap (HPMS), which was originally developed within the University’s Magnetic Materials Group (MMG) to extract rare earth magnets from scrap and redundant equipment and subsequently licensed to HyProMag.

The development of domestic sources of recycled rare earths in the UK, Germany, United States and other territories is a significant opportunity to fast-track the development of sustainable and competitive recycled rare earth magnet production.

Read more at: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2023/birmingham-to-become-uks-first-centre-for-rare-earth-magnet-recycling

It is one of the defining competitions of our age: The countries that can make batteries for electric cars will reap decades of economic and geopolitical advantages.

The only winner so far is China.

Despite billions in Western investment, China is so far ahead — mining rare minerals, training engineers and building huge factories — that the rest of the world may take decades to catch up.

Even by 2030, China will make more than twice as many batteries as every other country combined, according to estimates from Benchmark Minerals, a consulting group.

Here’s how China controls each step of lithium-ion battery production, from getting the raw materials out of the ground to making the cars, and why these advantages are likely to last.

China controls:	41% of the world’s cobalt
	28% of lithium
	6% of the world’s nickel
	78% of graphite
	5% of manganese
REFINING:	95% of manganese
	73% of cobalt
	70% of graphite
	67% of lithium
	63% of nickel
Components making:	74% of separators
	77% of cathodes
	92% of anodes
Cathodes making:	73% of NMC cathodes
	99% of LFP cathodes
Battery Cells	66% of the world’s battery cells

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/16/business/china-ev-battery.html

Tesla CEO Elon Musk traveled to Texas on Monday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the company’s new lithium refinery that the electric vehicle maker hopes will give the company more control over its supply chain.

Musk said the facility, which will be one of the largest of its kind in the world, will produce lithium for “about a million vehicles” and have more lithium refining capacity than “the rest of North American refining capacity combined.” 

He explained that the refinery’s capacity could be expand.

Read more at: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-greg-abbott-celebrate-groundbreaking-teslas-new-texas-facility

An agreement between the US and the European Union over critical minerals would unlock wider benefits than previously thought, with a deal paving the way to remove several more trade barriers introduced by President Joe Biden’s massive green subsidy law, according to people familiar with the matter.

An accord would essentially allow EU companies to take advantage of some of the benefits in the Inflation Reduction Act on the 50 minerals defined as critical in the law, said the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Biden administration has said that nations with trade agreements with the US will be able access some of the IRA’s benefits, which will offer some $369 billion in handouts and tax credits over the next decade for clean-energy programs in North America. If the minerals accord is passed, it would act as the equivalent of a free-trade agreement and that status would in turn enable electric vehicles containing EU-extracted and processed critical minerals to be eligible for IRA subsidies, the people said.

The US Trade Representative’s office declined to comment.

An early draft of the EU-US minerals agreement lists five minerals — cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese and nickel — covered by that standalone accord, Bloomberg previously reported. Such a deal would echo one that the Biden administration signed last month with Japan.

Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-28/us-eu-critical-minerals-deal-would-give-eu-broader-trade-relief#xj4y7vzkg