The de-carbonization of the transport industry is heavily dependent on the scaling up of electric vehicle production rapidly and massively, and this rests on scaling up battery mineral mining and refining. This means Lithium.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence counts 40 lithium mines that have been in operation and producing lithium in 2022. But, by 2050, the company sees a need for 234 more lithium mines if there’s no battery recycling underway (which, of course, is completely unrealistic but is a place to start from for such an analysis).
“The long term path for lithium is set, yet the supply chain scaling challenge has just begun,” said Simon Moores, chief executive of Benchmark. “What this data shows is that we are at just the beginning of a generational challenge, not one that’s going to be solved in the 2020s.”
Source: Cleantechnica: Read The Article
PSR Analysis: Benchmark predicts that by 2032 more Lithium will need to be mined per year than was produced in the years 2015 to 2022. This means more mines are needed (with resulting capital investment) and recycling needs to be ramped up significantly.) In fact, Benchmark forecasts that in 2040, nearly 20% of lithium chemicals will be produced from recycled batteries or process scrap.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence sees stationary energy storage as the main driver of demand by that time — two-thirds of the 11.2 million tons expected to be needed by 2050, so the market will need to shift towards non-lithium energy storage (such as Flow Batteries and other novel technologies) for grid support and peak shaving. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
