Mainly in comparison to the distribution of oil which I understand is a lot more established. Will there come a point whereby batteries can’t be economically produced?
Do we have any idea where these minerals are likely to be?
In: 2
If we look at a chemistry like Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO or LFP) which is increasingly popular (e.g. used in some Tesla/BYD electric cars), there’s little to no dependence on rare earth metals or blood minerals.
The ingredients for those cells are all super common, and apart from Lithium are already mined and processed in huge quantities.
There are plentiful deposits of lithium all over the world, but demand and prices have been low until recently so there’s been little reason to open new mines. Given the potential environmental impacts of large mining operations, it takes a while for new mines to open.
Edit: to answer your question about cartels/future energy markets, I do not think we’ll see similar things like OPEC in the renewable/battery space.
Oil is energy itself, cut off the supply and economies immediately shrink and quality of life drops. Cut off the supply of parts for batteries/solar/nuclear/etc and you hinder economy growing, but it’s a much slower and more long term impact that gives countries time to work around it.
Edit 2: forgot to add, LFP is the current front runner here but there are clear candidates to replace it. CATL, who make a *lot* of EV batteries, plan to mass produce sodium ion batteries this year. Sodium is incredibly plentiful all over the world. Energy density is lower, but at least for stationary storage and low end EVs I can see sodium becoming the world leader – and manufacturable all over the world without input constraints
Latest Answers