IEA Calls For Innovation To Bridge Gap Between Demand & Supply Of Metals For EV Batteries

The autonomous intergovernmental organisation that shapes policies related to energy for countries, International Energy Agency (IEA) has published a 68-page report “Global Supply Chains of EV Batteries“. The report states that innovation alone can help bridge the fast increasing gap between demand and supply of critically important metals for EV batteries. The supply of critical minerals and metal needed to manufacture the batteries will determine the speed to net zero, a solemn pledge the world must keep. 30% to 40% of the price of an EV is accounted for by the batteries. In 2021, EV sales broke new records, with close to 10% of global car sales being electric, quadruple their market share in 2019. Three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries are produced by China where 70% of production capacity for cathodes and 85% for anodes (both are key components of batteries) is based.

The biggest challenge to the EV industry is the dramatic increase in the price of battery metal in early 2022. In the period spanning the outset of 2021 and May 2022, lithium prices increased more than sevenfold while cobalt prices more than doubled. Nickel prices almost doubled over the same period reaching levels not seen for almost a decade.

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These are all the principal reasons behind the IEA pinning its hope on innovation which alone can play a rescue act. It has the three following postulates.

Direct Lithium Extraction Can Increase Production From Existing Mines

Direct lithium extraction (DLE) bypasses the time-intensive need to evaporate the unconcentrated brine water and chemical removal of impurities. Instead, DLE technologies directly extract lithium from unconcentrated brine either through adsorption, ion exchange or solvent extraction techniques. DLE relies on high selectivity technologies which can extract lithium from complex and varied brines and reject impurities. Thus, it saves not only money and time but the environment too by widening the pool of economically extractable lithium supply. However, it is quite the challenge to select and scale up DLE technologies.

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Novel Nickel Routes Can Increase The Variety Of Supply Sources

Batteries require Class 1 nickel and Class 2 nickel. Most of the production is expected to happen in the regions with significant laterite resources, which produce Class 2 nickel, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. There are novel technologies to convert low grade laterite resources into Class 1 nickel. HPAL (high-pressure acid leaching) is a form of hydrometallurgy that uses acid separation under high temperature and pressure to produce nickel at Class 1 grade suitable for battery applications. HPAL, however, comes with significant challenges, predominantly due to cost and lead times.

HPAL projects are capital intensive as they cost twice the conventional smelters for oxide ore and take as long as four to five years. Much to the chagrin of environmentalists, it is not a sustainable solution either. Indonesia’s first HPAL battery nickel project, a joint venture between Indonesian company Harita Group and Chinese company Ningbo Lygend Mining Co. started operating in 2021. Clean Teq, a company developing a solar-powered HPAL project in Australia, where steam and heat are also recovered, is struggling to make HPAL sustainable.

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Re-mining From Mining Waste

There is a novel process to extract the valuable minerals and metals from mine tailings, waste water and rock. Although a significant source of supply, it has not yet been realised. For example, tailings for nickel and copper mining were 4 billion tonnes in 2017. There are several start-ups focussing on this including the Rio Tinto backed start-up, Regeneration.