Christian Moess Laursen of The Wall Street Journal reports that Europe is ramping up lithium mining to help loosen Beijing’s grip on the market. Approximately 97% of the lithium used in the EU comes from China. He writes:
A fleet of new lithium mines are set to open across Europe in the next few years as the European Union pushes to increase supply of the metal deemed vital for the energy transition in a bid to combat China’s grip on the market.
Lithium is crucial to limiting carbon-emissions due to its use in electric vehicle batteries. Demand from BEVs is set to triple in Europe in the next ten years, according to commodity-research firm Fastmarkets.
This poses a problem for the EU as 97% of lithium used in the bloc comes from a single source: China.
“We are totally dependent on China,” President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said at a clean-tech conference earlier this year. […]
In its forecasts, Fastmarkets has eight mines that it views likely to start producing throughout this decade. These will take European mine supply from virtually zero to 58,000 tons of lithium-carbonate equivalent a year by 2034.
“These are very large mines that are looking to come online,” Schoffstall said. Securing that supply domestically should help regain some pricing control from China and allow Europe to build out a supply chain, he added.
“It gets you out of the situation like Europe has with Russia and natural gas where they’re really reliant on one specific partner,” Schoffstall said.
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