Simon Moores

We’ve called it “the new black.” The Guardian even went as far as ringing in the “Ion Age.”  Bearing testimony to the growing importance of battery technology, the U.S. Senate will hold a hearing examining the outlook for energy and minerals markets in the 116th Congress on Tuesday, February 5, 2019 with an emphasis on battery technology.

Followers of ARPN will not be surprised to learn that Simon Moores, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Managing director and member of the ARPN panel of issue experts has been asked – once more – to share their insights on the supply chain for EV lithium ion batteries and the energy storage revolution.

Moores considers the fact that the U.S. Senate Energy committee is holding its second hearing in 14 months on the issue progress, stating: 

“The highest level of US government is taking the risks to its future automotive and energy industries seriously. With the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) and the true arrival of battery storage as part of the energy mix, those that have low cost, abundant supply of quality lithium ion batteries will be ahead of the pack.  Right now, China is leading the build out of this lithium ion battery capacity and Benchmark Minerals now forecasts the country to have 68% of global capacity by 2028 while the US presently sits at 11%.

The other key factor in controlling this industry is securing supply chains for lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite anode materials. This is not just about low cost, high volume mining but key skills and know-how to produce chemically engineered battery grade chemicals – commodities for the 21st century.”

The committee has set the hearing for 10:00 a.m. EST on Tuesday, February 5, 2019, and will offer a livestream on its website, where written testimony will also be made available at the time of the hearing.

Steve LeVine, Future Editor at Axios and Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council, has called it “one of the most confounding areas of research” and a “technology that, while invented more than two centuries ago, is still frustrating scientists.”   It is also one of the areas where one of the key growth industries – the electronic vehicle segment – is making massive investments to achieve breakthroughs: We’re talking about battery technology.

Supply concerns for the materials underpinning this technology are increasingly forcing automakers and other industries relying on energy storage, such as utilities, to step up their efforts both boost the amount of energy batteries can store and diversify materials used to achieve these efficiencies.

Lithium, Cobalt and Nickel have long been the shining stars of battery technology, but there is a new kid on the block – particularly in the area of stationary storage.

Simon Moores, member of the ARPN panel of experts and Managing Director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, believes that Vanadium’s time to shine may have come.  Addressing attendees of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s World Tour in Melbourne Australia, Moores said that “if the vanadium market gets a number of key [mines] up and running quickly, vanadium flow could have its ‘lithium ion battery moment’ — its Elon Musk moment.”

Traditionally known as an alloying component in various steels, where its strengthening properties come to bear, Vanadium has been used in the building and construction industry for a long time. Ferrovanadium alloys have also been used in protective military vehicles while a Titanium-Aluminum-Vanadium alloy is used in jet engines and high-speed aircraft.  While Vanadium flow battery technology has been around for a while, first-generation batteries were mired by inefficiencies ad costliness. Initial breakthroughs in 2011 increased storage capacity of Vanadium by 70 percent – and more R&D is continuing to yield further improvements. Vanadium flow battery technology today, however, is considered well established and commercially viable, leading Moores and his colleagues to estimate that by 2028, 50 percent of the “burgeoning stationary storage market will be lithium-ion, and 25 per cent vanadium flow batteries.”

This emerging development, in turn, invites a theme that is very familiar for ARPN followers — the co-product challenge. As we have previously pointed out:

“According to USGS, Vanadium [ a co-product of Aluminum ]  is at least as plentiful as Nickel and Zinc, at least in terms of its availability in the earth’s crust. However, it rarely occurs in deposits that can be economically mined for the element alone. Between 2009 and 2013, some co-product vanadium production occurred domestically (though not from Bauxite mining for Aluminum), but it has since been suspended. As a result, the United States is currently 100% import dependent for its domestic Vanadium needs – in spite of the fact that ‘domestic resources and secondary recovery are adequate to supply a large portion of domestic needs.’

This once more begs the question – isn’t it time for a more comprehensive approach to mineral resource policy?”

The inclusion of Vanadium on the Department of Interior’s list of 35 minerals deemed critical to U.S. national security was a logical first step. Now appropriate policy reforms must follow.

In an interview with InvestingNews.com, Simon Moores, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s managing director and a member of the ARPN panel of experts, discusses challenges relating to Lithium – one of the key materials underpinning EV battery technology. Moores says that big challenges still lie in bringing new supply to the market, but the situation is not [...]

We’ve said it before, EV battery technology is the new black – and if the metals and minerals fueling this technology are not yet on your radar, you’ve clearly missed the memo.  Even the oil industry is coming to grips with this new reality. As our friends from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence report: “For the first [...]

In case you haven’t noticed, EV battery technology is the new black. With Lithium being one of the key metals driving this technology, our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence have looked at the material’s supply chain – and the time it takes to develop the respective components of it. As Simon Moores, managing director at [...]

Our friends from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence – formidable experts when it comes to battery tech and the mineral resources driving it – are returning to the U.S. in May for another round of their World Tour. This year’s tour will “focus on the supply chains for the next generation of battery technologies,” and seek to [...]

Just last week, we highlighted the surge in EV technology and its implications for mineral resource supply and demand.  A timely subject – as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy held a “Full Committee Hearing “to Examine Energy Storage Technologies” this week. Simon Moores, Managing Director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence [...]

ARPN followers know it’s the elephant in the room. China. Already vast and resource-rich, the country has demonstrated an insatiable appetite for the world’s mineral resources and has pursued an aggressive strategy to gain access to the materials needed to meet the world’s largest population’s resource needs. Thus, it comes as no surprise that China [...]

Our friends at Benchmark Minerals are back in town and they’ve done it again: The team led by Benchmark Minerals Managing Director and ARPN expert panel member Simon Moores has once more put together a great lineup for a half-day event in Washington, DC this Wednesday. Speakers like David Abraham, Director of the Technology, Rare [...]

A recent piece for InvestorIntel zeroes in on a metal which, due to its growing use in battery technology, coupled with a challenging supply scenario is increasingly afforded “critical mineral” status – Cobalt. A co-product of Nickel and Copper, the metal’s recent history, as author Lara Smith argues, has been “chaotic.” ARPN agrees that about sums it up. Criticism regarding the [...]