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It’s Halloween – time for trick or treating, spooky storytelling and scary visuals.  Here’s a real scary one if you’re still looking to frighten the policy wonks among your Halloween party guests. Courtesy of our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, it’s an infographic that should send a serious chill down policy makers’ spines, and it’s not even gory:

While stakeholders have taken some important steps to decouple from China in the wake of critical mineral supply chain wake-up calls against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and rising geopolitical tensions, we are still — and likely will be for a while — at the mercy of China when it comes to securing our EV battery supply chains, which are at the core of the green energy transition.

As Benchmark outlines,

“While most of the world’s lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese for batteries is mined outside of China, the majority of all critical minerals for the battery supply chain are further refined and processed in China.

With the exception of mining, China controls at least half of the supply from every step needed to make a lithium ion battery.”

As if “at least half” wasn’t scary enough, let’s take a look at graphite — a key ingredient for the anode side of Lithium-ion batteries:  According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, China mines 64% of natural flake graphite, and it has a “monopoly on converting [it] into the spherical graphite needed for anodes.” 

It gets worse from there. Says Benchmark Mineral Intelligence:

“In 2022, Benchmark forecasts 70% of all batteries will be made in China. This is supported by strong control of the midstream, with a near monopoly over anode production and over three-quarters of cathode production.”

Right now, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. is 100% import-dependent for graphite.  But that’s not for lack of known graphite resources.  As USGS noted in February 2022 in its updated U.S. Mineral Deposit Database, Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska is America’s largest graphite deposit.  If U.S. Government efforts to develop an American-based EV and lithium-ion battery supply chain have any hope of succeeding, looking for ways to help projects like Graphite Creek down the path to production will be, in a word…. Critical.

Until then, China’s battery anode dominance could be the West’s Achilles heel in the green energy transition – in defense planners parlance, a potential “single point of failure”:  irrespective of whether we succeed in developing multiple minerals and metals for the battery cathode, if we can’t meet anode material needs – and we cannot without natural graphite — we can’t build a rechargeable battery independent of China.  Scary thought, indeed.

The sourcing provisions in the energy passages of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, coupled with the recently announced grants to “supercharge” U.S. EV battery and electric grid supply chains are important steps towards mitigating that potential single point of failure.  However, considering the long timelines for permitting for mining and processing projects, decoupling and building out a battery supply chain independent of China will warrant a concerted effort by stakeholders and policy makers to decouple from China.

Are we scared enough to take on the challenge?

Shane Lasley is known to followers of ARPN for his stellar reporting on critical mineral resource issues from an Alaskan perspective.  Today, his Metal Tech News project has published the second iteration of what may just be the most comprehensive North American primer on critical minerals:

Critical Minerals Alliances 2022 is a magazine covering 29 metals and minerals (when counting rare earths as 14) deemed critical to North American supply chains, as well as U.S. and Canadian resource policy issues, the mineral intensity of the green energy transition, as well the material inputs going into EVs, among other topics.

This year’s rare earths section mirrors what the updated U.S. Government critical minerals list has done, treating the elements individually, with a special emphasis on magnet REEs.

In his opening column for the publication, Lasley says that the “shift away from the fossil fuels that powered the Industrial Revolution and transported humankind through the 20th century and toward the clean energy technologies that will propel us into the future has the world at an inflection point – the decisions we make on how to supply, use, and recycle the minerals and metals that are the basic building blocks of the Renewable Energy Revolution will shape the world we leave for posterity.” 

He argues that “[t]he optimum solution to laying the foundation for the next epoch of human progress will only be discovered through the forging of unlikely alliances between the woke and old school, environmental conservationists and natural resource developers, liberals and conservatives, national laboratories and private sector entrepreneurs, local stakeholders and global mining companies, venture capitalists and innovators, and everyone else with visions of a cleaner, greener, and high-tech future.”

This in-depth treatment of critical minerals and the issues surrounding them could not come at a more opportune time with nations all over the globe struggling to untangle complex supply chains and reduce over-reliance on adversary nations against the backdrop of mounting geopolitical challenges and socio-economic pressures to forge ahead towards a net zero carbons emissions future.

Metal Tech News has all the articles available for your reading pleasure on their Critical Minerals Alliances page.

If you prefer to read from a handy pdf version, click here to download the Critical Minerals Alliances pdf.

Against the backdrop of ongoing supply chain challenges around the globe, the urgency of untangling and securing critical mineral supply chains essential to a net zero carbon emissions future is becoming increasingly clear. Following on the heels of the Biden Administration invoking the Defense Production Act for the “Battery Criticals” – lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese [...]

Just as a new federal law – the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – may send a much-needed investment signal to the underdeveloped critical mineral supply chains for EVs and other 21st  century technologies, many of which are rife with underinvestment, political risk and poor governance – lawmakers and policy experts gathered for a two-day two-day conference hosted by the [...]

Mere months after widespread lockdowns in China over coronavirus outbreaks, factories in Sichuan province are shutting down again – this time over an intense heatwave and drought across China’s south.  Meanwhile, Russia’s war on Ukraine shows no signs of slowing down, and tensions between the United States and China over Taiwan continue to flare. As the [...]

They say desperate times call for desperate measures, and if you needed any more indications that the state of supply chain security has reached crisis level, consider headlines like this one:  “Tech firms rip apart NEW washing machines so they can harvest their computer parts in a bid to beat the global microchip shortage”. The news [...]

Over the past few weeks, we dove into the materials challenges associated with the accelerating EV revolution, outlining that while general awareness of immense mineral intensity of the green energy transition is growing, misconceptions in terms of how to address the challenge persist, with too many still subscribing to the notion that we can recycle, [...]

Shane Lasley has done it again.  Known to followers of ARPN for his stellar reporting on critical mineral resource issues from an Alaskan perspective, his Metal Tech News project has published what may just be the most comprehensive North American primer on critical minerals: Critical Minerals Alliances is a magazine covering more than twenty metals and minerals critical to North American [...]

Current news coverage may have you believe that when it comes to critical minerals, all we’re talking about is Rare Earths and battery tech metals, such as Lithium, Cobalt, Manganese, Nickel and Graphite. However, while certainly extremely important for 21st Century technology, these materials and the sectors in which they find key applications only represent [...]

Speaking at a virtual forum hosted by House Committee on Natural Resources Republicans on the role of critical minerals in geopolitics, renewable energy production and beyond earlier today, ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty called on policy stakeholder to apply the “all of the above” approach that helped reverse decades of American dependence on foreign oil to the [...]