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Happy Friday!
This week 250 delegates descended on Budapest for Benchmark's Battery Gigafactories Europe event. Over two days packed with presentations, insights, and networking, two major themes became apparent.
We need mining: We are in the midst of a global battery arms race and the mining sector must increase its level of investment if it is to supply the rapidly increasing capacity of gigafactories in Europe and the rest of the world. Currently, gigafactory investment is moving at three to four times the pace of the upstream. Batteries are geopolitical: "Lithium ion is at the centre of a global geopolitical vortex," Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark, told attendees. The EU and US are going head-to-head with China and China is likely to react.
Indeed, Maro efovi, the VP of the European Commission, told the conference "the only way to ensure that the EU remains a global battery front runner is to step up our game."
But in creating new geographies for the energy transition, we need to be careful not to create inefficient supply chains by simply replicating the old model, warns Livent's Sarah Maryssael.
Both the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the Green Deal Industrial Plan in Europe feature energy storage. Iola Hughes from Rho Motion told delegates that energy storage is the fastest-growing market for batteries at the moment, having grown about 50% per year since 2020.
Part of the Green Deal Industrial Plan is reform of the electricity market. Policy analysts from the European Association for Storage of Energy give their opinion on these reforms in an article for Benchmark Source.
This week, the fall in cobalt prices also dealt a blow to the first new cobalt mine in the US for decades, as Jervois said it would pause final construction of its Idaho cobalt mine due to low prices and inflation. The decision highlights the difficulty of localising supply chains, even with generous government incentives such as the IRA.
Elsewhere, can Europe localise the rare earth supply chain and reduce China's dominance? While the pipeline of rare earth processing facilities in North America, Australia and Europe is significant, it will take time for the first inputs to be converted into saleable material. Read Benchmark's analysis of the situation for free here.
Also on Benchmark Source this week: Albemarle's $3.7 billion bid for Liontown is rejected; Ford joins a $4.5 billion nickel processing project in Indonesia with Vale and Huayou Cobalt; and GEM in China tests the eligibility requirements of the IRA by building a precursor plant in South Korea with SK On and EcoPro.
Have a good weekend,
The Benchmark Source Team