A report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that the global battery and minerals supply chain would need to expand tenfold by 2030 to meet projected demand for critical minerals.
The report concluded that the industry would need to build an additional 50 lithium mines, 60 nickel mines and 17 cobalt mines by 2030 to meet global net carbon emissions targets.
As the electrification of road transport expands to meet net-zero targets, pressure on supplies of critical materials will continue to build. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for electric vehicle batteries will increase from around 340 GWh today to more than 3,500 GWh by 2030.
Projected mineral supplies by the end of the 2020s are in line with demand for electric vehicle batteries in the IEA World Energy Model's "Stated Policies Scenario". However, supply of some minerals, such as lithium, needs to increase by a third by 2030 to meet commitments and announcements for EV batteries in the Announced Commitment Scenario (APS) of the same energy model.
Nickel will face the largest absolute demand growth through 2030, as high-nickel chemistries are currently the main cathode for electric vehicles and are expected to continue to do so.
For cobalt, the opposite is true, with battery makers continuing to economize on lower-cobalt chemistries (possibly even using cobalt-free chemistries by 2030) to reduce costs, while at the same time contributing to environmental, social and governance concerns ( ESG concerns.
Despite this trend, the report warns that a surge in global demand for electric vehicle batteries will still add to total cobalt demand this decade.
The IEA believes that an additional 41 nickel and 11 cobalt mines will be required to meet the expected demand in the 2030 given policy scenario, which would significantly expand the current project pipeline.
In addition to this urgent need for a new mine, the mine development timetable has also been extended to 16 years to allow for the necessary feasibility studies and engineering and construction work. In addition to the time it takes to start commercial production, mines typically take about 10 years to reach nameplate production capacity.
The IEA believes that new extraction and processing technologies, such as direct lithium extraction (DLE), high pressure acid leaching (HPAL), and re-mining from mining waste, can go a long way in closing the widening supply gap.
However, the technology has not yet been economically proven and has not yet been used commercially in the field.
