Connect with us

Electrification

Charted: The Most Expensive Battery Metals

Published

on

most expensive battery metals

The Five Most Expensive Battery Metals

Battery metal markets are booming on the back of rising electric vehicle sales.

Supply chain issues and a global rush to secure supplies have skyrocketed battery metal prices over the last year. And if battery metals remain expensive, the decade-long freefall in lithium-ion battery prices might come to a temporary halt.

The above infographic highlights the five most expensive battery metals as of December 2022 using prices from the Institute of Rare Earths and Strategic Metals (ISE).

How Much Do Battery Metals Cost?

Cobalt was by far the most expensive battery metal until late 2021, which was when lithium prices hit an inflection point, heading towards all-time highs.

A single tonne of lithium carbonate, one of the refined forms of lithium that’s used in batteries, now costs over $80,000, up from around $6,500 at the beginning of 2021.

MetalPrice per tonne (6-month average)Use in batteries
Lithium carbonate$82,141Cathode
Copper$9,417Current collectors
Cobalt sulfate$8,767Cathode
Nickel sulfate$6,488Cathode
Manganese sulfate$947Cathode

Prices have been converted from Euro to USD as of Dec. 8, 2022.

Lithium carbonate prices rose by around 496% in 2021, and have surged by over 100% year-to-date as of November 2022. Increasing EV demand and sales are driving prices from the demand side, with the lack of supply tightening the squeeze.

This year, lithium supplies have been affected by heatwaves in China, where some factories were temporarily shut down due to power shortages from drought-hit hydropower generation. From a broader perspective, it takes anywhere between three to five years for new lithium supply capacity to come online, making it difficult for suppliers to react quickly to rising demand.

Cobalt’s high cost is largely attributed to how geographically concentrated its supply is. Around 70% of global mined cobalt production comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Furthermore, cobalt mining in the DRC is associated with several human rights issues, including child labor.

The majority of the most expensive battery metals are used to build the cathode. The cathode is arguably the most important part of the battery, determining performance, longevity, and range. Copper is the only non-cathode material on the list. Thanks to its excellent electrical conductivity, copper is used as a current collector for battery anodes, serving as a medium for electric current and an outlet for heat.

On average, the cathode accounts for 51% of the cost of a single lithium-ion battery cell, largely due to the metals it contains.

What Does This Mean for EVs?

After falling by 89% from 2010 to 2021, lithium-ion battery pack prices are forecasted to rise this year, according to BloombergNEF.

Average battery pack prices are expected to increase from $132 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2021 to $135/kWh in 2022. While the increase is small, if prolonged, it could delay price parity between EVs and gas-powered cars, which is projected to occur once prices fall below $100/kWh.

In terms of the EV transition, higher battery metal prices could ultimately end up increasing the cost of the average electric vehicle, potentially becoming a speed bump to EV adoption. Consequently, an increase in battery metal supply and the subsequent stabilization in prices will be critical in keeping EV momentum on track.

Click for Comments

Electrification

How EV Adoption Will Impact Oil Consumption (2015-2025P)

How much oil is saved by adding electric vehicles into the mix? We look at data from 2015 to 2025P for different types of EVs.

Published

on

The EV Impact on Oil Consumption

As the world moves towards the electrification of the transportation sector, demand for oil will be replaced by demand for electricity.

To highlight the EV impact on oil consumption, the above infographic shows how much oil has been and will be saved every day between 2015 and 2025 by various types of electric vehicles, according to BloombergNEF.

How Much Oil Do Electric Vehicles Save?

A standard combustion engine passenger vehicle in the U.S. uses about 10 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per year. A motorcycle uses 1, a Class 8 truck about 244, and a bus uses more than 276 BOEs per year.

When these vehicles become electrified, the oil their combustion engine counterparts would have used is no longer needed, displacing oil demand with electricity.

Since 2015, two and three-wheeled vehicles, such as mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles, have accounted for most of the oil saved from EVs on a global scale. With a wide adoption in Asia specifically, these vehicles displaced the demand for almost 675,000 barrels of oil per day in 2015. By 2021, this number had quickly grown to 1 million barrels per day.

Let’s take a look at the daily displacement of oil demand by EV segment.

Number of barrels saved per day, 2015Number of barrels saved per day, 2025P
Electric Passenger Vehicles8,600 886,700
Electric Commercial Vehicles0145,000
Electric Buses 43,100333,800
Electric Two & Three-Wheelers674,3001,100,000
Total Oil Barrels Per Day726,0002,465,500

Today, while work is being done in the commercial vehicle segment, very few large trucks on the road are electric—however, this is expected to change by 2025.

Meanwile, electric passenger vehicles have shown the biggest growth in adoption since 2015.

In 2022, the electric car market experienced exponential growth, with sales exceeding 10 million cars. The market is expected to continue its strong growth throughout 2023 and beyond, eventually coming to save a predicted 886,700 barrels of oil per day in 2025.

From Gas to Electric

While the world shifts from fossil fuels to electricity, BloombergNEF predicts that the decline in oil demand does not necessarily equate to a drop in oil prices.

In the event that investments in new supply capacity decrease more rapidly than demand, oil prices could still remain unstable and high.

The shift toward electrification, however, will likely have other implications.

While most of us associate electric vehicles with lower emissions, it’s good to consider that they are only as sustainable as the electricity used to charge them. The shift toward electrification, then, presents an incredible opportunity to meet the growing demand for electricity with clean energy sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear power.

The shift away from fossil fuels in road transport will also require expanded infrastructure. EV charging stations, expanded transmission capacity, and battery storage will likely all be key to supporting the wide-scale transition from gas to electricity.

Continue Reading

Electrification

Graphite: An Essential Material in the Battery Supply Chain

Graphite represents almost 50% of the materials needed for batteries by weight, no matter the chemistry.

Published

on

Graphite: An Essential Material in the Battery Supply Chain

The demand for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries has skyrocketed in recent years due to the increasing popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy storage systems.

What many people don’t realize, however, is that the key component of these batteries is not just lithium, but also graphite.

Graphite represents almost 50% of the materials needed for batteries by weight, regardless of the chemistry. In Li-ion batteries specifically, graphite makes up the anode, which is the negative electrode responsible for storing and releasing electrons during the charging and discharging process.

To explore just how essential graphite is in the battery supply chain, this infographic sponsored by Northern Graphite dives into how the anode of a Li-ion battery is made.

What is Graphite?

Graphite is a naturally occurring form of carbon that is used in a wide range of industrial applications, including in synthetic diamonds, EV Li-ion batteries, pencils, lubricants, and semiconductor substrates.

It is stable, high-performing, and reusable. While it comes in many different grades and forms, battery-grade graphite falls into one of two classes: natural or synthetic.

Natural graphite is produced by mining naturally occurring mineral deposits. This method produces only one to two kilograms of CO2 emissions per kilogram of graphite.

Synthetic graphite, on the other hand, is produced by the treatment of petroleum coke and coal tar, producing nearly 5 kg of CO2 per kilogram of graphite along with other harmful emissions such as sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide.

A Closer Look: How Graphite Turns into a Li-ion Battery Anode

The battery anode production process is composed of four overarching steps. These are:

  1. Mining
  2. Shaping
  3. Purifying
  4. Coating

Each of these stages results in various forms of graphite with different end-uses.

For instance, the micronized graphite that results from the shaping process can be used in plastic additives. On the other hand, only coated spherical purified graphite that went through all four of the above stages can be used in EV Li-ion batteries.

The Graphite Supply Chain

Despite its growing use in the energy transition all around the world, around 70% of the world’s graphite currently comes from China.

With scarce alternatives to be used in batteries, however, achieving supply security in North America is crucial, and it is using more environmentally friendly approaches to graphite processing.

With a lower environmental footprint and lower production costs, natural graphite serves as the anode material for a greener future.

Click here to learn more about how Northern Graphite plans to build the largest Battery Anode Material (BAM) plant in North America.

Continue Reading

Subscribe

Popular