This text is taken from the Courrier de la Planète of July 5, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
The resources of lithium, copper, nickel, graphite and cobalt, the main minerals needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles, are not unlimited. But – to answer Guy Hébert’s question – they are present in very abundant quantities, so there is very little risk of running out of them.
For example, if lithium production remained at 2020 levels, there would be enough known resources on the planet for 1,345 years, according to data from the US National Minerals Information Center. For graphite, we are talking about 1159 years.
Obviously, demand is bound to increase to meet the needs of the shift to electric transport. For example, the World Bank predicts that 4 to 10 million tons of lithium will be produced by 2050 for energy technologies. However, this represents only about 9%, at most, of the 111 million tonnes of world lithium reserves and resources known at this time. In addition, mining exploration should make it possible to find new deposits, points out Michel Jébrak, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UQAM.
However, it is questionable whether these reserves will be sufficiently and adequately exploited to meet demand. The sources of supply of these minerals are currently very little varied. For lithium and cobalt, the three largest producers control nearly three-quarters of production, the International Energy Agency (IEA) points out in a 2021 report titled The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions.
It is in this context that many countries, such as Canada, are trying to develop their production of critical and strategic minerals. However, the commissioning of new mines takes a long time. The IEA estimates that it takes on average more than 16 years between the discovery of a deposit and the first production.
“The demand is so strong that there may be temporary shortages due to delays in bringing the mines into production,” notes Mr. Jébrak. This causes prices to rise sharply and these fall again as soon as expectations of a supply disruption end. »
Price volatility therefore makes this market very risky. The abundance of these resources can also be a thorn in the side of business projects, according to Ugo Lapointe, consultant in responsible mineral production and consumption and co-spokesperson for the Coalition Québec Better Mine.
“Investors may hesitate to put a billion dollars in a project, when they know that there are plenty of other mining projects on the planet,” he believes.
Environmental limits
The effects of mining on the environment will also present a challenge. “The limit to mining is not the availability of resources, but the environmental consequences that we are ready to accept,” says Mr. Lapointe.
In particular, mining production requires the use of a large quantity of water, causes deforestation and generates a lot of waste. To produce one tonne of nickel or copper, for example, around 700 tonnes of mining waste was discarded in 2017, according to the IEA. This proportion was also increasing, since the sought-after ore is present in less and less concentration in the rocks extracted from the ground.
“If environmental and social issues are poorly managed, they can harm local communities and disrupt the supply of mineral resources,” writes the IEA in its report.
In this context, the World Bank and the IEA recommend strongly developing the recycling and reuse sector for these minerals. Recycling is also one of the steps in the battery industry that Quebec wishes to develop.