Critical minerals – Global spread and role in battery production
Lithium
The soft metal has a relatively short history of successful commercial production, contributing to a volatility in prices in the last 10 years as its role in modern batteries has driven demand. Possessing a fairly wide geological spread, Australia, Chile, Argentina and China hold the largest reserves. Lithium can be extracted from brine as well as rocks containing lithium, such as spodumene, and is critical to the production of lithium-ion batteries.
Australia and Indonesia hold the largest deposits in the world, but Russia and Canada are also big producers. Nickel has a long history of being used for plating in stainless steel. A key material in modern batteries, nickel helps deliver higher energy density and greater storage capacity in lithium-ion batteries, a factor expected to drive demand on high-end electric vehicle batteries.
Nickel
Australia and Indonesia possess large reserves but the majority comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Cobalt is used in alloys, pigments and catalysts and most lithium-ion batteries within the cathode, contributing to stability and energy density. Despite its proven role in EV batteries, its scarcity, global concentration and volatile price has driven substantial research into reducing or eliminating its role in next generation energy storage.
Cobalt
