Miners must dig deep to provide raw materials for electric cars

Bullish forecasts for growth in electric vehicles may not be met because there won’t be enough cobalt and nickel mines.

A child and a woman break rocks extracted from a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Picture: AFP

The prospect of electric vehicles (EVs) being used around the world is already moving markets for key commodities and shaping investment decisions by the biggest mining companies.

Switching enough cars to electric to avert the worst extremes of climate change will require huge volumes of crucial commodities such as cobalt, nickel, lithium and copper, which are used in far greater quantities than in conventional cars. That raises questions over whether enough can be produced in time and at what environmental and financial cost.

“There is a real possibility that a shortage of minerals could hold back the urgent need for a rapid upscaling of low-carbon technologies,” researchers at the University of Sussex warned this month. Supplies are often “heavily monopolised by a single country, confronted by social and environmental conflict, or concentrated in poorly functioning markets”, they said.

Wood Mackenzie, the consultancy, forecasts EVs will account for about 7 per cent of global car sales by 2025. Others have forecast double this level but Milan Thakore, senior analyst in battery materials at Wood Mackenzie, says that “looks impossible” because there are simply not enough cobalt and nickel mines being built to meet that level of demand. “We don’t know where that metal is going to come from,” he says. “The battery and automotive industry needs to remember you can’t just switch on a new mining operation - they take many, many years to develop. Really, we need that investment now.”

Companies such as Glencore, the world’s largest cobalt producer, believe they are well positioned. “Electric vehicles will have an extremely positive effect on the demand for cobalt and nickel,” Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive, told investors last month.

Glencore says that of the 100 million vehicles sold each year about 2.2 million are electric cars, and that this requires 27,000 tonnes of cobalt. At present global annual production stands at 120,000 tonnes. By 2025, it predicts there will be about 11.5 million electric vehicles sold each year, requiring an additional 73,000 tonnes. Mr Glasenberg says that a forecast of 580 million electric vehicles on the road by 2040 “bodes well” for its business in cobalt, as well as in nickel and copper where it also has bullish views.

Such forecasts helped to drive cobalt prices to record highs of more than $US90,000 a tonne in 2018, but prices have since fallen back sharply and are now trading closer to $US30,000 a tonne. The fall has been attributed to a surge in supply that does not appear to have been matched by EV sales. Late last year Glencore mothballed the world’s biggest cobalt mine, at Mutanda in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in response to lower prices and higher taxes in the country.

Mothballed: Glencore’s copper and cobalt mine at Mutanda in the DRC, Picture: Bloomberg

Lithium carbonate prices have also retreated, from $US13,500 a tonne a year ago to about $US9000. An initial uptick in demand for lithium for EVs led to a surge in mined lithium in Australia and higher output from salt lakes in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, but this led to oversupply.

Low prices are not the only obstacle to investment in new mines. “Eighty per cent of new cobalt projects that could potentially come on are in the DRC, so not only are you asking investors to look at cobalt, where the price has come down so significantly, you’re asking them to invest in one of the riskiest jurisdictions in the world,” Mr Thakore says. Corruption, child labour and political instability are all deterrents.

Carmakers are aware of the potential controversies. Volvo announced that it would become the first manufacturer to make the cobalt in its batteries traceable by using blockchain technology.

Martina Buchauser, Volvo’s global head of procurement, says: “We have always had our requirements in terms of sustainability and responsible sourcing, but with electric vehicles and the amount of raw materials going into a battery, this has become even more critical.”

She says that Volvo has set out to “fix” the issues it sees with child labour, circled above, in “artisanal” small-scale mining in the DRC. The carmaker has taken some of its battery cell suppliers to the country “to make sure everyone understands what the challenge is”.

The Times