USB who aren't known as Lithium bulls are forecasting that...

USB who aren't known as Lithium bulls are forecasting that Lithium demand was 804kt in 2022, 1,000kt in 2023 increasing to 1,875kt in 2026. From 2022 this is an annual lithium demand growth rate of 24.6% pa. Demand is projected to double in 4 years. Their 2030 forecast is 3584kt LCE so the next 4 year period is expected to have demand almost double again.

So a twitter (x) forecast I found had copper demand going from 25,152t in 2022 to 29,260t in 2026 which is indeed an above GDP growth rate of 3.9%. This improves slightly to 4.6% if starting in 2023. Some bullish copper demand forecasts are 6-7% pa. How long does it take copper demand to double. How about going away and finding that out then come back post the result and see how it compares to 3-5 years?

The typical timeline for new lithium projects is 8-10 year for large but quicker hard rock projects. Projects like Critical Elements Canadian Rose project haven't materially progressed since their last JORC update in 2011. You might have got confused by the abundant supply from the James Bay project. It was owned by Galaxy who progressed it to permitting. Allkem owned it for a few years and the entire time it was stuck in Canadian permitting red tape. Its now owned by Arcadium but its still yet to get all the permits needed for a FID to commence construction allowing production. There's a whole heap of optimistic forecasts about how quickly many of these Canadian projects will progress. Apply a "yea right" view to the timelines and forecast supply surplus's disappear.

Broadly Lithium has the same supply constraint issue as Copper, it takes time to identify, define, and then ultimately build a lithium mine. Two recent lithium mines that being developed in Australia are Mt Holland (Wesfarmers/SQM) and Kathleen Valley (Liontown). Both these projects have their origins back to at least 2016. News articles note that on 15 July 2016 Kidman shares soared on its Mt holland lithium discovery. It was on 4 August 2016 that Liontown entered into an agreement to acquire the Kathleen Valley Project from Ramelius Resources. Both these projects are circa 8 years to production.

While it is correct that lithium in low concentrations is everywhere those concentrations are very low. A lithium in soils anomaly worth noting and exploring further might be 100ppm Li₂O aka a 0.01% soils grade. A good lithium deposit needs a grade above around 10,000ppm Li₂O aka 1.0%. The lithium everywhere is not at concentrations that can be mined commercially at anything close to current lithium prices.