TO Lithium Hodlers.
UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING AND ABOUT TO HAPPEN IN THE LITHIUM SPACE.
..1. Excess supply will easily last another 3 years, can you wait that long?
..2. I'm positive that we will have a dire/serious market correction long before lithium winter ends
..3. When lithium about to emerge from its winter, we may well have a version of sodium-ion battery that is readily in contention with LFP batteries, marginalising lithium's role in the EV battery space
..Its because you chose to remain luddite in denial about the changing fortunes of lithium.
..EV can continue to prosper handsomely without lithium being indispensable and certainly without higher lithium pricing
There are some great #lithium projects out there, but ….
Standard Lithium's Arkansas pilot plant begins operations In partnership with Koch Technology Solutions, the company is now operating the plant at its South West Arkansas project, which it owns in collaboration with Norway’s state-owned petroleum company Equinor (NYSE: EQNR)..
The Unlikely Ingredient That Could End U.S. Dependence on Chinese Batteries Batteries that use sodium instead of lithium could allow the U.S. and its allies to create a completely new supply chain for the energy storage taking off across the world
Dec. 20, 2024 9:00 pm ET
Illustration: John Hinderliter
The U.S. and China are in a high-stakes race, with the energy security of America and its allies hanging in the balance. It involves batteries made from the same sodium found in table salt.
In both countries, researchers and companies are working furiously to make batteries that rely on a very different starting material than the lithium-ion batteries currently powering everything from our cellphones to our power grids. Such a battery could break China’s near monopoly on crucial battery-making elements at a time when trade tensions and America’s electric storage needs are on a collision course.
Instead of lithium, this nascent battery tech uses a sodium compound called soda ash, which can be produced using table salt. Unlike lithium, sodium is easily accessible everywhere. Even better for the U.S. is that China must synthesize soda ash from salt, while it is cheap and plentiful here. In fact, with 92% of the world’s reserves, you might even say that the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of the stuff.
Researchers and entrepreneurs have twice failed in their attempts to turn the U.S. into a battery-making powerhouse. They are more optimistic this time, partly because they’ve teamed up with a bipartisan group of policymakers that is armed with incentives enacted by the current administration, and expected tariffs in the coming one.
Securing the gargantuan quantities of batteries the U.S. will need in the future is critical, given the transition to electrified transportation, as well as the essential role that battery storage has and will play in the reliability of our electrical grid. Experts who have worked on previous revolutions in energy storage say this latest technology gives the U.S. a third crack at the problem—and that we might not get another.
A consortium of six national laboratories and eight universities just received a $50 million grant from the Energy Department to advance this technology.
Sodium-ion batteries have a number of advantages over lithium-ion battery tech, including being tougher and potentially safer. They also have one big disadvantage, thanks to unavoidable realities of the periodic table—they are bulkier and heavier.
Proponents of this new kind of battery say their size and weight disadvantages hardly matter in many applications, such as large, stationary batteries for capturing energy when the sun shines and the wind blows, and feeding it back to the power grid when they don’t. And researchers say that eventually, they may be able to produce sodium-ion batteries which would be small and light enough to be used in electric vehicles.
This could lead to safer and cheaper EV batteries that also work across a wider range of temperatures—including the cold weather which can be a drag on EV range in conventional lithium-ion-powered vehicles.
Battery ingredients are mixed with a mortar and pestle at Argonne National Laboratory. Photo: Wes Agresta/Argonne National Laboratory
The U.S. should give priority to the development of sodium-ion batteries on account of national security, says Venkat Srinivasan, director of research in energy storage at Argonne National Laboratory and head of the recently-announced consortium. The supply chains for lithium-ion batteries nearly all flow through China, which is by far the dominant refiner of critical minerals and also the dominant manufacturer of finished cells.
This is no idle threat. China has repeatedly restricted exports of minerals critical for other components of electric cars and renewable energy infrastructure, most recently with a ban on exports of rare-earth elements. It has also reviewed controls on exports of graphite, essential for making lithium-ion batteries.
As people everywhere become increasingly dependent on batteries, there is a hazard that China gains a level of power over other countries that would make the OPEC of the early 1970s green with envy. Twice before—with the initial breakthroughs that led to lithium-ion batteries, and again with the recent refinement of that chemistry into more affordable batteries which are fast becoming dominant in EVs the world over—the U.S. has completely ceded the field to China.
If the U.S. can move quickly enough it can build up a battery-based energy independence from China, says Landon Mossburg, chief executive of Denver-based Peak Energy. His company is attempting to bring sodium-ion batteries to grid energy storage in the U.S., and already has contracts to build a handful of small pilot installations for utility companies and independent power providers in 2025.
The U.S. has vast reserves of naturally occurring sodium carbonate, also known as soda ash, the primary component of sodium-ion batteries. While soda ash can be synthesized, it’s cheaper to simply mine it, says Srinivasan. About half of the soda ash the U.S. digs up every year is used in the production of glass—everything from the windows in your home to beer bottles.
China is the only country producing early commercial versions of sodium-ion batteries at scale. As a result, Mossburg’s company is purchasing its battery cells from a Chinese partner he declined to name—while also attempting to learn all it can about their manufacture. It’s a process analogous to the decades of forced technology transfer U.S. firms have had to sign up for whenever they want to build manufacturing plants in China, only this time it’s China that’s ahead technologically, and the U.S. that is learning.
Peak Energy battery cell testing in Broomfield, Colo. Photo: Peak Energy
At a Peak Energy facility in the Bay Area, dozens of engineers are working out how to turn the battery cells from China into assemblages the size of large shipping containers so they can replace the arrays of lithium-ion batteries used by utilities. Eventually, the goal of the company is to open a factory to produce sodium-ion batteries here in the U.S., but that will take years, says Mossburg.
Meanwhile, researchers at the consortium led by Srinivasan are working on improving the sodium-ion batteries that companies like Peak Energy are already buying. One eventual goal, he says, is to figure out how to make battery packs for electric vehicles that are as energy-dense as the current standard for lower-cost EV batteries, known as lithium iron phosphate, or LFP. These are used in base models of the Tesla Model 3, Ford F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E, and many models of Chinese vehicles.
Getting there will require a substantial amount of research, as there are many problems to overcome, says Srinivasan. One is figuring out how to tweak the chemistry of current sodium-ion batteries to eliminate nickel—a China-controlled critical mineral. Another is figuring out how to cram more of them into a smaller space to make the battery packs more competitive with lithium-ion.
Ultimately, what could make sodium-ion batteries a viable alternative for electric vehicles is that the rest of the tech in an EV is also evolving. As Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson mentioned in a recent interview on the Wall Street Journal’s Bold Names podcast, advancing technology in every aspect of their vehicles means that in the future, EVs with far smaller battery packs could go just as far as ones with larger packs do today.
Getting there will require just as much policymaking as science, says Mossburg. For example, if the U.S. slaps broad tariffs on imported Chinese goods, his company could be hamstrung, unless there’s a carve-out for sodium-ion batteries. Despite analysts’ worries that policies of the next administration will derail the U.S. build-out of next-generation energy technologies, he remains optimistic.
“In our discussions with the incoming administration, we are seeing a fairly bipartisan viewpoint that energy security is national security,” says Mossburg. “Whether your tactic is the Inflation Reduction Act, or tariffs, the goal is the same—to create space for fledgling companies in the U.S. to grow up to become globally competitive.”
...meanwhile more dramas as always in Lithium M&A.
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