Not Gunna Be Enough Lithium, page-1873

An opinion article in today's Economic Daily (Hospodářské noviny) newspaper framing Czech-German relations on the lithium topic:

What to talk to the Germans about? Maybe lithium, that could be a topic of cooperation
Lithium is the magic word of our time, which can hide many things and can also be used as a decoy to distract or a fig leaf to obscure the true state of affairs. I have already demonstrated on the HN website, through social media analysis, how the "lithium affair" went from the fringes of social media disinformation to the mainstream and how some politicians took advantage of it ahead of the 2017 elections. Back then, it was about promises around the alleged sell-out of national interests and potential profits from its extraction.Now here is lithium again, the same resource in the same Ore Mountains, only the European context is dramatically different. Lithium is no longer just a Czech issue, but a truly European and global one, as the European Union seeks to revive parts of its industry where lithium plays a key role as part of electric car batteries and other green technologies.The lure is still working the same way. It distracts from the point and helps as a verbal crutch for politicians. I realised this again on Saturday when participants in a panel at the annual Czech-German Discussion Forum conference touched on the fact that the Czech Republic and Saxony hold a fairly strong card on the future of European industry in the form of lithium deposits. It is estimated that the Czech Republic could have the largest lithium reserves in Europe and a total of three percent of the world's lithium reserves. The resource on the Saxon side is expected to be slightly smaller, but also important.The Czech-German Discussion Forum is part of the institutions that emerged after the Czech-German Declaration and contributed to reconciliation and political rapprochement between the two countries. For some time now, however, this highly institutionalised and formalised form of past-oriented dialogue has been staggering in a kind of hibernation mode, which does not correspond well with the lively economic or cultural activity between the two countries and which the organisers from both countries are trying to revive now and then. For example, energy is occasionally brought back to the panels of the discussion forum to make sure that, especially on the nuclear issue, we have really different views.It is similar with official Czech-German relations. Politicians are reassured how great our relations are. But if you ask in Berlin where there is a Czech-German European issue where the Czechs could use the political capital from the EU presidency, the answer is a shrug of the shoulders.Europe needs to build its industry of new green technologies quickly, because of the fight against climate change and because of fears of growing dependence on China. Lithium, if it were to be taken up in a real way, could be a major Czech-German topic, if only because it would be a revolution. Not an industrial one, but above all a bureaucratic and perhaps eventually a political one. Here is an example: the German authorities were able to authorise the construction of LNG terminals in a matter of months, when the German (and Czech) energy industry was running out of gas after cutting itself off from Russian gas. The usual bureaucratic "it can't be done" argument does not apply here, unless a politician decides to be a leader and move the situation forward, as German Economy Minister Robert Habeck did in the case of the terminals.There are a few facts to remember. The average time to open a new mine in the EU is 16 years. And the EU wants and needs to reduce its economic dependence on China. And because China has cheap energy and plenty of capacity, it processes 58% of the ore and produces the metal needed for batteries.If the Czechs and Germans could together and quickly overcome the complex bureaucratic permitting processes, build not only mines but also processing plants, they would set a shining example to the whole Union that the green reindustrialisation of Europe is possible. Indeed, many sceptics argue that Europe is more likely to drown in its own regulations and be swallowed up by Chinese competition before such a thing can happen. If such a topic were to be discussed in detail with experts at the Czech-German Discussion Forum, it would certainly give the Czech-German dialogue a more lively tone.The mining and processing of European lithium is not an abstract problem of a common future, but a concrete project with a big impact involving big money that was too late yesterday.