Regarding the Reuters article, companies place plenty of...

Regarding the Reuters article, companies place plenty of importance on ESG because it attracts investment. This is because adhering to ESG basically acts as a key that makes top line growth easier to achieve, so charging a premium on western anode/graphite that has been sustainably extracted/processed makes sense and will likely happen.

"The overwhelming weight of accumulatedresearch finds that companies that pay attention to environmental, social, andgovernance concerns do not experience a drag on value creation—in fact, quitethe opposite (Exhibit 1). A strong ESG proposition correlates with higher equityreturns, from both a tilt and momentum perspective. Better performance in ESGalso corresponds with a reduction in downside risk, as evidenced, among otherways, by lower loan and credit default swap spreads and higher credit ratings."

"Globalsustainable investment now tops $30 trillion—up 68 percent since 2014 and tenfoldsince 2004. The acceleration has been driven by heightened social, governmental,and consumer attention on the broader impact of corporations, as well as by theinvestors and executives who realize that a strong ESG proposition can safeguarda company’s long-term success"

The paper from Mckinsey goes into more detail on how and why:

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Strategy%20and%20Corporate%20Finance/Our%20Insights/Five%20ways%20that%20ESG%20creates%20value/Five-ways-that-ESG-creates-value.ashx

As for your second post, I'm fairly confident that the EU will not allow their auto industry to be destroyed. They saw what happened to their solar panel industry due to heavily subsidised competition out of China flooding the market, which is why we're now seeing an anti-subsidy investigation into imported EVs from China. There is already an existing 10% tariff on imported vehicles and after the probe, we could see that pumped up to 20 or 30%.