Supply limitations will boost lithium for now

Subject

Lithium market

Significance

Lithium consumption by the battery sector is expected to outstrip traditional sources of demand for the first time this year. Over the next three years, around 70% of the increase in incremental demand for lithium is expected to be driven by growth of electric vehicle production. However, after nearly doubling over the last five years, the pace of growth of lithium demand from the consumer-electronics sector is likely to slow.

Impacts

• Several ventures are investigating lithium clay projects as a by-product of geothermal power plants, but these are untested commercially.
• Many lithium deposits contain harmful materials and research will continue into ways of safely extracting these materials.
• Lithium-ion battery capacity needs to add 600 gigawatt hours or 60 billion dollars investment to achieve 30% vehicle sector penetration.
• Beijing has established a new sales target of 7 million electric vehicles for 2025, which would represent a tenfold increase on 2016.