An increased supply of lithium will be needed to meet future expected demand growth for lithium-ion batteries for transportation and energy storage.
The resource question is an important one. Although lithium-Ion batteries contain a very small amount of lithium, the predicted growth of demand for these batteries could put pressure on supply chains for materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. And it’s essential that supply chains operate in an ethical way.
As the world increasingly swaps fossil fuel power for emissions-free electrification, batteries are becoming a vital storage tool to facilitate the energy transition. Lithium-Ion batteries first appeared commercially in the early 1990s and are now the go-to choice to power everything from mobile phones to electric vehicles and drones.
An increased supply of lithium will be needed to meet future expected demand growth for lithium-ion batteries for transportation and energy storage. Lithium demand has tripled since 2017 and is set to grow tenfold by 2050 under the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.
With the large-scale deployment of the lithium-ion batteries, such as in power batteries for EVs and energy-storage batteries for new energies, there is a growing demand for the recycling of large numbers of spent lithium-ion batteries. In 2021, the amount of retired lithium batteries in China reached a total of 600,000 tons .
China’s global lithium-ion battery exports reached $65 billion in 2023, up nearly 400 percent from pre-COVID levels in 2019. More than half of these 2023 exports were shipped to the European Union and the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) free trade zone. Chinese li-ion battery exports are largely bound for the European Union and North America.