Investing in green technologies is essential to ensuring the battery revolution and the delivery of clean, green energy that the world is eagerly awaiting. It predicted that global battery demand could increase more than fivefold by 2025.
The basics
Lithium is a lightweight metallic element. Lithium Ions are easily soluble and are commonly extracted from brines, typically in the form of groundwater with several different mineral salts dissolved in it. In mineral form, it is typically found in volcanic rocks known as pegmatite.
Although Lithium has many industrial applications, the primary and growing use of lithium is the creation of lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries. Li-ion batteries have a high power-to-weight ratio, have no memory effect and a low self-discharge rate.
Due to the increasing shift towards battery-powered devices, and even more significantly, the substantially-growing interest in electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide, demand for lithium is expanding quickly.
More information about LPI’s projects can be found HERE.
Lithium brine evaporation ponds |
The Lithium market
Electric Vehicles
With more and more people around the world choosing to drive EVs, it is predicted that global battery demand could increase more than fivefold by 2025. Passenger plug-in EVs alone will make up approximately 68.2% of global lithium demand by 2025.
Deloitte expects that by 2030 China will hold 49 per cent of the global EV market, Europe will account for 27 per cent, and the United States will hold 14 per cent.
Supply & Demand
Lithium carbonate demand, driven by its use in automobile applications, is projected to grow at a rate of 18.8% per year until 2036. However, development projects to meet future demand growth are limited and slow due to permitting and construction constraints, resulting in expectations of strong forward pricing.
LPI plans to capitalise on the lithium supply imbalance by fast-tracking Maricunga to production, with resources to exceed our 20-year mine life and forecasted pricing of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (‘LCE’).
Learn more
Keep up to date with the latest information on Lithium, its applications and future with our collection of articles, ebooks and reports available on our ‘Lithium Articles and Reports’ page.