Demand for lithium, a key component for electric vehicle batteries, is expected to surge from 500,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate in 2021 to three to four million metric tons by 2030, according to McKinsey & Company.
Albemarle, the world’s top producer of this critical metal and the operator of mines in Australia, Chile and the U.S., says it plans to bring another domestic lithium mine online by 2027 — Kings Mountain in North Carolina.
“We need to get the green stuff out and that will produce what’s called a spodumene concentrate,” said Matthew Hastings, group geologist for Albemarle. “That concentrate will run about 6% lithium oxide, so the intent there is to produce that concentrate, that will be what we give to conversion facilities.”
That concentrate will likely end up in Albemarle’s soon to be built $1.3 billion processing facility in South Carolina where it is turned into battery-grade lithium hydroxide. The plant will support the manufacturing of 2.4 million electric vehicles annually and be able to process lithium from recycled batteries.
But despite that growth Albemarle faces a number of potential headwinds including a possible economic downturn that could slow the demand for EV’s, new battery chemistries that could reduce the need for lithium, battery recycling and additional competitors. Tesla began construction of a lithium refinery in Texas in 2023.
To better understand how lithium, known as “White Gold”, is extracted, the challenges involved and where production is moving to next, CNBC got a behind the scenes look at Albemarle’s operations in Chile and the U.S. Watch the video to learn more.
Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
02:56 — History
05:55 — Chile
08:42 — Domestic production
11:46 — The future
Produced and Shot by: Shawn Baldwin
Edited by: Nic Henry
Supervising Producer: Jeniece Pettitt
Additional Camera: Katie Brigham, Magdalena Petrova
Graphics: Christina Locopo
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29 Comments
What about sodium batteries
Residential battery storage is really taking off. Tesla Mega battery packs are also doing well. VR power utility companies in the future. Solar and battery packs will keep costs/kwh at EV charging stations
What about sodium batteries
Ras House Music 🎶 Laborie Beach ⛱️ St Lucia
@CNBC 9:00 "miles… feet" please include metric unit measurements in your video.
white gold to consumer electronics EV EVTOL electric boat aircraft megapack battery storage to powering the international space station robot battery drones wealth building
What we have to do above all else is preserve the car centric culture. We need to ensure there are billions of cars around the world, trapping people for a significant part of their lives in traffic, with the added bonus of the number of car deaths due to human beings not actually evolving to travel faster than they can run.
We must do everything we can to prevent significant funding of Public Transport, reducing the need for whatever form of personal automobiles, and the personal individual economic cost of maintaining them.
As lets also look forward to most major road networks across the planet, needing exponential expansion for the rest of the century, to accommodate the constant population and subsequent increase in personal vehicles.
Noises in Chilean
This will be ok until someone, hopefully me, develops a commercial aluminum or magnesium battery that can do 10000 full electrochemical loops of discharging & recharging like lithium…
Australia has zero tariff trade for Lithium mines. They also don't have to crush rocks to get it. Australia is about to make billions of America..
You know they're going to pollute and destroy the wildlife there. Another reason I am against EV's, internal combustion engines is still the way to go.
Went to 60k per ton not 600k. Someone’s smoking something very strong
7:08 don't you think she looks Indian 😅
Sodium batteries will dominate the market soon
Thank you youtube for suggesting this propaganda story!
Most people don't even realize that the economy is collapsing and there is an increasing rate of unemployment worldwide so take advantage and prepare while things are still on the shelf in the store
So we destroy the earth to mine lithium… so we can drive cars branded as "eco friendly"?
Chilean Government should partner with a Chinese mining company for the state owned mining facility. Sensible to hedge their bets in a multi-polar world.
Destroy a beautiful lake and pollute the environment to make a million EVs … which will barely replace a fraction of ICE vehicles globally… is what I heard!
Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river? The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.
In May 2016, hundreds of protestors threw dead fish onto the streets of Tagong, a town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. They had plucked them from the waters of the Liqi river, where a toxic chemical leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine had wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem.
There are pictures of masses of dead fish on the surface of the stream. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing cow and yak carcasses floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third such incident in the space of seven years in an area which has seen a sharp rise in mining activity, including operations run by BYD, the world’ biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries for smartphones and electric cars. After the second incident, in 2013, officials closed the mine, but when it reopened in April 2016, the fish started dying again.
@11:10 Look there are ducks and turtles living in this pond. It must be pure and free from any pollutants. Sigh…
Make even more videos about EVs, batteries, solar and clean energy!
FJB
Iran is Second Largest Lithium Reserve of the World and we don't give any to America
🇮🇷💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼
'lithium, also better known as white gold' no, no… I think white gold is something else
So i might be wrong but i read an article about lithium being a side product of desalination plants. Its still hella expensive but its definitely a way to finance it.
This is a really bad idea – I hope they fail. Why destroy the environment for a low quality battery. The investors are stupid and will lose everything.
Let’s destroy the planet to make stupid batteries! Let’s use fuel to dig these mines and process the products too….
Well a million is nowhere near enough vehicles for the country and then you don't even have enough for replacements. Then on top of it there's nowhere near enough electricity to charge all these cars this makes no sense to me. To be an option is fine but to try to force this is ridiculous I'm really rooting for hydrogen because that'll make electric obsolete