Finnish Government Report Reveals Lithium and Cobalt Supplies Insufficient

Progress on the energy transition might be threatened as a new report by the Finnish government revealed that the world does not have enough Lithium and Cobalt to replace all batteries every 10 years.

The 1,000-page report undertaken for a government agency in Finland by Associate Professor Simon Michaux stated that there just isn’t enough time nor resources to achieve the goal with the current target. It said, “In theory there are enough global reserves of nickel and lithium if they are exclusively used to produce batteries for electric vehicles. But there is not enough cobalt, and more will need to be discovered.

As all new batteries have a useful working life of 8-10 years, replacements will need to be regularly produced. This is unlikely to be practical, which suggests the whole EV battery solution may need to be re-thought and a new solution is developed that is not so mineral intensive.“

Michaux sounded a clear warning message that the world is trying to replace a complex industrial energy ecosystem that took more than 100 years to build in less than half the time. According to him, it was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known – oil – in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit and seemingly unlimited mineral resources.

“The replacement now needs to be done with a comparatively very expensive energy source and a period of high debt and scarce resources within a few decades. This won’t go as planned according to our analysis.

“What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds. This implies a very different social contract and a radically different system of governance to what is in place today.” Stating that even though China had such a governance system, it had a bit more nuanced approach towards the energy transition.

Michaux noted that despite the country’s success in taking its citizens out of poverty, the leader, President Xi Jinping said “prudence” would direct the country’s efforts to peak and eventually zero-out carbon emissions.

Michaux pointed out that nearly 85% of world energy comes from fossil fuel. By his calculations, the annual global capacity of non-fossil electrical power would need to quadruple to 37,670.6 TWh. This will involve adding capacity at eight times the rate it has been added over the last 30 years implying a cost of nearly one trillion pounds.