It's vaguely possible to make our own lithium-ion batteries with cobalt
mined in Idaho and lithium steamed from the Salton Sea in California. Startups
are experimenting with both. Don't expect any meaningful production for a
decade or so, if ever. USA lithium-ion batteries are not going be cheap,
compared to China's low cost production infrastructure, ample lithium deposits,
and paramilitary operations in darkest Africa, taking every ton of cobalt mined
by children in a war zone.
U.S. peak production of cobalt was in 1958. Various agencies estimated that
there were 60,000 metric tons of reserves, most of it in the Congo, blood red
on the Aon terror map, a hellhole foreclosed to American civilian
entrepreneurs. U.S. peak production of lithium was in 1954. USGS estimated
80,000 metric tons still in the ground worldwide. Lithium demand exceeded
90,000 metric tons cumulatively in 2020, which was unexpected, bureaucratically
speaking. Global production today is 12,000 metric tons annually, nearly all of
it mined in Chile and China. There is a lithium resource in Afghanistan, which
explains why China armed the Taliban. It won't matter if we lift sanctions on 8th
century Taliban terror and brutality. America isn't going to get a gram of
Afghan lithium extracted by Chinese engineers.
Speaking of China, I should mention the rare earth elements lanthanum,
neodymium, dysprosium , and terbium. You can’t build a Prius, an accurate
missile, or a wind turbine without them. China has a virtual monopoly on dysprosium.
The Middle Kingdom was dealt a royal flush in rare earth geology. Sadly, the world’s richest reserves of rare earths, a mine
in Mountain Pass, California, stopped production in 2002. China won a low cost economic hammerlock on high
efficiency DC motors and supermagnets.
Whatever battery tech we'd like to produce, it's in Utah and the Salton
Sea, both of them ring fenced by EPA, USFS, and NIMBY nuts.
No comments:
Post a Comment