The EU needs to decarbonise its transport sector, which produces about a quarter of its CO2 emissions, to meet its target of climate neutrality by 2050.
To do this it wants to put 30 million electric vehicles on its roads by 2030. But that requires a lot of lithium, a key component in electric vehicle batteries.
In a strategy plan on critical raw materials published last September, the European Commission (the EU’s executive arm) forecast that Europe would already need 18 times as much lithium in 2030 compared to current EU supply in order to meet its demand for electric vehicle batteries.
But the EU is not a lithium producer. It relies on imports (78 per cent comes from Chile, 8 per cent from the US and 4 per cent from Russia) so a big question for Europe is how it will source the extra needed.
While Chile provides 44 per cent of global supply and China is the next largest with 39 per cent, the EU’s answer is to exploit some of the many reserves in its own territory by developing new mines. The result is a plethora of mining projects springing up across Europe - link - more like this - link
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