This looks like good news:
All those stories foretelling a shortage of critical minerals seemed to assume that miners sit on their hands and that technology is static. The greater likelihood is a glut.
There are already as many solar panel factories as could possibly be needed this decade. Hence the drastic deflation in solar prices. Panels are today being flogged in the Global South at $120 per kWp, tantamount to free power. Try selling them a new coal plant without a bribe.
Well, yes, we’ve been known to push that likelihood of a minerals glut ourselves. Lithium mines are already on care and maintenance basis as prices are so low (Core Lithium for example) and cobalt mines aren’t opening on that same price basis (Jervois).
We’ve also been known to mutter over the decades that if solar gets cheap enough then the problem becomes solved. Yes, intermittency is still a problem but if electricity is cheap enough - with a lot of emphasis on enough - then all those dreams of batteries, of hydrogen from electrolysis to fuel cells, or Fisher Tropsch up to petrol and so on, become economically possible. Now, which might win out, even whether any will, we don’t pretend to want to plan. We’re of the market school, recall? Let people try everything and we’ll all do more of what works once it has been shown to work.
However, there’s also this:
The West has woken up to the technology threat from China, pulling slightly ahead last year with combined capex spending of $718bn on clean tech and the mineral supply chain. Clean capex rose 38pc in Europe, reaching $341bn in the EU and to $74bn in the UK – more than France ($56bn), or Italy ($30bn), which might surprise some.
“It is simply a technology battle at this point. There are three key races in clean tech and China is winning all of them,” said Kingsmill Bond from the Rocky Mountain Institute.
“The US and Europe are massively behind but last year was the year they got back into the game. There is an exponential growth story taking place across the leading regions and sectors of the world,” he said.
We’re not understanding this “technology threat”.
Those folks who have invested massively in solar factories are having to slash their prices because so many people entered that race. So, they’re all losing money on those slashed prices. Why would this be a race we’d want to enter? The competition to see who can lose the most money through industrial overcapacity?
We also can’t see it as a threat. Someone is now willing to sell us stuff below the cost of production? Sounds good to us, will they sell us two d’ye think?
What is this technological race and why do we want to lose money entering it?