Will “cobalt,” which is also used in electric vehicle batteries, be depleted faster than petroleum?

Cobalt is a metal used in many electric vehicle batteries. The news is that Tesla will use “cobalt-free” batteries, but what kind of “resource” is cobalt? I will summarize from the basic knowledge you want to know.

Its name is Conflict Minerals Derived from Demon

Do you know the element cobalt? Not only contained in batteries of electric vehicles (EVs) and smartphones, but also used in heat-resistant cobalt metal alloys such as jet engines and drill bits, magnets for speakers, and, surprisingly, oil refining. Cobalt is named after the “Kobold,” a monster that frequently appears in dungeon science fiction, and was believed in medieval Europe that they cast magic on mines to create difficult and toxic metals. that’s right.

Now, whether or not there are monsters in the mine, cobalt is toxic and can cause serious health hazards such as pneumoconiosis if you don’t wear proper personal protective equipment. And although the Democratic Republic of Congo produces more than half of the world’s cobalt, a small mine (Artisanal mine) where poor people without jobs are digging holes with simple tools without any safety training. ), Collapse accidents occur frequently, children are forced to work for a long time with a low wage of about 200 yen a day, and even Amatsu is a source of funds for armed groups, so cobalt is alongside gold, tungsten, tin, and tantalum. , Came to be called conflict minerals.

However, with the spread of EVs and lithium-ion batteries, in recent years global companies have begun investigating whether cobalt produced by improper routes, including the supply chain of cobalt oxide and cobalt hydroxide, is being used.

For example, battery giants CATL and LG Chem are participating in the China-led “Responsible Cobalt Initiative (RCI)”, primarily working to eradicate child labor.

In 2018, the Fair Cobalt Alliance (FCA), a cobalt fair trade organization, was established as an initiative to promote the transparency and legitimacy of the cobalt mining process. Participants include Tesla, which consumes lithium-ion batteries, German EV startup Sono Motors, Swiss resource giant Glencore, and China’s Huayu Cobalt.

Looking at Japan, Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd., which wholesales positive electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries to Panasonic, established the “Policy on Responsible Procurement of Cobalt Raw Materials” in August 2020 and started due diligence and monitoring. bottom.

In the future, as major companies will launch properly managed mining projects one after another, workers will have to take risks and dive into small mines, and demand will gradually decrease.

Obvious lack of cobalt

Currently, the number of EVs is still small, with a total of only 7 million, including 2.1 million sold worldwide in 2019. On the other hand, the total number of engine cars in the world is said to be 1 billion or 1.3 billion, and if gasoline cars are abolished and replaced with EVs in the future, a tremendous amount of cobalt  cobalt oxide and cobalt hydroxide will be required.

The total amount of cobalt used in EV batteries in 2019 was 19,000 tons, which means that an average of 9 kg of cobalt was needed per vehicle. Making 1 billion EVs with 9 kg each requires 9 million tons of cobalt, but the world’s total reserves are only 7.1 million tons, and as mentioned at the beginning, 100,000 tons in other industries every year. Since it is a metal that is used so much, it is visibly depleted as it is.

EV sales are expected to grow tenfold in 2025, with annual demand of 250,000 tonnes, including in-vehicle batteries, special alloys and other uses. Even if EV demand leveled off, it would run out of all currently known reserves within 30 years.

Against this background, battery developers are working hard day and night on how to reduce the amount of cobalt. For example, NMC batteries using nickel, manganese, and cobalt are being improved by NMC111 (nickel, manganese, and cobalt are 1: 1. The amount of cobalt has been steadily reduced from 1: 1) to NMC532 and NMC811, and NMC9.5.5 (cobalt ratio is 0.5) is currently under development.

The NCA (nickel, cobalt, aluminum) used by Tesla has the cobalt content cut down to 3%, but the Model 3 produced in China uses a cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate battery (LFP). There are also grades that have been adopted. Although LFP is inferior to NCA in terms of performance, it has the features of cheap materials, stable supply, and long life.

And at “Tesla Battery Day” scheduled from 6:30 am on September 23, 2020 in China time, a new cobalt-free battery will be announced, and it will start mass production with Panasonic in a few years. Is expected.

By the way, in Japan, “Rare Metals” and “Rare Earths” are often confused. Rare metals are used in industry because “securing a stable supply is important in terms of policy among metals whose abundance on the earth is rare or difficult to extract due to technical and economic reasons (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry)”. It is a non-ferrous metal that is often used, and is a general term for 31 types including lithium, titanium, chromium, cobalt, nickel, platinum, and rare earths. Of these, rare earths are called rare earths, and 17 species such as neodymium and dysprosium used for permanent magnets are defined.

At the background of lack of cobalt resource,  cobalt metal sheet & powder, and cobalt compounds such as cobaltous chloride even hexaamminecobalt(III) chloride is short supply.

Responsible break from cobalt

As the performance required for EVs increases, it is expected that batteries that do not require cobalt, such as all-solid-state batteries and lithium-sulfur batteries, will evolve in the future, so fortunately we do not think that resources will be exhausted. However, that means that the demand for cobalt will collapse somewhere.

The turning point will come in 5 to 10 years at the earliest, and major mining companies are reluctant to make long-term investments in cobalt. However, because we are seeing the end, we want local miners to leave a safer working environment than before the cobalt bubble.

And the batteries of electric vehicles currently on the market also need to be recycled after they have finished their duties 10 to 20 years later, which is Redwood founded by Sumitomo Metals and Tesla’s former chief technology officer JB Strobel. -Materials and others have already established cobalt recovery technology and will reuse it with other resources.

Even if the demand for some resources temporarily increases in the process of evolution of electric vehicles, we will face sustainability and workers’ human rights as firmly as cobalt, and will not buy the wrath of Kobolts lurking in the cave. I would like to conclude this story with the hope of becoming a society.