[HN Gopher] Lithium "shortage" bubble implodes again
___________________________________________________________________
Lithium "shortage" bubble implodes again
Author : passwordoops
Score : 295 points
Date : 2023-12-07 14:06 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wolfstreet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wolfstreet.com)
| blueflow wrote:
| > CNY per tonne
|
| I somewhat expected USD but i'm not surprised. Times change.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I was going to comment about perhaps that's because so much of
| it is mined in China, but a quick google says China is a rather
| distant third behind Australia and Chile. The more you know.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| China is the leading lithium refiner. The price referenced
| (battery grade lithium carbonate) is an output of a refinery,
| not a mine. There are many different numbers thrown around
| for China's refining share, but they are all significant,
| typically all > 50%.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Looks like that's because it's trading in Shanghai.
| cft wrote:
| Since the end of the USD as the world reserve currency is
| imminent, the wisest thing US government can do is promote and
| favor Bitcoin. It's better to have a world reserve currency
| that no one controls, than CNY.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, let's run the world economy off a currency that could
| halve in value if Satoshi Nakamoto finds an old USB drive
| sitting around somewhere.
| barelyauser wrote:
| I suppose this is a better arrangement than the current
| system, where they key figures know exactly where the money
| printer is at all times.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Poe's law strikes again.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Over half of lithium is refined in China and then sold.
|
| Since those refining costs are in domestic CNY, it makes
| perfect sense that the commodities price will also be quoted in
| CNY.
|
| Nothing to do with "times changing", everything to do with
| country of production. (Most commodities aren't so tied to a
| single country, which is why they end up in USD.)
| Eumenes wrote:
| Time to stock up on lifepo4 batteries.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Time to ramp utility scale energy storage. Make batteries while
| the inputs are cheap.
|
| https://www.pcienergysolutions.com/2022/04/27/how-quickly-ca...
|
| https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/grid-scale-sto...
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/692788/tesla-battery-energy-stora...
|
| (edit: as the cost of renewables approaches sub $0.01/kwh
| wholesale, storage/transmission/distribution become the primary
| costs of energy)
| Eumenes wrote:
| How challenging is it to DIY your own lithium battery packs?
| dylan604 wrote:
| How good are you at putting out fire that doesn't mind
| getting wet?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No need to dissuade people from actually learning and
| doing things.
|
| It is pretty trivial if you are prepared.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There is no attempt at dissuading anyone from anything.
| It was a simple question that is pretty pertinent to the
| process of the task. If the potential of fire is
| something you're not able to accept, then this would be
| pretty challenging. If potential fires are not a show
| stopper, are you prepared for this particular type of
| fire? If you are, the DIY battery is probably not going
| to be challenging.
|
| What you find trivial might be too much of an ask for
| someone else. Because you think it is trivial and
| demonstrate that you clearly feel it is something you can
| blindly recommend to someone else on the internet is
| dangerous arrogance. Sometimes, it is perfectly
| reasonable for the response to a question to be another
| question.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| thats all fine and well. It just came off as dismissive,
| snarky, and negative. a very anti hacking attitude - at
| least to me.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| You can use LFP cells (don't suffer from thermal runaway)
| with a good BMS to avoid this risk.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Check out this discussion from yesterday from just such an
| effort, regarding the challenges + severe dangers involved:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38541441
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's definitely doable. There are plenty of tutorials out
| there on the internet. But like others have said, there's
| plenty that can go wrong if you don't get it right (a fire
| that can't be put out).
|
| Personally I would consider building one myself, but
| there's no way I'd keep it in my house (it would be going
| in a fireproof metal shed at the bottom of the garden or
| similar). And tbh, that's probably more trouble (and
| expense) than just buying a commercial one.
| amelius wrote:
| How do you know the commercial ones are safe?
| nicoburns wrote:
| I mean, ultimately you don't. And there's always going to
| be some risk (ideally I'd definitely put any home battery
| in a fireproof location). But a commercial one is at
| least likely to have high quality welds, be wired
| properly, and have some kind of QA procedure overseen by
| someone who knows what they're doing). If there's a
| systematic problem with the design you are also likely to
| get notified via product recall, etc.
| wongarsu wrote:
| For stationary applications like a UPS or a power wall
| LiFePo4 is pretty safe and easy to set up. LiIon is
| obviously better for mobile use cases and easier to get
| used cells for, but it's also a lot more unstable and
| dangerous.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Don't do it somewhere that you can't afford burning down.
|
| Lithium iron prismatic cells are quite neat if you want to
| make your own packs. Electric gocart suppliers might sell
| you cells and bms.
|
| It was really hard to get anyone to sell you cells, like 8
| years ago when, I did 4 6kWh packs. It might be easier now.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Just need to buy a billion battery chargers now and plug them
| in.
| kcb wrote:
| I bought a 100ah 12v lifepo4 battery on Amazon for my boat
| motor last year and prices have literally halfed since that
| time. Crazy to see the rapid change before your eyes.
| tiahura wrote:
| 12v 100ah was 500 a few years ago. Now under $175 on Amazon.
| foobarian wrote:
| Any ideas what the best source is for 18650 format LFP cells?
| grecy wrote:
| This is fantastic news, and means the price of EVs and large
| utility scale batteries will continue to fall much faster than
| anyone predicted.
| mysterydip wrote:
| It's still about 3x the lowest price from 2020. Hopefully the
| downward trend continues, though.
| infofarmer wrote:
| Lithium is <10% cost of a battery. Presumably much less now.
| Doesn't affect the price of EVs that much yet.
| nicoburns wrote:
| What makes up the majority of the cost?
| danans wrote:
| Other expensive materials in the cathode, manufacturing
| costs, and the anode are most of the major costs. A
| visualization:
|
| https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-
| cost...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Lithium is part of the cathode. Looks like it was more
| like ~20% in 2022, though it may be down closer to 10%
| now that the price spike is subsiding:
|
| https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/lithium-ion-
| batterie...
|
| Of note: raw materials are now ~2/3 of the total price of
| a battery cell, because of the continued plunge in
| manufacturing costs. And it's pretty well distributed
| across the different raw materials used. That indicates
| that the price may not drop all that much more without a
| concerted supply-chain effort.
| danans wrote:
| Also, The OP asked about EV battery prices, which are
| about more than the cell, and also include the price of
| the pack/enclosure, which is 25% of the cost and hasn't
| budged much in the last few years [1]. Maybe structural
| battery packs will eliminate this cost completely in the
| future.
|
| And then there is the reality that most EVs are still
| being designed and marketed as upmarket luxury cars, and
| not with the goal of maximizing mass adoption of EVs in
| the near term.
|
| The market for EVs is the market for higher end new
| vehicles today. Therefore even as battery prices drop,
| other factors will probably keep the prices pretty high
| in the near future.
|
| 1. https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/01/record-low-ev-
| battery-p....
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Maybe not for current chemistry lithium batteries but for
| batteries in general prices will probably keep dropping
| as they find different ways to save cost like using
| sodium instead of lithium. As solar and wind electricity
| production keeps getting cheaper and more home
| installations keep happening I think the demand for cheap
| home stationary batteries will start growing
| exponentially.
|
| Hopefully we are not far from the tipping point cheap
| batteries are needed for it to happen though where world
| yearly electricity consumption growth can be met by
| renewables alone and we can start closing more and more
| coal power plants.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| Profits
| sapiogram wrote:
| Was it <10% at peak price as well?
| TomK32 wrote:
| Clickbaiting heading. The price is still 300% compared to the low
| in August 2020.
| passwordoops wrote:
| And it's back to where it was in 2018. Point of the article is
| commodities fluctuate
| sapiogram wrote:
| I don't find it clickbaity at all. I mean, it makes it sound
| like the price of lithium dropped massively, but isn't that
| exactly what happened?
| SkyBelow wrote:
| I think the difference is in what a drop is in regards to. A
| drop of a well established price indicates something has
| fundamentally changed to make the price go down. A drop from
| the peak of a large increase that is still far above the
| previous well established price looks more like something has
| fundamentally changed to make the price go up, but markets
| over estimated how much the price would increase. The
| difference is that the new price, assuming it becomes the new
| well established price, is lower in one situation and higher
| in the other. A title implying the former case when it is the
| latter might fall under the scope of clickbait.
|
| If the price is swinging up and down constantly and there is
| no well established price, then that is yet another situation
| which seems different from the previous two and the title
| might be better off capturing the unsteady nature of the
| price.
|
| If I make a major story that "X happened three times this
| year" without pointing out in the title that the historic
| numbers of X is 2 to 4 each year, it can be treated as a
| dishonest implication of some trend that doesn't exist. We
| know many will only read headlines and will not question the
| implications. This is something worth calling out even when
| it is over trivial matters to prevent it from being used for
| more serious matters.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > A drop of a well established price indicates something
| has fundamentally changed to make the price go down.
|
| No it doesn't. Look at any commodity futures prices: they
| swing wildly for no apparent reason. Fundamentals are only
| loosely connected to today's prices.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| A quick increase shortly followed by a quick decrease of
| about the same size is a completely different news from a
| quick decrease without the previous increase.
|
| The article is quite clear on what happened, and interesting
| too. But the headline is clickbaity.
| epistasis wrote:
| Reporting change in price over the course of a year, at the end
| of the year, is not "clickbait" or even the least bit
| deceptive.
| wredue wrote:
| Lithium was also bouncing around the usual pump and dump
| suspects like Wallstreetbets for a while.
|
| Probably, someone with influence lost money buying at the top
| and is pushing articles to try to recoup their losses.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Don't worry the media does this to bitcoin and all crypto too
|
| It's always "crashing", just magically 1,000% higher from the
| last time you looked!
| MikeCapone wrote:
| Why is the low of 2020 the right level to benchmark from?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's not. COVID messed everything up, especially commodities
| prices.
| hwillis wrote:
| In that time, global EV sales have increased by over 450%:
| https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport/electric-vehicle...
|
| The prevailing opinion was that lithium would stay expensive or
| go up even more. The price also has not stabilized and may well
| continue to drop; this is an in-progress update.
| jandrese wrote:
| Prevailing opinion from whom? Certainly nobody who
| understands how commodity markets work.
|
| This is all econ 101 level effects, and yet there have been
| so many articles in the past few years where writers are
| shocked at what is happening to the prices this week. Or even
| dumber ones where they project out battery production to 2030
| and then compare that to the lithium market today and come to
| the conclusion that we will never be able to electrify
| because the lithium market isn't big enough.
|
| I'm personally excited for the point a few years from now
| when all of the battery plants are online and they overshoot
| demand and the prices crater. It will be a short but glorious
| golden age for grid storage, EV startups, and so on until
| some of the companies go under and others consolidate and the
| prices come back up to a more sustainable level.
| barney54 wrote:
| Where is the data on lithium production surging? It isn't in the
| article, only future projects (they may or may not work.)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/606684/world-production-...
| shows a significant surge starting in 2017.
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-25-years-of-lit...
| has a per-country visualization of it; look like Australia has
| a big share of the increase.
| aifooh7Keew6xoo wrote:
| sounds like they need to invest in some regulatory capture or
| maybe just all of their competitors, capitalism is only supposed
| to work like that in text books!
| speed_spread wrote:
| Is it sodium battery tech starting to have an effect?
| passwordoops wrote:
| Nope, just good old speculation in the commodities market!
| sapiogram wrote:
| That doesn't exclude sodium batteries as a factor. Quite the
| opposite imo, since that technology is also highly
| speculative.
| tooltalk wrote:
| >> Is it sodium battery tech starting to have an effect? <<
|
| It's not yet mass-produced at scale or commodified to have much
| impact yet. The falling lithium price however could make sodium
| batteries less attractive.
| gumby wrote:
| As famously predicted by Julian Simon back in the 70s and 80s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager
| passwordoops wrote:
| Sorry to burst your bubble, but the article points out it's
| just good old fashioned speculation in the commodities market!
| Clearly there was a massive bubble over the past couple of
| years driven by hype. The spot price is still higher than 2020
| otherme123 wrote:
| Everyone can recognize a bubble once it pops. But the last
| three years, what you call "bubble" was rational (?)
| speculation that lithium 1) was going to be needed on a
| massive scale and 2) virtually all the profitable sources
| were already being mined.
|
| Also, between 2020 and 2023 we have a ~20% inflation, and the
| price is not yet stable.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of the Hunt Brothers attempt to corner the
| silver market.
|
| Moral of the story: markets are dynamic.
| Beijinger wrote:
| "The Simon-Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between
| business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich,
| betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity
| over the decade leading up to 1990."
|
| Interesting. But the club of Rome predicted in the 70ies
| problems for the first half of the 21st century. And I think
| they are going to win the bet. Two blogs I can recommend:
|
| 1. https://senecaeffect.substack.com/
|
| 2. https://ourfiniteworld.com/
|
| Both bloggers I consider extremely smart.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Gail Tverberg, author of Our Finite World, has a long track
| record of being incorrect. I don't think that she is a
| credible prognosticator.
|
| Did she ever go back and explain why she was so wrong the
| first time around with predictions like these?
|
| https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/
|
| https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/
|
| https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/08/06/peak-oil-whats-ahead/
|
| Did she make more cautious predictions going forward, after
| making such badly failed predictions 16 years ago? If she
| did, I didn't see it. It looks like Our Finite World is still
| a drumbeat of predictions about crises just ahead. If she's
| eventually correct about a specific prediction it will be a
| case of the stopped clock showing the correct time by chance.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Its kind of interesting how england as they knew it then really
| doesn't exist anymore today thanks to things like hong kong and
| brexit.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| How does this translate to the cost of producing a lithium ion
| battery?
| epistasis wrote:
| Even with recent price spikes on various component prices, the
| price of the overall good sold continues its march downwards.
| BNEF's annual survey showed a 14% decrease in prices (other price
| surveys will show different results).
|
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
|
| The single component price, even of the component namesake of the
| battery, does not cause huge fluctuations in the overall cost of
| the battery due to the small amount of lithium cost in the
| battery and the substitution possibilities for all the other
| components.
|
| And there's even a chance that sodium substitution for lithium
| could be used in a ton of applications soon.
|
| Batteries and renewables are not like oil: a single commodity
| price fluctuation is not going to disrupt entire economies. They
| are a much more stable foundation upon which to build an economy.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Thought of mine from 20 years ago is the power available from
| fossil fuels has been limited since around 1970. Which is it's
| very price inelastic. And there will never be enough to pull
| the remaining 2/3rds of humanity out of poverty. The Chinese
| managed what they did by burning 2/3rd of their total coal
| reserves in the last 40 years.
|
| But what we're now seeing is the vastly larger availability and
| price elastic supply of solar and wind power. All this stuff,
| solar, wind, batteries are getting cheap and commodified. The
| result is the world economy isn't energy constrained for the
| first time in 50 years.
| epistasis wrote:
| Good points. One thing about raising most of the world out of
| poverty, however, is that even with the current energy mix,
| it would not take much more fossil fuels, and only raise
| emissions by 5%. A very recent paper with this (somewhat
| surprising) modeling:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03627-w
| Hayvok wrote:
| > The spot price of battery-grade lithium carbonate, trading in
| Shanghai and serving as a benchmark
|
| I'm not sure why the Shanghai price is being used as the global
| benchmark without any qualification in this article, because in
| 2022 China was paying 2x per KG more than the U.S.A. and Europe.
| Everybody saw a significant increase, but nobody quite like
| China, where it looks like a bubble.
|
| Prices have come down globally in 2023, but the Chinese price is
| now much closer to the U.S. and European price.
|
| Regional price index:
| https://businessanalytiq.com/procurementanalytics/index/lith...
| firebat45 wrote:
| When you look at where the overwhelming majority of lithium
| batteries are produced, it makes sense to use China as the
| benchmark (and why it pays more than the US or Europe).
| bee_rider wrote:
| It isn't obvious to me (although, I am dumb about this stuff)
| why China would pay more for lithium if they (presumably) use
| more... wouldn't we expect economies of scale and all that to
| make it cheaper for them?
| nativeit wrote:
| Only if speculators don't ruin everyone's fun betting from
| the sidelines in volumes that outpace the influence of
| legitimate trade.
| xkekjrktllss wrote:
| Are you implying that stocks are not legitimate trade?
| That's anti-freedom.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Trading in commodities futures has a point, but it has
| gotten absolutely ridiculous in scope. The market
| participants used to be farm collectives, mining
| companies on the one and large wholesalers and consumers
| on the other side as a way for both to hedge against
| price swings... but that's no longer the case. Hell even
| if you just look at the last 10 years, trading volume has
| exploded by ~3x (futures) / ~5x (options) [1] - but there
| is no economic fundamentals (e.g. production amount of
| farms or raw material mines) to support this, it's all
| financial mind-fuckery that skims off billions of
| "fractions of cents per transaction" and redirects them
| to a select few very rich people.
|
| This kind of predatory leeching has to stop, once and for
| all.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/377025/global-
| futures-an...
| Animats wrote:
| There's a lot to be said for this position. Here's an
| NBER study from 2014 on the financialization of commodity
| prices. There is substantially more volatility in
| commodity prices than in the underlying production and
| consumption. Sometimes, what's happening in markets is
| going in the opposite direction as the real world
| commodity.
|
| Another related study.[2] Studies agree that the tail is
| wagging the dog, but there is no agreement on what to do
| about it.
|
| [1] https://www.nber.org/reporter/2014number2/financializ
| ation-c...
|
| [2] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/commodity-
| financi...
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
|
| In smaller markets stock trading can turn into a
| manipulation game completely unrelated to the underlying
| asset.
| sally_glance wrote:
| Thanks for the link, what a fun story! Was it unrelated
| to the asset though? The article says
|
| > Authority stated that it was the perishable nature of
| onions which made them vulnerable to price swings.
|
| I'm just an interested bystander in terms of futures
| trading and the article relates to some studies which
| seem to find that even in the very decade of that
| incident, onion price volatility was decreased. So is
| there any strong evidence supporting that any small
| futures market can be gamed?
| paulddraper wrote:
| > stocks are not legitimate trade?
|
| Most commodity futures are not legitimate trade; i.e.
| most parties that will never actually possess the
| commodity.
|
| They're speculation.
|
| > That's anti-freedom.
|
| No, that idea is not anti-freedom.
| comte7092 wrote:
| The position you are espousing is not universal outside
| of dogmatically libertarian circles. Most people have
| much more nuanced views than simple "trade == freedom,
| therefore ++trade implies ++freedom" equations.
| Symmetry wrote:
| If the quantities of Lithium need are going to keep going
| up its better that speculators big up the prices to high
| levels now than that manufacturers bid up the levels to
| crazy high later. High prices get people who don't need
| as much of it to start economizing and let producers
| expand production to levels they'll need.
|
| People have, from time to time, experimented with banning
| speculation in commodities like onions in the US. And the
| wholesale prices of onions are much more volatile than
| other vegetables as a result. Sometimes commodity traders
| cause wild price swings and usually lose tons of money
| with stupid speculation, but more often they act to
| smooth things out.
| boringg wrote:
| 1. You have transportation costs. 2. I believe their
| economy was in a shutdown somewhat so market was askew. 3.
| If they are the major buyer but lithium being sold to them
| is monopolistic market structure in its origins then
| supplier can set the price. 4. They buy lithium in long
| term contracts so spot price is probably a proxy for whats
| at the margins as opposed to what the big companies are
| paying. 5. Speculators.
| paulddraper wrote:
| 6. If what the lithium consumers are doing well
| financially, they are capable of paying more.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Scale isn't instant.
| addicted wrote:
| Economies of scale aren't automatic. They only apply to a
| certain size after which any benefits plateau.
|
| Simultaneously you have demand and supply pressures
| especially if demand is increasing and supply cannot keep
| up, pressures due to limited transportation and shipping
| capacity which was a huge issue over the past couple of
| years across the board (and probably a bigger driver of
| inflation than nearly anything other than energy prices),
| and other costs increasing such as energy prices.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China isn't an open market, there is resistance getting
| Lithium from outside of China into China. Trade needs to
| happen, some people don't want that trade to happen,
| Australia had some issues with China last year, Bolivia
| doesn't really have any ports, port capacity is an issue,
| speculators might also be bailing out of real estate and
| their money is now sloshing around in commodities.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well, I don't feel as stupid about this not being obvious
| to me anymore, given that I've got at least four competing
| theories as to why the price is what it is.
| cgb223 wrote:
| Why was China paying so much more? Just to ensure they would
| have enough for their needs?
| Hayvok wrote:
| That's what I'm curious about -- everybody went up
| significantly in 2022, but if China was paying _double_ for
| imports, then why wasn 't everybody else having to pay double
| as well?
|
| China procures most of their lithium through trade, so
| they're tapping the same global markets as everybody else.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Where is lithium made versus where is it used.
|
| For example if there was not enough shipping routes to
| China from where it's made then that could be an issue. Or
| if their demand was up, and there wasn't enough unloading
| capacity for lithium (not sure how this is being shipped
| over there) then there can be price spikes.
| cgb223 wrote:
| I'm not a shipping expert by any means but if any country
| in the world would have a shipping route to it, surely it
| would be China no?
|
| They manufacture basically everything and export a ton
| lucubratory wrote:
| Australia is a large supplier of lithium, the world's
| largest actually. Due to trade restrictions and
| irregularities arising from disputes, trade between China
| and Australia wasn't operating normally in 2022. Trade
| has now mostly resumed and the first bulkers left
| Australian ports for Chinese ports early this year
| carrying lithium ore. I suspect the absence of the
| Australian market meant that Chile could set their
| prices, and it looks like they set their prices pretty
| high. Plus, Chile is a longer and thus more expensive
| trip for any ship, including a bulker.
|
| The high lithium prices in China were the Chinese side of
| the trade restrictions causing economic pain.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| They dramatically increased demand lately for solar
| production, so they were probably the cause of and epicenter
| of the global shortage - paying the premium as a cost of
| doing business while lithium production caught up.
| marricks wrote:
| > https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=...
|
| It looks like it's returning to its pre-pandemic levels. Demand
| is increasing with EV's so it's still interesting, but possibly
| less interesting than the title implies.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| I think it would be highly interesting if physicists/scientists
| could figure out how to create Lithium in the lab, maybe from
| Helium -- or some esoteric combination of Helium, Helium
| isotopes, Hydrogen, Hydrogen isotopes -- and/or energy...
|
| Now that I think about it, maybe it would be possible to make
| Lithium from a heavier element -- such as Beryllium (the next
| element in Lithium's period/horizontal row) and/or Sodium (the
| next element in Lithium's group/family/vertical row -- that is,
| an element whose properties are the most similar to Lithium).
|
| But, the point is, if scientists or future scientists can do that
| -- then we can end this Lithium debate once and for all!
|
| Oh sure, it may initially cost, like, trillions of dollars to do
| this in the lab the first couple of times (the history of using
| particle accelerators to transmute metals is a case study in cost
| ineffectiveness -- but then, so is the history of early mainframe
| computers, and so is the history of using rockets to send
| satellites to orbit) but eventually with continued
| experimentation, the cost should become cheaper and cheaper...
|
| _First you make it work -- then you make it cheap._
|
| You know, the Elon Musk school of business philosophy...
|
| First you make it work -- then you make it cheap... or at least
| cheaper...
|
| Which was actually, coincidentally, Henry Ford's philosophy --
| and that of the early American capitalists (AKA, "The Robber
| Barons" -- as well)...
|
| Also, I'd put that simple philosophy against anything that anyone
| could learn in a Harvard, Stanford or Wharton MBA program (*) for
| $73,440 and one or two years of their life, plus living expenses!
|
| _First you make it work -- then you make it cheap..._
| pjc50 wrote:
| There's no need to do nuclear chemistry when you can fish it
| out of seawater.
|
| > cheaper
|
| Physics sets fundamental limitations on how much energy you
| need, which means your lower bound is set by energy prices.
|
| It's not _that_ scarce, it 's not something like Polonium.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Repeat after me: Price Will Save Us
| monkeydust wrote:
| Is there a good place to track prices for solar batteries? Have a
| system and considering a battery next year.
| yinser wrote:
| If you are like me and found the editorialization a bit much from
| this article but want to know more I highly recommend The
| Limiting Factor on YouTube.
| https://youtu.be/xEY_CMUb8jY?si=1wWmG83NfuBSNeKZ
|
| Another one off that helped me get up to speed with understanding
| lithium was a guest lecture recently streamed at CWU on Exploring
| the Origin of Economic Lithium Deposits by PhD Rachel Hampton
|
| https://www.youtube.com/live/inq_ypJeiZk?si=LTQFGR07d-ypiS6_
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Worlds largest lithium deposit found in NV, a state which is 90%
| government owned, and we're having trouble deciding what to do.
| Other countries are probably going like - wow, they just found a
| Lithium mine and they're just going to sit on it... and they are
| asking us to ramp up production???
| nemo44x wrote:
| I mean, that's sort of smart isn't it? Wouldn't you rather use
| someone else's resources instead of your own for as long as you
| can? Additionally, the deposit becomes a strategic reserve to
| control prices when needed.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's not a strategic reserve if you don't develop the
| capability to timely extract and refine it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Is there something unique in mining lithium that would be
| different from other kind of mining that America does? I
| feel like the capability if needed to extract and refine it
| within the US exists / wouldn't be hard to develop over the
| course of constructing the mine, no?
|
| Also there's a lawsuit ongoing here with Native Americans
| suing to stop any mining. I suspect that there's going to
| be a lot of pressure to not start a mine because of how
| destructive they are to the environment. At the same time,
| I'm pretty sure the mine will happen. However, at that
| point you want to have the highest price of lithium
| possible and this is a substantial amount of lithium that
| would be coming on the market which would counteract any
| price growth.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > there's a lawsuit
|
| Exactly my point. All other extraction industries in
| America are grandfathered in from before NEPA, before
| anyone gave a damn that a dead guy from the far past
| thought the stones were holy. America is paralyzed by its
| own legal system which can be wielded as a weapon by any
| bad-faith actor who doesn't want electrification to
| happen.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Ok now you're switching your argument from we don't have
| the capacity to build mines to NEPA. Except this has
| nothing to do with NEPA and the tribes weren't getting
| anywhere with the lawsuits and constantly losing because
| of the General Mining Law of 1872.
|
| I'm not aware of any serious challenge to the
| construction of this mine.
|
| Sure, there may be governmental red tape (eg
| environmental assessment impact studies and whatnot) but
| most "no build" laws I believe would be at the state not
| federal level. Federal environmental legislation itself
| tends to be quite conservative. There's an argument to be
| made the administrative state sets up additional
| regulations but in this specific case I believe the Trump
| administration was in favor and the Biden administration
| never changed course so I suspect the EPA doesn't have
| any major objections (not sure if it really passes
| regulations or if there's just selective enforcement in
| favor of the mine)
|
| [1] https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/12/07/nv-tribes-
| will-not-...
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't think I switched arguments. They are the same
| argument to me. For example the reason that we don't have
| enough homes in America is not because we literally
| forgot how to nail boards together to make a house, it is
| because we gradually accreted a system where it takes 5+
| years to get permission to do it. The bureaucratic
| capacity to begin building is key, and on the critical
| path of actual production.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Sure but housing is a municipal and state level issue
| while this mine is on federal land. Your argument is
| maybe relevant to explain why it was 14 years between
| discovery and being granted approval in 2021 just before
| Biden took office. But I don't know the timeline of how
| long it took to get the approval once filed - do you?
| Couldn't find anything online.
|
| Your argument would be stronger about the Maine mine but
| this mine was approved in 2021 and afaik production is
| ongoing.
|
| The mining is being done by the Chinese as Lithium
| Americas' majority owner is a Chinese company. GM has
| already invested 650M to get access to the mine. This
| does not seem like the right hill to argue about
| bureaucratic lethargy. And again, I don't see how any of
| this has any relevance as to whether America has the
| capability to build and run a lithium mine - we do. We
| may not have refining capabilities (not sure - haven't
| researched) but that'll come online once we have
| significant mining operations.
|
| At the end of the day, you don't want to mine too
| aggressively because you'll shoot yourself in the foot
| economically. The US has some of the largest lithium
| reserves in the world. This mine alone would represent
| 25% of the world's current production capacity. Ignoring
| environmental damage from mining (which is quite
| considerable), if you bring it online too quickly you'll
| lose out on a lot of money which is probably a larger
| factor than anything else.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Actually no, we really did forget how to nail boards
| together. Skilled labor vanished as other wages rose.
|
| Making a new house used to actually cost less than buying
| an existing one. Today, the calculation has changed, and
| it is more expensive, mostly because of the labor costs.
| They're only able to build in areas where there are fewer
| available jobs so there's no price pressure.
|
| Literally people leaving the skilled trades because job
| pricing pressure to work somewhere else. I've even met jr
| developers that used to be electricians. It's going to be
| hard to "remember" the trades.
|
| Permits are taking 5 years in esoteric oddball projects.
| The reality is a permit for a SFH takes a few months to
| get approved, even less for ADUs.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Sorry but the data isn't on your side. The population-
| weighted time to get a housing permit in California, as
| the most extremely bogus example, is well over 4 years.
| This information is available from California HCD's
| online dashboard.
|
| The driving force behind high construction prices is soft
| costs and contractor profits. Labor costs in construction
| have been roughly inline with overall labor inflation
| across all industries. See https://twitter.com/FactChecke
| r23/status/1730738575292113347...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| California definitely has a housing problem and looking
| at its data is a worst case scenario that'll skew your
| perception of what it's like in America as a whole - this
| mine is in Nevada not California.
|
| Also, I think the state has taken some positive action
| against NIMBY legislation but it will be a long fight to
| undo it. If things keep going SF is likely to run afoul
| of the build-positive regulations and end up suing the
| state/developers to fight needing to be in compliance.
| But again don't see the relevance of California housing
| which is a municipal / state level issue to mining in
| Nevada on federal lands.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| From your link:
|
| https://www.agc.org/sites/default/files/Files/Communicati
| ons...
|
| Wow you're waaaay off. As someone in this industry I am
| acutely aware of how way off base you are.
|
| Look at answers 4 - 10, the rest of it backs this up too.
|
| I just got a recent permit done in 5 months - plan,
| submit, approval (submit->approval was 3). ADUs in CA are
| mandated at 60 days max for approval
|
| Also, outside of CA approvals in some jurisdictions are
| weeks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebuilding/comments/sk3
| bd2/how_lo...
| rurp wrote:
| Is it really that unimagineable that some people would
| rather not see this large area of natural land destroyed,
| and have to live with the resulting externalities of the
| mine? People who hold different values than you aren't
| all evil beaurocrats who hate electrification. Many of
| the folks opposing this mine are strongly for green
| energy projects in general, but clearly prioritize
| certain tradeoffs differently than you do.
|
| There's an argument to be made that the tradeoffs are
| worth it in this case, but you don't seem to be making an
| argument so much as completely dismissing groups of
| locals and environmentalists who have a number of valid
| concerns.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I'd believe that if there seemed to be any analysis of
| alternatives. The area of the United States that has been
| completely wrecked for oil and gas is way, way bigger
| than the area under consideration for lithium extraction.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Because battery tech is evolving fast, and lithium could
| quickly become far less valuable...
| mihaic wrote:
| Sitting on it makes sense when something could go up in price
| long-term. This is probably modern government inaction though.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Sitting on it makes sense when something could go up in
| price long-term.
|
| It _could_ make sense in some very specific situations, but
| that really depends on the details.
| RobRivera wrote:
| Wouldnt you want to have a motherlode hoarded when supplies dry
| up 100 years from now, a commodity that fuels advanced
| avionics?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| What do you mean? If you're referring to lithium battery
| powered aircraft my understanding is that will never be
| viable for anything but the smallest aircraft.
| rnk wrote:
| What does small mean? We have puddle jumpers (few miles
| between islands) already in service, like 5-10 miles. I
| expect it to creep up over time as efficiency slight
| increases but battery energy increases at the battery
| moore's law like rate it has. Prices go down and
| capacity/weight goes up.
|
| I agree it will have limits, I doubt I'll see long flights
| like 200 miles. But I see no reason it can't improve by 10%
| a year just like the batteries. I believe the ones in
| service are using lfp batteries, which are safer than
| lithium batteries, but also have lower energy density - and
| these have gone up over time too in energy density.
| 93po wrote:
| There is virtually no way we will ever run out of lithium. It
| is massively abundant. It's just a matter of how much it
| costs to extract it. And we'll surely have fusion
| energy/abundant energy in 100 years and it will make the cost
| of extraction very close to zero.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah it's called a rare earth mineral because the
| concentration in ore is so low not because there's little
| of it in total.
|
| It does unfortunately mean that you need to excavate a lot
| to mine it which is not great for the environment either
| (even though lithium is currently key to most renewable
| technologies)
| VygmraMGVl wrote:
| Lithium is not a rare earth mineral. Typical weight
| fraction in ore is 0.5-8%.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I'm sure the nuclear physicists 100 years ago assumed the
| same about our fission energy output by today.
| scythe wrote:
| Lithium deposits come in various grades and have different
| associated costs for extraction. The famous deposits in Bolivia
| are considered cheap to exploit. The geothermal brines in
| England as well. Other rock sources might be harder.
| iteria wrote:
| IIRC, they aren't sitting on it. They're investigating the
| environmental impact. Lithium is the worst because it needs a
| lot of water to mine, but it's only found in arid places. NV
| rightly asked for an investigation to see what thr impact on
| the water supplu would be
| VintageCool wrote:
| Construction of the lithium mine at Thacker Pass began in June,
| and it is expected to start producing lithium by 2026.
|
| There is a (super nutty _) environmentalist group and some
| Native Americans protesting and trying to delay the mine, but
| it looks like they have so far been unsuccessful at convincing
| judges, and blockers have been getting cleared out.
|
| _ I consider myself an environmentalist, so I'm a bit sensitive
| about descriptions like "nutty environmentalist", but... the
| group protesting the Thacker Pass mine is weird and I think
| largely repudiated by other environmentalists. I mean, they're
| trying to stop the transition to clean energy. These guys
| advocate for total deindustrialization, return to a pre-
| agriculture way of life, only as many humans as the hunter-and-
| gatherer lifestyle can support, and they're... deeply anti-
| trans?
| lucubratory wrote:
| Is this Deep Green Resistance? If it is, the anti-trans thing
| is a combination of things, one of them being that they view
| hormone replacement therapy as an unnatural "big pharma"
| thing that can't survive in their idyllic future where the
| Earth has a population of 100,000, just like insulin for
| diabetics. The other is just that they had significant
| factional splits with thin voting margins, and the faction
| that kept the name was fighting against another faction that
| had some transgender members, so "Transgender people are
| industrialised freaks and/or rapists" was a convenient way to
| try to expel enough voting members of the opposing faction to
| seize control of the faction. A lot of the time when you see
| a random extreme political organisation that's nominally
| left-wing have a strongly anti-transgender stance, it's
| because at some point in their organisational past
| transgender people were casualties in some larger factional
| dispute.
| masto wrote:
| I guess nobody told Energizer.
|
| https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01C4PP8FK?cpf=amazon-ne...
|
| My Nest smoke detectors demand these specific batteries. They
| were all installed around the same time, so they all come due at
| once, at a cost of ~$200.
| argiopetech wrote:
| That's probably due to long standby times. You could get away
| with cheap (i.e., Harbor Freight batteries at $20/20 or
| comparable) if you were willing to change them more frequently.
|
| I'm not sure what the actual scale of difference is between
| battery chemistries. Perhaps someone with more knowledge will
| reply and refute me.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You have enough smoke detectors that it requires 75 - 100
| batteries to power them all?
| Cerium wrote:
| The old Nest smoke detectors seem to use six of those
| batteries each. That is still a fairly high number of smoke
| detectors.
| megaman821 wrote:
| How long do they last? Normal lithium ion powered smoked
| detectors will last 10 years between battery changes.
| jdeibele wrote:
| $200/$65.89 = 3 packs of 24 AA batteries
|
| Nest smoke detectors take 6 batteries each https://support.goog
| le.com/googlenest/answer/9297548?hl=en#:....
|
| 72 batteries / 6 batteries/device = approximately 12 smoke
| detectors (could be 9, 10, or 11)
|
| We have 6 First Alert smoke detectors that are connected
| together but don't use WiFi. There's 1 in each bedroom and a
| couple left over for key places.
|
| Using 12 smoke detectors is being very careful to cover every
| space or a big house. Or both.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Does this mean cheaper ebikes?
| anonporridge wrote:
| "I've seen gluts not followed by shortages, but I've never seen a
| shortage not followed by a glut." -- Nassim Taleb
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Incentives are powerful and scale.
| anonporridge wrote:
| "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome." --
| Charlie Munger
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Yep, I love that quote.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I think the difficulty of the problem is also important to
| the outcome.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Over what time scale?
| prepend wrote:
| His attention span.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| LOL.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Commodity prices fluctuate wildly. Fundamentals have very little
| to do with it.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I guess I should stock up on my meds.
| Animats wrote:
| Same thing happened in rare earths. The Mountain Pass, CA mine
| was shut down, reopened, shut down, reopened, shut down, and
| reopened since the 1980s, as prices went up and down. Probably
| will stay open now because rare earth usage is up.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Good news for the environment really. Electric cars and storage
| need to be a lot cheaper to become ubiquitous.
| benbojangles wrote:
| Not sure it 'collapsed'. Probably leveraged to undercut oil.
| epistasis wrote:
| Even at its peak, it barely caused a change in battery prices.
|
| It's going to be really hard to undercut oil by dropping
| lithium prices, as nickel is a bigger contributor to cost.
| benbojangles wrote:
| Nickel also down in price
| epistasis wrote:
| Not sure which players could cause huge shifts in both
| lithium and nickel commodity prices, for the goal of
| undercutting oil. Especially since standard learning curves
| deliver huge drops in battery prices year after year
| anyway. Seems like a futile effort.
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