Australia said it has teamed up with the United States and Canada to launch an interactive map of deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals that are expected to be in hot demand as the world moves to cleaner forms of energy…The website contains the world’s largest dataset of minerals such cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements and has more than 7,000 mineral samples from over 60 countries which could help identify new areas of critical minerals…The data can be used by governments to identify options to diversify their critical minerals sources and by companies to better target their exploration strategies, Keith Pitt, the minister for resources, water and northern Australia, said in a statement…Western governments have been keen to diversify procurement amid trade and political tensions with Beijing…The United State said this month it would work with allies to secure the minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries and process them domestically. 

The tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru has notified a U.N. body of plans to start deep-sea mining, giving the International Seabed Authority (ISA) two years to complete long-running talks on rules governing the new and controversial industry…Nauru President Lionel Aingimea notified ISA about the mining plans to be carried out by a subsidiary of The Metals Co in a letter dated June 25 and seen by Reuters on Tuesday…Reuters reported on Friday that Nauru planned to trigger the so-called "two-year rule", which allows for a mining plan to be approved after two years under whatever rules are in place at that time…Nauru is a sponsoring state for Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Metals Co, formerly known as DeepGreen, which plans to list on the U.S. Nasdaq in the third quarter in a merger with blank-check company Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp…The Metals Co, which aims to start mining in 2024, did not immediately reply to a request for comment…Deep-sea mining would extract cobalt, copper, nickel, and manganese - key battery materials - from potato-sized rocks called "polymetallic nodules" on the sea floor at depths of 4-6 km (2.5-4 miles). They are abundant in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the North Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico…But environmental groups, some of which have called for a ban on the activity arguing that too little is known about its impact, said the draft was far from ready…"Forcing the regulations through prematurely and without due process or enough scientific knowledge about the deep sea is not in line with the precautionary approach and other principles of international environmental law," the World Wildlife Fund said…Alphabet's Google, carmaker BMW and battery producer Samsung SDI back WWF's call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining…Nauru, with 12,000 inhabitants, said 80% of its land was uninhabitable because of colonial-era phosphate mining and deep-sea mining was more sustainable. 

While the pandemic oversaw a global car sales drop of 16%, electric car registrations grew by 41% in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That rise meant that there were around 10 million electric vehicles out and about on the world’s roads by the end of last year…Consumer spending on electric cars rose to $120 billion in 2020, the IEA says in its Global EV Outlook 2021 report. That’s a jump of 50% on 2019’s figures…Alongside that, “governments across the world spent $14 billion to support electric car sales, up 25% from 2019, mostly from stronger incentives in Europe”…That said, the share of government-supplied incentives – as a proportion of total EV spending – has been falling over the past five years, the IEA report shows. Government incentives made up around 10% of EV spending in 2020, down from roughly 20% in 2015…The most common mechanisms for administering incentives have been the kind of rebate New Zealand has just announced…Drivers there can look forward to a cash rebate if they buy electric or hybrid cars. The Clean Car Discount scheme comes into effect on 1 July 2021 and will “make it cheaper for New Zealanders to buy electric and low-emission cars,” the country’s Transport Minister Michael Wood said in a statement online…As well as rebates on cleaner cars, the scheme will also introduce additional fees on the price of vehicles that produce high levels of carbon dioxide emissions, earning it the nickname “the feebate” in New Zealand…In the US, President Biden has just announced $7.5 billion for an EV charging infrastructure network, but it’s not yet clear what will be made available for vehicle purchasing incentives – $100 billion was originally earmarked for EV subsidies in Biden’s ‘American Jobs Plan’…In California, the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project offers discounts of up to $7,000 on new EVs, although the scheme is currently on hold as funding has been used up. California also operates a Clean Fuel Reward programme, which can be worth up to $1,500 when buying or leasing an EV…The UK government offers a $3,480 discount on new EVs under $48,670, but this represents a cut to the previous grant, which was $4,170 on EVs worth $69,500, according to The Guardian…In 2019, the vehicle-maker Volkswagen carried out a comparison of some of the world’s leading EV markets and the different incentive levers governments were pulling to encourage sales. Generous tax bonuses in Norway are attributed to bringing the price of EVs and conventional cars close to parity…China, meanwhile, is the world’s largest market for EVs, due in large part to its extensive regulatory incentives.

Battery Resourcers has entered into an agreement with American Honda Motor to disassemble and recycle spent lithium-ion batteries from the automaker's electric vehicles for the production of battery-ready cathode-active materials, the companies said June 28…"The safe and affordable recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries is a significant challenge for carmakers and battery manufacturers, especially since millions of EVs are expected to hit the road in the coming years and new regulations mandate the recycling of spent batteries and the use of recycled metals in new batteries," the companies said in a statement…The Massachusetts-based battery recycling company currently operates a vertically integrated recycling and refining plant in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the batteries from Honda will be processed…The Worcester plant is capable of achieving 97% metal recovery from a mixed stream of used lithium-ion batteries to produce finished nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC)-based cathode materials…Battery Resourcers eventually plans to process Honda's batteries at a commercial-scale plant that will be operational in the first half of 2022. The new site will be capable of processing more than 20 million lb of batteries annually.

Lithium iron phosphate batteries have recently regained their position as the preferred option among original equipment manufacturers in China, casting doubt on the forecast dominance of the alternative nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium-ion batteries in the country’s electric vehicle battery supply chain…The situation has also raised questions about whether the change in sentiment would be mirrored outside China…The output of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries in China surpassed that of nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) units in May 2021. Some market sources noted that it was the first time in three years that the former has exceeded the latter in terms of output…LFP batteries are among the earliest well-developed electric vehicle (EV) battery technologies in China, and are well known for their stable and safe performance, despite their overall low energy density compared with NCM batteries. The higher the energy density an EV battery has, the greater the driving range of the vehicle on a single charge…In the second half of the past decade, most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in China shifted to NCM lithium-ion batteries in an attempt to achieve higher battery energy density. This change in battery chemistries was...

Democratic Republic of Congo’s state-owned utility company SNEL said on Tuesday it had signed power purchase agreements for the construction of two 100 megawatt (MW) solar power plants in the copper and cobalt-rich south-east for more than $300 million…SNEL agreed the projects, which are expected to break ground in March 2022 and start operating in early 2023, with developer Financing Access, which is partnered with investment fund Green Power Capital (GPC), the companies said in a joint statement…A plant in the town of Kolwezi will cost $148 million, while a plant in nearby Likasi will cost $157 million…Less than 10% of Congo’s roughly 90 million people have reliable access to electricity, and electricity shortages are a major impediment to building processing factories to add value to copper and cobalt exports…Congo is Africa’s top copper producer and the world’s biggest miner of cobalt, which is used in batteries for electric vehicles and other electronic products…Similarly, we will be able to ensure the supply of electricity to industrialists in the area, in particular the mining companies which represent the economic lungs of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba (provinces),” he said…The two plants will provide the Congo’s grid with an average annual production of around 500 gigawatt hours, enough to supply electricity to more than 1.25 million people, SNEL said.