Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US should work on shifting dependence on some nations for supplies of critical inputs as global supply-chain logjams have hurt the domestic economy. “We saw during the pandemic that our supply chains were very brittle and really lacking in resilience,” she said Monday. Yellen repeated her support for so-called friend-shoring, where supply chains are made up of “countries that espouse a common set of values.”…Yellen made the comments during a trip to Toronto where she appeared alongside Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland…Canada is a potential source of some products that countries have for many years obtained from China and Russia, Freeland said…“What we can really contribute in a world of friend-shoring is critical metals and minerals and energy,” she said.

Chinese new energy battery materials producer Huayou Cobalt has announced a new investment plan regarding mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), cobalt hydroxide, lithium ores and salts, the company said on Monday June 20…Huayou Cobalt said that, via wholly owned subsidiary Huatuo International Development, it will work with Singaporean investment company Glaucous International to set up a joint venture called the Huashan Project...

U.S. startup Redwood Materials Inc on Tuesday said Japan's Toyota Motor Corp has become the latest auto industry giant to join its comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling and remanufacturing initiative…Redwood Materials, whose partners include automaker Ford Motor Co and EV battery maker Panasonic Holdings Corp, is building a closed-loop battery ecosystem aimed at lowering EV costs by lessening dependence on imported materials while also reducing the environmental impact…The five-year-old company has focused initial work at a 175-acre campus in northern Nevada, and plans to build another complex in southeastern United States, its chief executive and founder, JB Straubel, said in an interview…Redwood Materials is ramping up production of anode and cathode components to 100 gigawatt-hours by 2025, enough to supply batteries for 1 million EVs a year, then to 500 GWh by 2030, enough to supply 5 million EVs a year or more, said Straubel, a co-founder of Tesla Inc .  

Global chemical giant BASF is going to build a commercial battery-recycling, black-mass plant in Schwarzheide, a town in Brandenburg, eastern Germany…The production of black mass, which contains high amounts of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese – the key metals used to produce cathode active materials – is the first step in the battery recycling process…BASF says that its new plant will strengthen its production of cathode active materials – the main component of lithium-ion batteries – and battery recycling hub in Schwarzheide. It will have an annual processing capacity of 15,000 tons of electric vehicle batteries and production scrap. It will create around 30 new production jobs, and it’s expected to launch in early 2024…The black mass will then go to BASF’s commercial hydrometallurgical refinery for battery recycling, which will be built in around three years. 

Shenzhen-based battery firm Sunwoda reportedly launched a spin-off for its automotive power battery business at the end of 2021. Its subsidiary Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., Ltd. (EVB) will be listed as an independent company, and is expected to submit an IPO application in 2023 or 2024, 36Kr reported on Tuesday…One investor told 36Kr that Sunwoda EVB is seeking a new round of financing, with an estimated amount of more than 3 billion yuan ($448 million) and an overall valuation of 20 billion yuan…On February 24, 19 investors including Li Auto, XPeng and NIO increased their capital in Sunwoda EVB with 2.43 billion yuan, and obtained about 19.5% equity of the company…According to Sunwoda’s 2021 financial report, its power battery business revenue was 2.933 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 584.67%. However, the specific business accounts for only 7.85% of Sunwoda’s overall revenue. Consumer electronics batteries are still the core business of Sunwoda. In 2021, the firm’s revenue from its smartphone battery business was 20.795 billion yuan, accounting for more than half of the total revenue…In the field of power batteries, since 2019, Sunwoda has reached cooperation agreements with Renault, Geely, Dongfeng Motor, GAC Motor, SAIC-GM-Wuling, and other car companies…The Chinese battery firm also intensively expanded its battery capacity. Since August 2021, Sunwoda has planned to achieve 130GWh power battery capacity in the provinces of Jiangxi, Shandong, Guangdong and Sichuan, with total investment exceeding 60 billion yuan.

Honda Motor Co Ltd said on Tuesday its joint venture in China with Guangzhou Automobile Group Co has begun building an electric vehicle factory in Guangdong province with an initial investment of 3.49 billion yuan ($522 million)…The Japanese automaker is aiming to start the factory's operation in 2024, it said in a statement. The new factory has an annual production capacity of 120,000 units…Honda said another EV plant in China, in a joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group, is also expected to start operations in 2024.

More Chinese renewable energy developers are incorporating storage facilities in their projects to comply with state policies, helping increase the national grid’s flexibility to meet peak demand and absorb clean but intermittent power…More than 4 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar farms bundled with storage and other energy facilities worth a combined 66 billion yuan (US$9.9 billion) have been signed in the past week, according to official announcements and mainland Chinese news reports. They include one mooted by China Huaneng Group, one of the nation’s biggest power producers…Most Chinese provincial governments require a bundling of 10 to 30 per cent of energy storage capacity for new large solar and wind projects, relative to their generating capacity, according to Lucas Zhang Liutong, director of Hong Kong-based consultancy WaterRock Energy Economics…“Basically, they are forcing the renewable developers to use [profit] margins from the solar and wind projects to partially pay for the energy storage capacity,” he said. “Under the current market design, energy storage capacity is still not economical, [hence] the mandatory requirement to bundle.”…While storage systems are expensive to deploy, they are essential for the proliferation of renewable energy, a key power sector decarbonisation solution. They are also a good energy source for meeting peak demand, especially during hot summers and cold winters…China has set a goal for total wind and solar capacity to reach 1,200GW by 2030, almost double the 635GW capacity in place at the end of last year. This is expected to help with the nation’s twin climate goals of peak emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.