Super funds need to take “a venture capital approach” to investing in critical minerals if they want to cash in on the energy transition, Guy Debelle says, as only a fraction of their bets in the sector will pay off but those that do will “make massive returns”…The former RBA deputy governor doubled down on his calls for big super to help fund the energy transition on Wednesday, saying the investment horizons and potential returns of the critical minerals sector suited funds’ objectives…He conceded that it was a challenge for funds to factor the risk of the sector into their portfolio structures, but “to [his] mind at least that’s the sort of opportunity you should be looking for” given their “patient capital”…It comes as super funds point to the energy transition as a potential honeypot for their long-term customers but warn that there are not enough local opportunities to match the level of capital they want to deploy into it…“You can do your due diligence and find about 20 half-decent critical minerals prospects – four or five are probably going to make massive returns, five probably aren’t going to make you any money at all, and about half will probably return your funds,” Dr Debelle said at the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) national conference in Adelaide…“But those that pay off will pay off hugely.”…He warned that if super funds waited until these opportunities were “really firm” then they would miss most of the upside and instead be left with assets delivering returns more like those in the utilities sector…Super funds were also better placed to do this over other investors given they had the cash to cover the significant upfront costs but the investment horizons to wait for the returns.

Saudi Arabia is exploring the potential launch of a new commodity trading platform for battery materials, including graphite and rare earths, its vice minister of industry and mineral resources said…Riyadh's efforts to build an economy that is not dependent on oil include a shift towards mining the country's untapped mineral resources - worth about $1.33 trillion - including copper, lithium, phosphate and gold, but also investing in overseas assets…"To be a minerals hub you have to have it all and we are studying a future minerals commodity exchange for graphite, rare earths, lithium, cobalt and even nickel, as there is no efficient commodity exchange nor price-finding mechanism for some," Khalid bin Saleh Al-Mudaifer told Reuters in an interview…Lithium and cobalt can be traded on the London Metal Exchange and Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)…Saudi Arabia's investment fund Manara Minerals, a joint venture between state-owned miner Ma'aden and the Public Investment Fund (PIF), was set up in January to buy assets overseas. It will prioritise copper, nickel, iron ore and lithium.

The transition back to using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathodes in electric vehicle (EV) batteries from nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) poses a challenge to recyclers and could split the market, attendees at the Future Battery Forum in Berlin heard on Tuesday…In the race to maximise energy density to support longer EV driving ranges, battery manufacturers largely adopted NMC cathodes, particularly outside China. NMC battery cells typically provide an energy density of about 250 Wh/kg, supporting a range of about 300 miles (480km) on a single charge, while LFP cells provide about 160 Wh/kg…"LFP poses a huge challenge to recyclers because there are not these expensive and very relevant materials inside the batteries — there's no nickel, there's no cobalt," Gonzalez-Garcia said. "There's still lithium, there's still graphite, but the recycling process is more challenging. What happens to those batteries when they reach end of life? Do we recycle them?...Maybe the market splits into two different flows — the flow of low-value battery chemistry and those are radically reduced, and the other market flow which is NMC batteries or those with high content of cobalt and nickel which are of huge value for recyclers."…Low-value LFP batteries could be used in second-life applications, while higher-value batteries with high nickel content could be sent straight to recyclers, Gonzalez-Garcia suggested…LFP chemistries accounted for 27pc of global battery capacity for light-duty vehicles in 2022, up from 17pc in 2021 and just 3pc in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency. High-nickel chemistries accounted for a 66pc share, down from 76pc in 2021 and 89pc in 2019. NCA accounted for a share of about 8pc last year…The LFP transition is driven by China, which accounted for about 95pc of the LFP batteries produced last year…Recycling of lithium-ion batteries via conventional recycling methods using pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy is largely unprofitable for LFP and lithium manganese oxide (LMO) batteries in Europe and the US, data show. Direct recycling, which reduces intermediate processing steps to recover a larger proportion of the metals and chemicals, is marginally profitable for LFP and LMO but NMC and nickel-cobalt-aluminium recycling generates about $10/kWh of profit in the US and Europe and closer to $20/kWh in South Korea and China. 

The U.N. weather agency said Thursday that 2023 is all but certain to be the hottest year on record, and warning of worrying trends that suggest increasing floods, wildfires, glacier melt, and heat waves in the future…The World Meteorological Organization also warned that the average temperature for the year is up some 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times – a mere one-tenth of a degree under a target limit for the end of the century as laid out by the Paris climate accord in 2015…WMO issued the findings for Thursday’s start of the U.N.’s annual climate conference, this year being held in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates city of Dubai…“We are heading towards 2.5 to 3 degrees warming and that would mean that we would see massively more negative impacts of climate change,” Taalas said, pointing to glacier loss and sea level rise over “the coming thousands of years.”…The nine years 2015 to 2023 were the warmest on record, WMO said. Its findings for this year run through October, but it says the last two months are not likely to be enough to keep 2023 from being a record-hot year…Still, there are “some signs of hope” – including a turn toward renewable energies and more electric cars, which help reduce the amount of carbon that is spewed into the atmosphere, trapping heat inside,” Taalas said…“We have to reduce our consumption of coal, oil and natural gas dramatically to be able to limit the warming to the Paris limits,” he said. “Luckily, things are happening. But still, we in the Western countries, in the rich countries, we are still consuming oil, a little bit less coal than in the past, and still natural gas.”

In Värmdö, a municipality of 10,000 small islands near Stockholm in Sweden, the school commute is about to get a whole lot more exciting for a few lucky students…Starting in December, the archipelago’s four schools will be the first users of the X Shore Pro, a new electric boat by a Swedish manufacturer that’s been described as the “Tesla of the seas.”…The boat is 26 feet (8 meters) long and seats up to 10 people, has a top speed of 30 knots (about 35 mph) and a range of about 100 nautical miles (about 115 miles), only achievable at a lower cruising speed of around 20 knots and heavily dependent on load and sea conditions. Fully electric, it produces no emissions or noise, resulting in a smoother ride that it says is far kinder to marine habitats…“We believe in prioritizing the health and well-being of our students and the environment,” says Maria Niläng, principal of the Värmdö Archipelago Schools. “With this innovative electric school shuttle boat, we’re not just providing efficient transportation; we’re pushing for a cleaner society, and a brighter, healthier future for our students.”…Founded in 2019, X Shore had previously released two electric leisure boats, the high-performance Eelex 8000 and the smaller X Shore 1. The X Shore Pro, which is meant for commercial operations or coast guards, is based on the former and shares most of its specifications…The X Shore 1 costs upwards of €109,000 (about $119,000), but the more expensive models in the lineup start at €195,000 (about $213,000)…The batteries that power the boat are similar to those found on electric vehicles. “They are lithium-ion batteries, but they are certified for the marine environment, so they need to be much safer around water,” Keisu says. “They use normal automotive charging, so with a supercharger they can charge in 30 minutes, but they can also charge on [equipment] that is typically present in all marinas. That way, our different models charge somewhere between two hours to five hours.” Using a household electric outlet is also possible, but with vastly increased charging times… “The boating industry should do more to transition [to electric vehicles] because boating is much worse for the environment than cars — the average leisure boat emits around four times as much CO2 as the average car.”…Boats and ships with combustion engines are now starting to face scattered bans in lakes and waterways across the world — for example, diesel and gasoline engines will be banned from Amsterdam’s canals from 2025, and Norway is planning zero emissions requirements for cruise ships, tourist boats and ferries in its UNESCO World Heritage fjords by 2026.