The US has moved to limit Chinese involvement in the country’s battery supply chain by setting a 25% ownership cap for companies producing battery components or critical minerals for electric vehicles…Automakers will not be eligible for up to $7,500 in electric vehicle subsidies if they use battery components or critical minerals from companies where at least 25% is owned directly or indirectly by Chinese companies, according to guidance from the US Treasury and the Department of Energy…The guidance also covers licensing of technologies from Chinese companies…It could also be a blow to plants producing precursors and cathodes in South Korea, which mostly rely on nickel from Chinese companies in Indonesia…At least 82% of Indonesia’s 2024 battery nickel output will be under majority Chinese ownership and at least 54% by 2033, according to Benchmark…One of the world’s largest lithium mines, the Greenbushes mine in Australia, is also controlled by China’s Tianqi Lithium, which has a 26% stake…Starting in 2025 the vehicle’s battery can’t contain any critical minerals that were extracted, processed, or recycled by a “Foreign Entity of Concern.”…A “Foreign Entity of Concern” is company, person, or group formed under the jurisdiction of, or influenced by, China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran…For critical minerals, the rule covers extraction, processing, and recycling. A mineral extracted by an entity that is not a FEOC but processed by a FEOC would not be compliant, it says…Automakers will have to conduct tracing on their supply chains to ensure they meet the requirements. Given the difficulty of tracing critical minerals, the guidance proposes to allocate minerals to a “particular set of battery cells.” 

The Biden administration on Friday issued-long awaited guidance that will limit Chinese content in batteries eligible for electric vehicle tax credits starting next year…In a win for automakers, the U.S. Treasury will temporarily exempt some trace critical minerals from new strict rules barring materials from China and other countries deemed a "Foreign Entity of Concern." (FEOC)…The new rules, required under an August 2022 law, are designed to wean the U.S. electric vehicle battery chain away from China and are being closely watched by automakers as they make investment decisions on producing batteries for their transition to electric vehicles…The FEOC rules come into effect in 2024 for completed batteries and 2025 for critical minerals used to produce them…The Energy Department said a company would be deemed a FEOC if owned or controlled by a named foreign government. Companies will also be ineligible if an entity of concern holds 25% of that entity’s board seats, voting rights, or equity…Those countries include North Korea, China, Russia and Iran…The rules are expected to further reduce the number of electric vehicles eligible for EV tax credits. 

China’s anti-spy agency has put safeguarding of the country’s supplies of critical minerals as among its top tasks, accusing the West of trying to contain China’s development. “Critical mineral resources are the important basis for serving the development of new industries. They are the top priority for resource security,” the Ministry of State Security said in a post on its official social media account on Thursday…“Strategic critical minerals have become an important engine for speeding up the building of a modern industrial system and promoting high-quality economic development, which is directly related to national security,” it said…The post comes months after China ordered export restrictions on gallium and germanium, important metals used in semiconductor manufacturing, and several of their compounds, in retaliation against Western sanctions on its chip industry…The post went online a day before China’s export controls on graphite, a material used in electric vehicle batteries, took effect…The security ministry post pointed out that critical minerals had become a new arena of competition among global powers, triggering a rise in resource protectionism and geopolitical tug of war…The scarcity of critical mineral resources and the monopoly enjoyed by a small number of countries were behind the global scramble, it said…“Faced with the suppression from some Western countries … [China has] implemented a holistic concept of national security in recent years, and regards guarding national security in critical mineral resources as an important task,” it said. Officials had been strictly combating espionage in relation to mineral resources and safeguarding China’s overseas critical mineral cooperation projects, the top spy agency said.

Governments formulate lists of critical minerals according to their industrial requirements and strategic evaluations of supply risks…This graphic uses IRENA and the U.S. Department of Energy data to identify which minerals are essential to China, the United States, and the European Union…One thing countries share, however, is the concern that a lack of minerals could slow down the energy transition…Ten materials feature on critical material lists of both the U.S., the EU, and China, including cobalt, lithium, graphite, and rare earths…Despite being the world’s biggest carbon polluter, China is the largest producer of most of the world’s critical minerals for the green revolution…China produces 60% of all rare earth elements used as components in high-technology devices, including smartphones and computers. The country also has a 13% share of the lithium production market. In addition, it refines around 35% of the world’s nickel, 58% of lithium, and 70% of cobalt...

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Congo's state mining group Gecamines said it will push to secure the rights to buy copper and cobalt at mines it has holdings in, as it attempts to build its own stocks and trade the metals…To do so, Gecamines needs to amend some terms of its joint venture agreements in Democratic Republic of Congo, which is the world's top supplier of battery-grade cobalt and the third largest copper producer after Peru and Chile…Gecamines Chairman Guy Robert Lukama said its joint venture partners "can no longer get all the off take of the production"…Lukama told Reuters that Gecamines now wants to be able to buy copper and cobalt proportional to its stakes in joint ventures in Congo with partners including Glencore and Chinese investors, with its holdings ranging from 20% to 49%...It then plans to trade this on its own, which will enable Gecamines to be directly involved in supplying the metals the world needs in the green energy transition, he added…Lukama said the plan to renegotiate the joint ventures had the backing of Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi, who is vying for a second term in Dec. 20 presidential elections…"The rationale is to have a better role for the state, and Gecamines, in the supply of critical minerals to the world," Lukama said, adding: "We cannot just be sitting passively, seeing people taking all of the cobalt and copper."…Congo has since been re-negotiating key terms of a $6 billion metals for infrastructure deal with China…During a visit by Tshisekedi to China in July, Gecamines reached a deal with China's CMOC Group. This includes conditions that secured it a right to acquire copper and cobalt, produced from Tenke Fungurume Mining equal to its 20% stake in the operation, on market terms…Lukama said the right to buy and market the metals need to be extended to all its joint ventures and Gecamines is able to finance the purchase of metals or it could seek bank financing…Directly trading the metals that are key for products from power lines and industrial machinery to electric vehicles, shields Gecamines from a lack of returns when its joint venture partners make losses, Lukama said…Lukama said Gecamines plans to conclude negotiations at all partnerships by end of 2024, adding that the CMOC deal made it "obvious" Congo wants a role in the supply of critical metals.

In the deserts of Chile, the Australian outback and the plains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the earth is being peeled back and the water sucked up and dried out to find the minerals needed to feed the world’s need for electric cars…The scars left on the earth by the search for battery minerals are regularly trotted out by opponents of the transition away from fossil fuels. But in our EV mythbusters series, we are taking a closer look at some of the most common criticisms of electric cars, highlighting the myths, the realities, and the grey areas…The science…Mineral demand for heavy batteries will grow rapidly. The International Energy Agency estimated that electric cars use 173kg more minerals such as lithium, nickel and copper than petrol cars (when ignoring steel and aluminium)…Yet overall, the mineral use for electric cars is much, much lower than petrol and diesel as soon as oil enters the equation. Transport & Environment (T&E), a Brussels-based thinktank, found that a petrol car will burn an average of 17,000 litres of oil in its lifetime – about 12.5 tonnes…And most criticisms of electric cars’ mineral use miss a hugely important point: the majority of battery materials used in cars are likely to be recycled. That will drastically cut down the amount of wasted material compared with fossil fuels which disappear invisibly but harmfully to heat the planet…David Bott, the head of innovation at the Society of Chemical Industry, said: “The real thing people forget is once it has been mined, you will end up being able to reuse 80-90% of the metals. You don’t have to go back to the planet to steal more minerals.”…T&E’s data suggests that after recycling, battery material waste over an electric car’s life will be about the size of a football, or 30kg, by 2030. That figure does not include any fossil fuels burned to generate electricity, meaning the true real-life mineral toll will be higher than 30kg until countries have decarbonised their electrical grids completely…Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, said that about 0.1% of the Earth’s habitable land is used in mining, but less than 0.01% was used for battery minerals. That still includes vast amounts of material, including 130,000 tonnes of lithium, according to the US Geological Survey. But that is dwarfed by other materials: there were 2.6bn tonnes of iron ore mined for steel in 2022 and 4.4bn tonnes of oil…For fossil fuels “the sheer amount of material we need to get out of the ground is bigger and everlasting,” Hoekstra said. “At least with batteries you have a chance of making it circular.”…And the alternative will not mean less mining. Caspar Rawles, the chief data officer at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said: “It always makes me laugh. OK, the mining of EV [materials] is harmful. Where do you think your car now comes from?”…The data we have leaves little doubt that resource extraction will be significantly lower for electric cars compared with their petrol or diesel equivalents as recycling increases.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders at the COP28 climate summit to plan for a future without fossil fuels, saying there was no other way to curb global warming…Speaking a day after COP28 president Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber proposed embracing the continued use of fossil fuels, Guterres said: "We cannot save a burning planet with a fire hose of fossil fuels."…"The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce. Not abate," he said, referring to nascent technologies to capture and store carbon emissions. The competing visions summed up the most divisive issue facing world leaders at this year's U.N. climate summit in the oil-producing United Arab Emirates…A former Marshall Islands president, whose country faces inundation from climate-driven sea level rise, resigned from the main COP28 advisory board on Friday in objection to the UAE's support of continued use of fossil fuels…Hilda Heine said in her resignation letter that she was "deeply disappointed" that the UAE had reportedly used its COP28 role to broker oil and gas deals. The UAE has strongly denied the accusations…"These actions undermine the integrity of the COP presidency and the process as a whole," she wrote, adding that restoring trust meant delivering "an outcome that demonstrates that you are committed to phasing out fossil fuels."…Away from the main stage, delegations and technical committees set to work on Friday on the mammoth task of assessing their progress in meeting global climate targets, specifically the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), above pre-industrial temperatures…Scientists say that a global temperature rise beyond this threshold will unleash catastrophic and irreversible impacts worldwide…One of the options involves including commitments to phase down or phase out the use of fossil fuels, to quit coal energy and to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030…Also on the table for discussion is whether to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, which totaled some $7 trillion last year, and whether to include provisions for carbon capture and removal technology.

Tesla's long-delayed Cybertruck will be priced starting at $60,990, over 50% more than what CEO Elon Musk had touted in 2019 and a cost analysts have said will draw select, affluent buyers. The truck, made of shiny stainless steel and shaped into flat planes, is partly inspired by a car-turned-submarine in the 1977 James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me," Musk has said…Musk did not announce the vehicle's prices at the event, but Tesla's website listed the prices. Its highest performance variant, the 'Cyberbeast' will be available next year, as will the all-wheel drive trim that starts at an estimated $80,000…The cheapest rear-wheel drive version with an estimated starting price of about $61,000 will be available in 2025…After Musk estimated in 2019 that the Cybertruck would sell for $40,000, the vehicle drew more than a million reservation holders who put down $100 deposits. He had not offered an updated price before Monday, despite rising raw material costs for EVs…Cybertruck, two years behind schedule, enters a hot pickup truck market to compete with the likes of Ford's F150 Lightning, Rivian Automotive's R1T and General Motors' Hummer EV…Rivian's R1T has a starting price of $73,000, while the F-150 Lightning starts at about $50,000. The larger and more powerful Hummer EV pickup costs more than $96,000…The Cybertruck, Tesla's first new model in nearly four years, is critical to its reputation as a maker of innovative vehicles. At a time when the company is battling softening electric vehicle (EV) demand and rising competition, Cybertruck is also key for generating sales, though not to the extent of the company's high-volume Models 3 and Y…The Cybertruck's longest-range version can drive an estimated 340 miles (547 km), and comes with a "range extender" or extra battery pack that extends its range to 470 miles…In 2019, Musk had said the truck would be able to travel 500 miles or more on a single charge.