Are We Running Out of Lithium?
No -- but we do have a supply shortage.
If the world is going to need about 8 terawatt-hours of energy storage by 2030, as I estimated in the last post, can we meet that demand with lithium-ion batteries?
Or will we need to find some other technology, or slow down energy storage demands?
One question we’d have to answer is about raw materials — is there enough lithium in the world to make all those lithium-ion batteries?
The World Bank predicts that by 2050, the demand for lithium worldwide from energy technologies will be 415,000 metric tons, nearly 5x the quantity produced in 2018.
In 2021, the world production of lithium was 100,000 metric tons. Lithium production has not been rising in the past few years.
So that doesn’t look great.
How much lithium are we going to need?
Lithium Content in Batteries
There are about 160 grams of lithium per kilowatt-hour in a typical electric-vehicle lithium-ion battery, averaged over different battery chemistries.
To produce 8 terawatt-hours of lithium-ion batteries, we need 1.28 million tons of lithium.
Lithium Availability on Earth
The 1.28 million tons of lithium needed to build 8 terawatt-hours/year worth of energy storage capacity is significantly less than the 80 million tons of identified lithium resources worldwide, or even the 17 million tons of lithium carbonate reserves worldwide.
There is definitely enough lithium on Earth to meet demand.
Lithium Extraction
The problem is that it takes longer to build lithium mines than to build battery factories: 5-7 years to build a lithium mine, compared to 24 months for a gigafactory. There is currently a supply shortage of lithium, and it is expected to continue for the next several years.
Newer sources of lithium carbonate tend to come from lower-grade deposits containing lower concentrations of lithium, and requiring newer technologies and higher costs to extract.
But we’re not close to the fundamental geological limits of extractable lithium. It’s just going to become more expensive, and it’ll be scarce until supply scales up.
This is a bit off-topic, but I'm surprised at how much cobalt the World Bank estimates is needed! Assuming a constant 4.9% growth rate to get from 2018 to 2050 projected demand, 10.5 million tons would be needed between 2018 and 2050. The USGS estimates that world cobalt reserves are currently 7.1 million tons. This would be possible with an increase in reserves, but I think it's more likely that manufacturers will switch to lithium chemistries that use less cobalt.
From a different perspective industry recons at 25,000 tons needed to produce 1 million cars. Current production 100,000 tons or 4 million cars a year. Battery life 5 years. Global reserves (statista 2021) 20 Million tons. Volkswagen alone will produce 26 million EV in 2029 needing 650,000 tons annually and rising. Car companies will compete for lithium. As will stationary storage. Sending the price up. EV demand will outcompete stationary storage. So stationary storage will not be able to scale significantly using Li-Ion or reach TW scale.