: China controls 70% of global lithium production; thats a worry for the world #IndiaNEWS #National <br>Lithium has become a critical mineral in green technologies, with lithium-ion batteries

China controls 70% of global lithium production; thats a worry for the world #IndiaNEWS #National
<br>Lithium has become a critical mineral in green technologies, with lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, and to store wind and solar energy.
Like oil, lithium, is not evenly distributed in the world. Nearly 80 per cent of known deposits are in four countries the South American lithium triangle of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and Australia. However, holding less than 7 per cent of the worlds lithium reserves, China is the worlds largest importer, refiner and consumer of lithium, buying 70 per cent of lithium compounds and supplying 70 per cent of lithium production, largely to domestic lithium battery makers, six of which are among the top ten in the world, Zhang wrote.
Marina Yue Zhang is an associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney.
Chinas lithium dominance has caused concerns. Both the European Union and the United States have prioritised building greater self-sufficiency in raw materials, lithium included, in their industrial policies, aiming to curb their reliance on China and boost homegrown green technologies. This exposes Chinas vulnerabilities in its transition to clean energy, Zhang said.
Characterising batteries as the battlefield, Foreign Policy said that the next geopolitical contest may be over green technology, and China, for now, is poised to win control of those supply chains.
In the quest for the clean energy revolution, the United States is one of many countries that have ramped up investment in electric vehicles manufacturing and renewable energy sources to power the shift away from fossil fuels.
But that is an industry that has already been staked out by another power: China. After a decades long push, Beijing wields considerable control over supply chains for lithium-ion batteries, which are critical to everything from electric cars to smartphones. That dominance has transformed those powerful batteries and the key metals they comprise of into a thorny geopolitical flash point during a period of heightened tensions, Foreign Policy reported.
China is the dominant player across the supply chain for almost all of these critical minerals, said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines and a former lead energy specialist at the World Bank, the report said.
Is containing China the best option for the world? Zhang said over the past decade, China has invested heavily in transitioning to clean energy, including developing technologies and production know-how covering the entire lithium supply chain. It has paid substantial environmental costs through trial-and-error innovation and has now developed dominant advantages in not just the scale of mass production, but also green technologies used in lithium processing.

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