Battery Supply Chain

With the World Economic Forum pegging the global battery market to be worth around US$100 billion by 2025, understanding the emerging opportunities across the battery supply chain has never been more crucial.

Battery materials and electric vehicles (EVs) also offer something unique to today’s commodity producers and investors: a sustainable growth story that is not just China-dependent.

Manufacturers are scrambling to secure sustainable and ethical supply of the necessary raw materials—copper, nickel, lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite and vanadium—as questions are being raised about human rights issues and environmental impacts. Companies using materials that cannot guarantee an ethical supply chain will increasingly come under pressure as consumer demand for sustainably sourced products grows. Blockchain is coming to the rescue, offering the ability to create an incorruptible digital ledger for both miners and consumer-facing companies using battery materials.

While EVs have dominated the battery supply chain conversation to date—forecast to make up more than half of car sales within two decades—a wider picture is coming to the fore around applications in energy storage, consumer electronics and infrastructure. Battery storage, in particular, is an area that has the potential to radically transform the way we consume and generate power, alleviating some of the problems associated with the intermittent nature of renewable generation and enabling power to be consumed when demand peaks as opposed to only being available when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

The electrification revolution offers significant potential for innovation along the battery supply chain to ensure that batteries become a key segment in the sustainable-energy story of the future.
    

Highlights

Insights

• Digitalising the mining & metals global supply chain: 2019 sustainability update. An overview of key developments we've been monitoring since our last report, including: regulatory and enforcement updates, information on the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI)'s Blockchain Guidelines, and a survey of industry pilots.
• Digitalising the mining & metals global supply chain: Blockchain brings sustainability to the forefront. What will future minerals supply chains look like? Will sustainability attributes drive purchasing decisions?
• Digitalising the mining & metals global supply chain: Rise of blockchain and the smart contract. Blockchain and smart contracts could deliver a much-needed productivity boost to the mining and metals global supply chain.
• Building a sustainable battery supply chain: Is blockchain the solution?. Supply chains are inherently complex. They lack interoperability and are plagued by inconsistent or unavailable data.
• Battery supply chain: A unique growth opportunity. Battery materials and electric vehicles offer something unique to today's commodity producers and investors: a sustainable growth story that is not just China-dependent. The exponential growth in demand is creating a scramble for resources not seen since the last great commodity super cycle.

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See also:

• Mining & Metals
• Power
• Technology
• Infrastructure

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