Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/1152269
10 www.resourceworld.com A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 oversupplied, and batteries accounted for around 13% of demand for these elements in 2018, over 6% of which was in hybrid electric vehicles. If Toyota switches battery technology away from NiMH, the demand for lantha - num (and to a lesser extent, cerium) will be adversely affected. An accelerated decline in demand for these elements in batteries would exacerbate the already expanding surplus supply as the rare earths industry focusses its attention on neodymium and praseodymium demand in magnets. Nickel supply concerns cathode manu - facturers, as only a quarter of the nickel ore currently produced can meet the standards required for processing ore into nickel sul- phate for cathode production in both NMC (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt) and NiMH batteries. Cathode manufacturer BASF forecasts EVs to account for up to half of nickel demand by 2025. The market share of the NMC cathodes was estimated by Macquarie Research to be around 23% of total EVs in 2015, but this share has increased over the last two years according to market participants. Many battery makers have switched to NMC bat - teries because of their lower cost and good capacity. In 10 years, as much as 80% of lithium-ion batteries will use NMC cath- odes according to Cairn Energy Research. To significantly reduce the quantity of nickel and cobalt in its cathodes, BASF aims to create 'manganese-rich' cathodes in the longer term. Roskill forecasts that manganese demand, just from lithium- ion batteries, will grow at a compounded annual rate of 23% from now until 2027. The metal vanadium is used in the vanadium redox battery to store electrical energy on a large scale within an electri - cal grid. Electrical energy is stored during times when production (especially from intermittent power sources such as wind, solar and tidal) exceeds consumption, and returned to the grid when production falls below consumption. As EV sales rise around the world, and the deployment of solar and wind also continues to scale up, Bloomberg noted recently that many of these clean tech - nologies actually rely on the same supply chains and compete against one another for certain high-tech parts. As a result, some solar-component companies have to wait as long as 50 weeks for parts because EV companies are scaling up production, illustrating the bottlenecks that are begin - ning to appear. But batteries can always be recondi- tioned, opening up opportunities in metal recycling perhaps somewhat offsetting the looming issues with supply. n ENERGY METALS