Abstract for:Intertwining material supply chains: coping with increased demand for electric vehicle batteries

Electric vehicles (EVs) are deemed a solution to a low carbon economy. Today, EV sale increase is mostly driven by policy. The Global EV Outlook 2018 considered two scenarios including a modest New Policies Scenario (NPS) and an ambitious EV30@30 scenario. The NPS projected EV sales of 3.9 million in 2020 and 21 million in 2030 whereas the EV30@30 required sales of 38 million EVs in 2030 to achieve a 30% market share. Because EVs utilize lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) extensively, demand for LIB materials such as lithium (Li), cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni) are projected to increase significantly. Previous analyses have focused on these materials with major concerns on Li and Co. These papers mostly consider mineral reserves, capacity, supply, and demand using a mass balance approach with or without dynamic modeling. Although some of the mitigation approaches were investigated, since market dynamics and feedbacks are not taken into account, supply risk was not fully evaluated. In this work, we focus on the nature of co-production of copper-cobalt and nickel-cobalt on a global scale. By incorporating feedbacks between supply, demand and prices, we analyze the potential supply from both primary and secondary sources and ability to meet proposed demand.