Lithium Supply Chain Optimization: A Global Analysis of Critical Minerals for Batteries

Abstract

Energy storage is a foundational clean energy technology that can enable transformative technologies and lower carbon emissions, especially when paired with renewable energy. However, clean energy transition technologies need completely different supply chains than our current fuel-based supply chains. These technologies will instead require a material-based supply chain that extracts and processes massive amounts of minerals, especially critical minerals, which are classified by how essential they are for the modern economy. In order to develop, operate, and optimize the new material-based supply chain, new decision-making frameworks and tools are needed to design and navigate this new supply chain and ensure we have the materials we need to build the energy system of tomorrow. This work creates a flexible mathematical optimization framework for critical mineral supply chain analysis that, once provided with exogenously supplied projections for parameters such as demand, cost, and carbon intensity, can provide an efficient analysis of a mineral or critical mineral supply chain. To illustrate the capability of the framework, this work also conducts a case study investigating the global lithium supply chain needed for energy storage technologies like electric vehicles (EVs). The case study model explores the investment and operational decisions that a global central planner would consider in order to meet projected lithium demand in one scenario where the objective is to minimize cost and another scenario where the objective is to minimize CO2 emissions. The case study shows there is a 6% cost premium to reduce CO2 emissions by 2%. Furthermore, the CO2 Objective scenario invested in recycling capacity to reduce emissions, while the Cost Objective scenario did not. Lastly, this case study shows that even with a deterministic model and a global central planner, asset utilization is not perfect, and there is a substantial tradeoff between cost and emissions. Therefore, this framework—when expanded to less-idealized scenarios, like those focused on individual countries or regions or scenarios that optimize other important evaluation metrics—would yield even more impactful insights. However, even in its simplest form, as presented in this work, the framework illustrates its power to model, optimize, and illustrate the material-based supply chains needed for the clean energy technologies of tomorrow.