The EV battery sector requires vast amounts of lithium to keep supplying electric cars and other devices such as mobile phones. For that reason, it may be reassuring from a supply security perspective that the UK has both lithium in the ground and also plans in place to build up refining capacity.
While the likes of Tees Valley Lithium and Green Lithium will have large refining plants in place at the Tees Freeport and operational in the next 2-3 years, a much smaller plant is already running in Cornwall, a part of Britain with substantial lithium reserves. It is now seeking to scale up operations.
Imerys British Lithium is seeking to gain public support for its expansion plan through a public consultation meeting in the village of Riche, near its pilot plant. Further consultation events will take place soon at locations across Cornwall.
Declaring its aim to become “one of the most sustainable lithium producers in the world,” the firm wants to bring the extraction of lithium from local granite and the refining process close together, in a plant run on renewable energy.
Cornwall already has firms like Cornish Lithium making progress towards the commercial extraction of the material, which means any plant based in the county could process the material much more locally than one based in the Tees Valley.
Of course, this is already a major improvement on the situation of a few years ago, when it appeared China could end up having most of the world’s lithium refining capacity, with all the economic and geopolitical leverage that could bring.
To have Britain’s domestic lithium supply processed here will also help answer a common concern about the material; that the journey from the ground to the battery factory is so energy and carbon-intensive that it defeats the environmental objects switching to electric vehicles is meant to bring. The more the process is localised, the less valid this claim will be.