Cobalt’s lesson
“You don’t want prices to go higher and higher and higher,” he said. “Why is cobalt dead? Cobalt went to US$100,000 per metric ton. It killed itself.”That fits with conventional wisdom that there are no structural deficits for commodities; rather, high demand leads to high prices, which then lead to demand destruction and substitution until new mining projects are approved and constructed and supply catches up to demand.
Already, there are several dozen known battery chemistries for electric vehicles, but the two main chemistries are lithium-iron phosphate and lithium-ion batteries that include nickel manganese and copper. Hoffman estimated that the world needs to add 400 terawatts of clean electricity by 2030 to meet its targets on the path to net zero carbon emissions — a roughly 400-fold increase from current levels, which is why Hoffman thinks all metals are becoming “critical.”Although he left unstated whether he thinks the world’s net-zero goals are attainable, the thrust of his speech was that the IRA will create powerful financial incentives to build new mines.