This is Dana Perkins and you're listening to Switched on the podcast brought to you by BNF. On this podcast, we're talking about the energy transition and how our energy, transportation and agriculture systems are changing in many respects. Decarbonizing means different infrastructure and different equipment, and very often this
requires a critical ingredient. Lithium ion batteries are used for cars and stationary storage, electrolyizers for hydrogen, and transmission lines for the grid that connects these newer, cleaner power sources. So what do they all have in common? Well, they all rely on metals. So today I speak with Quasiampofo, who leads b and EF's Metals and Mining team globally, and his team member Rosemary Cats. In our conversation, they draw from research found in the Transition Metal's Outlook twenty
twenty four. We get into things like which metals have seen the most fluctuation in the past year, how cooling electric vehicle demand is impacting some battery metals, and which metal they see as the most critical to the energy transition. We also highlight the forgotten metal, but I can't tell you what it is because I've forgotten it. Of course, don't worry. Rose will remember to access b and EF's
research on metals. Clients will be able to find it at BNEF dot com or at BNFO on the Bloomberg terminal. So let's jump into the conversation with Quasy and Rose on the metals that underpin the energy transition. Rose, thank you for joining us today.
It's lovely to be here.
Dana and Quazy, welcome back.
Thank you, Dana. Always good to be buck.
So we're going to focus on the transition metals outlook, and today let's start with just defining their ten main transition metals quickly. What are they so?
Transition metals? Actually, I know the chemist listening to us will forgive us because transition metals is actually at classifications for metals on the periodic table. But then we at BNF we use it and the slightly transitioned way. As most of our listeners would probably be aware that the
energy transition is our bread and butter. And then we looked at the energy transition as a whole, and we came to the conclusion that every technology that would ensure we reach the parent goals would need some raw materials in them. So you think about your electrolyzers, you think about your winter turbines, you think about your solar pvs, you think about your batteries. All these would require some
amount of metals in them. So we classified all these metals as transition metals simply because they would play a key role to the energy transition.
Okay, so apologies to the chemists out there, but thank you for bearing with us on these energy transition critical metals. Now, this outlook that we do, we do it once a year. And what is it that you're hoping to achieve when you sit down once a year and look at these energy transition critical metals? What's the question you're asking yourself headed into it and what are you trying to solve?
I think the fundamental question is that on the transition energy transition side, there's obviously a lot of optimism that in different scenarios, in the zero economic transition scenario, but then will there be enough raw materials to actually build these technologies? And I think is a question we ask ourselves every year. And if not, what should policymakers be thinking about? What should investors be doing, what should mining
companies start doing? And more importantly, what should be these technology companies start doing if there's not enough, and.
The price of these metals underpins how the companies are actually thinking about them, how much they're producing, exploring. So can you talk a little bit about the volatility in this space, which metals in particular really have been the most volatile, and well, then we'll come to whether or not twenty twenty four has been a recovery from what was a challenging twenty twenty three.
Basically, when we talk about the prize of metals, there's always a temptation that is just a mining industry's problem. But then, Dana, I'm going to give you a formula that shows you that if we don't address the prize of metals, we could actually delay the energy transition. So let's say you are the precedent of a country and you set a target that by twenty thirty you expect five hundred people to drive electric vehicles. Now, the biggest
cost component of electric vehicle is the battery. And if you slice open a battery, which I hope nobody listening to me will do, you will notice that the battery is simply made up of metals. So if you have metals constituting about seventy percent in some instances of the total cost of the battery. If prices of metals go high, prices of batteries go high, and if prices of battery go high, prices of electric vehicles go high as well.
So essentially what you have is that five hundred people were hoping to buy electric vehicles, but then prices of these evs doubled and that five hundred becomes two hundred. So it's important that we address the price of commodities to ensure that governments are able to meet their target for clean energy adoption. If you look at the price market today, I think it's actually a very interesting dynamic.
There are two teams that I do every morning arm Dana. First, I have my coffee, preferably a flat and the second thing is I check the prices of metals, cobalt and lithium being my favorite. Now, if you look at the prices of most of these metals, they're actually very low, and it comes down to one fundamental fact. Two things
determine the price of a metal supply demand. If there's a lot of the metal in the market and less of it in demand, you have a surplus and nobody's buying, so prices drop, as we've seen with cobalt and lithium. On the flip side, if there is a lot of demand but less supply, we see actually the prices of these commodities rise, as we've seen recently with copper and aluminum. So essentially I think these are the two drivers. Lithium,
cobalt and nickel. Battery metals in particular have been down the last couple of quarts as a result of the slowdown in China as we've seen, and then the overcapacity arm from around the world. But then for copper and aluminum, I think demand is going particularly from the grid, the supply is constrained.
So when we're thinking about the use of transition metals in the energy transition, we're thinking about energy storage and electric vehicles. Predominantly. The vehicle space has seen a bit of a tapering off in terms of demand, and some of the forecasts coming from the auto manufacturers themselves is showing potentially cooling demand at least in the near term
for electric vehicles. This of course would then have as you so aptly outlined, with supply and demand, this would have a lowering of prices for many of these metals. Does this then benefit the energy storage space and do they essentially scoop up the excess supply and take advantage of the lower prices or are we not really seeing that interplay between these two sides of the demand part of the equation.
It's always a very interesting balance when you talk about that lower prices lead into low cost of battery. And I always say this that we as analysts, we focus on the excel, but every now and then we look around us to see whether the excel aligns with the row world scenario. And the example I always give is that over the last one year, you've noticed that pretty much every major electric vehicle company has reduced the price of its evs.
Has this had a big impact on the price.
It's about an eighty percent fall since twenty three, where lithium prices were at about sixty six and now they're sitting at thirteen point eight. So the prices of lithium plummeted quite quite a bit between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four.
And what that meant is that our electric vehicles became cheaper. But then here's the catch twenty two, So with lower prices of metals and lower prices of ev on what you realize is that miners need an incentive price to build new mice. Lower prices does not help the mining industry because everyone wants to be guaranteed their revenue when they are making a decision that would last thirty forty years. They're having some minds in Chili that have resisted over
one hundred years. So people want higher prices to incentivize them to make their capital decision. So today the ev industry is benefiting from lower prices, but then the mining industry is actually complaining because they are not getting the
incentive price to develop these new mince. And what is going to happen is that down the line, in this decade, after years of enjoying these low costs, you realize that there are no more new minds to me demind and we go back to that cycle where deficist prices start to go high. And that is why we always say that the mining industry is a cyclical industry.
So within this group of ten metals that you've defined that are really critical, which ones are most exposed and which ones essentially were the highlight of this report and with other people maybe when they were drinking their morning coffee were flicking to is a section that was critical to read.
I think, just like a responsible parent, I like to say that I love all my children equally, so I love all ten metals equally. But then if you look at there's actually an interesting metric we looked at in the report where we wanted to determine the exposure of each of these metals to the energy transition. So we looked at the percentage of demand coming from the energy transition relative to the percentage of demand coming from other sources.
And lithium is actually the most exposed. Then you have cobalt, So these two are actually the most exposed. So when you talk about exposure, it goes both ways. Right, If the energy transition is growing, that ultimately also impacts our growth. But then if there is a decline in the growth of the energy transition, that also affect them negatively. So I think those are the only two in terms of
which one was very interesting to me. Platinum was quite interesting because it's a metal that we have not looked at at B and EF in a very long time. We've done ad hoc studies and very few people would actually consider this metal or this group of metals has been related to the energy transition. So platinum metals, mostly found in South Africa are very interesting. So historically the are used has been in catalytic converters, and catalytic converters
essentially is in every car that goes around. What it does is you have combustion between fuel and oxygen propelling cars and there is always a waste product that comes out. So these converts enshure that the toxic air or the toxic gases that are produced don't get emitted, and PGMs
make these happen. Then we are saying that lectric vehicles we replace internal combusting egines, so that means that PGMs will see a significant decline river What we came to realize is that to be able to build electoralizers you need PGM. So we actually tried to estimate what would be this new demand or PGM that will come from the energy transition, and I bet you the results were quite interesting. I'll courage everyone reading to get a copy
of it. Go straight to that page and you would identify some interesting things and you would understand why I think that was my favorite metal in this report.
So We've done a show in the past on lithium, We've done a show in the past on coalbalt and the swapping potentially of aluminum as the prices go high. But within platinum group metals, which I don't think we have actually talked about on this show, are they countercyclical to the other metals and are there reasons why this behaves differently than the other cluster of those.
Ten Yeah, Mahamasa Michaeligu Grousia from South Africa, which happens to be I think the largest produce. I don't know if you've been to any of these platinum one.
I've been to a platinum and believe me, it's hot. It's dangerous to be down there. You see people mining without this shows on because it's so hot, and having ice packs in their boots. And you see from a structural geology side, just one th one meter scene for the value that it has in the market itself, so
you sometimes ask yourself is it worth it? But from an energy transition point of view, right now we're finding the value in it since people want to move to electric vehicles, so we definitely are seeing the value of it within the electoralizer space, as Pasi alluded to.
And also in terms of it being quite countercately called the fact that arms not many people realize that it's actually the only pressures metal, to the best of my knowledge, that also has a very significant industrial use. So they now, I don't know if you've ever been to a Tiffany.
I have not been to a Tiffany. I've seen a Tiffany. I've worked pastor Tiffany, and I've seen breakfast at Tiffany.
Okay, let me give you a task next time you actually you see a Tiffany, walk in there and take a look at some of the platinum you already have. So it's actually a pressures metal that happens to have industrial use. And you know that the horses that police cut are very different industrial use of your See you look at Macro grow China, Europe. Then for Juary, I mean, I don't know what the key drivers are and I
would not even attempt to. And now it's actually got a TED dimension to it, which is the energy transition demand. So it's actually the fully metal in my estimation that actually has a very broad induced application, and that's what makes it quite unique and to a largest and counter cyclical to the other metals that we traditionally focus on.
Well, let's talk a little bit about the environmental and also human element of this, and one of the things we've discussed in the past actually quasy is that you know, you've actually been to cobalt mines and seeing how there's been a verification process on mining operations using drones, and how blockchain has become a really important way and verifying that certain metals are actually coming from the minds that
they're purporting that they are from. With platinum group metals, you know, what are some of the ways to actually ensure that those who are interested in well the e of ESG and the environmental aspect, but also interested in the impact on the individuals who are actually doing the mining and then environment in the broadest sense, given that mining operations are not in and of themselves unharmful.
Coming from I guess the platinum group metals point of view being from South Africa where the largest reserves are found.
Speaking about the social aspect of it, A couple of years ago, one of the biggest mining disasters happened in South Africa called Maricana, where a lot of families lost a lot of their family members, and the way that was handled was a little bit contentious, But I think the biggest lesson we took out of there is to break down how to better take care of our people within these tough environments within that they work, and how to ensure, you know, the longevity in terms of having
work long term. But from an environmental point of view, I think the biggest thing that we've seen within that
sector is a lack of land reclamation. So a lot of abandoned sites have been left after these mines have depleted their reserves and resources, and I think it's very humbent upon the Anglos of this world to focus on if there is a depletion of a resource, to actively be planning reclaiming that land or repurposing it into something that the society at large that are within these communities can still continue finding value in.
So, when we're talking about the ecosystem surrounding an actual mining project, are we seeing signs that mining companies are taking this part of the project, the very tail end of the project, and are they taking it seriously and are things improving?
So definitely, yes, they are taking it seriously. As a government requirement to get your license to mine, you need an environmental impact assessment that basically outlines what you're going to do with the land after you're done mining the metal from it. And we do see some really great cases,
and we see some terrible cases. But I'd like to just highlight in areas like Groute Island South thirty two where they've actually reclaimed as they've mined because it is indigenous land, so as an agreement with the indigenous people, as you mine one quarry, you actually we have to reclaim the land, reforest the land as you go by.
But we have also seen instances in Indonesia which we cover in some of our biodiversity work here at benif retailings that actually from the mining of nickel have contaminated
water sources within the region. So there's definitely room for improvement, much more improvement, and that's why you see frameworks like the Global Biodiversity Framework coming in place to make sure that countries from a government level and a company level start focusing on the impact on biodiversity as we mine these energy transition minerals.
So it's fair to say that companies are increasingly starting to think about the energy transition and decarbonization with biodiversity in mind, and both of those are being taken into consideration.
Yes, yes, I would say so.
So you brought up Indonesia and you specifically referenced also the platinum group metals in South Africa. What are the countries to watch? What are the main centers of mining that really are highlighted among this group of ten.
Historically there has been focused if we talked about the countries to watch, the focus has actually been on the countries that produce these But then what the energy transition is actually teaching us is that a lot of people care beyond where these pits are located. And I think a few weeks ago we were the Climate Week in New York and myself in you and then it would amaze you the number of sessions that were held in New York on mining and there are no minds in
New York. So I think countries to watch. The United States, they've implemented the Inflation Reduction Act, which essentially helps the US to meet some of his demand from raw materials. We have the Bloomberg events held during Climate Week as well on renewable energy, tripling renewable energy. I think, for me, one of the highlight was the President of the EU given her speech and at the tail entry talks about critical raw materials, So obviously EU is origin to be
on the watch list as well. And then you've got the countries that actually produce these. We've already talked about South Africa, We've talked about Indonesia. We can also talk about Zimbabwe, we can talk about Chile, we can talk about Argentina, we can talk about of course Canada, who wouldn't and then the list goes on and on and on.
But then essentially I think the key thing to highlights with this question is that it's no more just the producers that care about these the consumers also equally care and for us are being f and in the report we tried to actually highlight.
So you've already established that there's not enough supply of some of these metals. Are there any countries that are essentially keeping it all to themselves and recognize the really high value in hagging it.
Yeah.
Thing, It's actually actually a very interesting conversation, Dana, that came up last week at Climate Week. So the Atlantic Council actually launched the public reports on Indonesia and how they managed to sort of I would say, put in place policies that restricted the export of nickel a few years back, and ultimately what happened is that that ended
up making Indonesia the largest producer. And whether in that report whether that could be a template countries in Africa could actually in order to dominate the industry, and I think, just like everything else, it always depends. There are a
lot of factors that come into play. Because internally, obviously that policy of banning raw materials, I think in the long term, if every country restrict the expert of these raw materials, that does not help the energy transition, right, So it's important to highlight that governments need to balance their local target with a long term ambition of reaching the zero and free flow of these raw materials would
actually help make the world better. The second thing is also about how do you then incentiviize local economy because for most of these countries, the energy transition is not just a transition, is also an opportunity to industrialize. And what we saw in Indonesia is that raw materials can actually become a catalyst for industrialization with the right policies.
So the policy in Indonesia's case was the fact they restricting export of these metals, which work for nickel for a host of reasons, the same policy did not actually work for copper. So it's not always universal that restricting export and consuming it locally always works. But what I think in March is for other economies looking to replicate the Indonesia model, is that it's always important to have
good business friendly policies as well. It's good to have infrastructure because in the end, if you look at the Indonesian story again, a lot of investment went into producing these industrial packs, railways, power that actually help. It is good to really have that certainty of capital being deployed and recovered in the country because imagine going into a country where you put in place a planned two years later government changes policy that you can do XYZ, and
I think that limits investments. So I think overall, I would just end by saying that other countries looking to replicate this model one should balance their local economy needs with a long term energy transition needs. Two, it's important to have the right business friendly policies. Three, it's also important to have infrastructure in place. And then finally they assurance that once company invests in the country they would be able to recover their capital and turns on it.
So you brought up New York Climate Week, and actually the next place where policy makers, specifically the United Nations come together to discuss decarbonization is at COP twenty nine, and one of the things they've brought up is that it's more than likely we're going to be talking a lot about energy storage and a increase potentially sixfold increase
of energy storage coming out of that meeting. So as we think about the future and COP meetings and these stated goals that all seem to focus on twenty to fifty, is this really important year? Do we have enough transition metals to actually meet twenty fifty net zero targets?
Do you want the simple as all the long one?
I want the long answer, Mark.
Let's start with the short fast. So now it's the long answer. It depends, and it depends in the sense that there are ten metals, obviously, and some of them run outs based on today's reserves quicker than others. Because there are dos as I talked about earlier, there are some metals that we would need a lot more than others.
So I think it's important to acknowledge that overall there's not enough, with the exception of platinum group, where we feel that there's silk quite some latent capacity in the market that could be ramped up to meet the growing demand from hydrogen. But with a reception of that, if you look at all these other metals, whether it's nickel, whether it's lithium, whether it's copper, whether it's aluminum, there
is not enough. But then the problem is that it's very easy to figures on the trees and mister forests. If you look at the market today, it's very easy to assume that low prices supplus in the market is very easy to forget that it's a journey to twenty fifty and the long term prospect. If there's anything I want anyone to take out of the podcast, the long term prospect for supply demand is not looking good and
that could affect the transition. And I think earlier on I talked about the formula that if we don't address metals, we are not addressed in climate change solutions.
So you've outlined that there's not a sufficient amount of greenfield exploration in order to meet long term demand. But what about metals recycling and you know, in recent years, and we have talked about that on this show, that there has been not the most favorable economics for metals recycling from batteries and that it has been with many of these cheaper to actually focus on these green field sites.
Do we see that changing in the future, and does metals recycling have a role to play and do we essentially have enough if we find a better way of reusing the metals that we've already extracted.
Yeah, that's actually a good point, and I think it's time probably to use that opportunity to supportlight that this is the first time in the Transition Metals outlook that for each of the metals that we talk about in the report, we consider the supply that would come from recycling. And I think it's important to acknowledge, like I said, as analysts, once in a while, we take ourselves out of the excel and look around us for real life examples, and you can see that globally we've done very well.
And when I say we, pretty much all of us have done well in recycling plastics. But then you ask ourselves, how many of us have actually bought a new phone
and decided to recycle the old phone? And a number of our listeners will probably be having old phones stuck in their drawers next to their beds, right And for me, that indicates that, no matter how bullish or optimistic we are about recycling, if we are not sending in those scraps that would enable recycling companies to actually recycle these metals, then we're doing the cycle without the reed or the other way around. So dya That leads me to my
next point. How can recycling play an important role in the energy transition? So one, it's about the availability of feestocks. So if you're listening to me, please, next time you buy your iPhone or your some song or whatever phone it is, please make sure that you recycle the old one. The same applies to our cars as well and other our household items. The second thing is that it's important that governments actually craft policies like they've done with plastics.
So metropolitan cities have enforced laws that would ensure that you separate your plastics from your other things that end up in the landfills. So it's important that if we are to have metals play a key role, recycling play a key role in the energy transition, it has to be Poller sees that has to do with a collection and all the extents. And I think the third thing is about technology. Even if we send these to scrap, if the technology to recycle them is not there, there's
very little these companies can do. So I think it's important that investments go into the technologies that would ensure that we recover most or all of these metals once they reach the end of life. And with these three things, I'm pretty sure that we're going to see magic happening in the recycling industry and it could potentially actually meet about a head of our needs by twenty fifty. From an energy transition perspective.
I'll certainly be keeping an eye on what's happening in the recycling space and the technology developments there. But let's zoom out to what's happening now with these green field sites. How much money is actually needed to meet demand When it comes to exploring, is there enough money going into it to essentially facilitate the transition in the scope that we're talking about.
So, I think, once again is a long term view, right, So I'm just going to take our listeners to acknowledge or to look at the forests and the simple answer is no. So in the report we actually crunch the numbers on how much investments need to go into new supply and to ensure that we don't fall off the cliff.
So as our listeners will probably be aware, there are two scenarios we look at BNF that ETS which is economic transition scenario, which looks at technologies of today, no new policies coming online, and more importantly, the deployment being led by costs. And we think that to be able to meet that ETS demand, we need one point six trillion dollars by twenty to fifty and if you extend that into the net zero scenario, that number jumps out to two point one trillion dollars.
So you've outlined how much money we actually need to go into that space. But how far are we have the mark.
We're really far off at the moment. Like I said, it's just so easy. There's a lot of fixation on the fact that the market seems well supplied in the short term, but then by twenty thirty the cracks start to reveal, and I think we need to really start investing in these now in order not to bear the.
Pain later twenty thirty is not that far off in the distance. Let's get even closer to now, though. Let's talk about prices. So we copper, the thing that you check in the morning when you're drinking your coffee. Are we seeing that swap with aluminum, and are we seeing that actually continuing to be a trend or with decreases in demand and therefore copper price is lowering, they're no longer that same impetus to actually think about aluminium or aluminium in the same way.
Yeah, so I like you when you get the aluminium aluminum. That's actually what reminds me that they know you're American, aren't you?
I am American?
Okay, great, So we've seen this play out before. Prices Whenever prices of commodities go high, it's not actually only supply that response. Usually would see that people would build new mines because there's an incentive to make money in there. But then there's also something called a demand response. Mind you,
the people who consume these metals also have budgets. Right If budget said that this year we're going to spend one billion only in cables between New York and DC or Johanna's Big and Cape Town, then all of the suddudden prices of copper, which is a key row material for great rises. So then they probably go back to the draying board and ask themselves, we can't keep up with this, what are some of the alternatives that we could potentially look at instead of copper? And what usually
comes up is aluminum. We've known that aluminium has sixty percent of the conductivity, but then were prices obviously going so high, they come to a conclusion that sixty percent conductivity compared to copper is actually not that bad. So I think those are some of the unintended consequences of letting price rise so high to the point where companies start looking for alternatives beyond just a grade. We saw that happening battery as well. Everybody thought little Man batteries
will last forever, but they're stdio highn right. So I think the unintended consequences of not managing prices is the fact that human ingenuity knows no bound. People get a lot more creative when they hit that wall of higher prices and they start thinking about alternatives, and that is actually going to play quite significantly in the energy transition across all the technologies.
Well, when you're dealing with commodities, because they are so responds to disapply and demand balance, and the prices fluctuate, and certainly traders want some degree of fluctuation in order to make money off of this. It looks like it's a nonlinear path. So we've established that the platinum group metals may actually, because they have different sources of demand, may actually have a smoother near term. Lithium highly exposed,
coalbalt potentially very exposed. Where does graphite fall on this gradient of metals that are really exposed to the transition and therefore fluctuating or potentially you know, have a little bit of a smoother future other than my graphite pencils. Where does graphite fall in here?
Graphite pencils? Indeed, and I always say this that so graphits is actually carbon. So there are three popular products of carbon that we know is a pressure and heats of carbon that result in multiple products that we know. The lease of them is coal, which we burn to produce power, which is mostly not clean. When it gets a little bit more pressure and heats, it produces graphites. And actually when you get them more pressure and heat
to produce diamond. So i'd say this is that graphite, it's a disappointed diamond, and then well, please don't.
Tell you the price fluctuate wildly is in question.
It does, and it's mostly is historically has been tied to steel production, so in electrodes, but increasingly we are seeing that the demand from anode. So every battery has a positive and a negative, So the positive part of the batteries are cathode, the negative part is the anode, and historically the metal or the mineral that has been used as the anode material is graphite. So because we see the steel industry being relatively stable, we've not seen
that fluctuation in graphite prices for a while. But now that we gain increase demand from the anode batteries, we think that towards the end of the decade we might start seeing the volatility we see in other commodities that get exposed to their energy transition.
So with somebody who lives their day thinking about the metals industry, how often do you speak to your colleagues who are actually focused on these sources of demand. So the electric vehicle space, you know, trying to figure out whether or not that is going to increase down the road, for various reasons, whether or not they are consumer driven
or policy driven. Is that something that is heavily weighing on you when you're looking at something like the Transition Metals outlook and trying to put all of these different, you know, seemingly disjointed but all interconnected things together.
I think you really spot on there. That's actually the main reason for TMO. When we started thinking about TMO, there was a lot of disjointed conversation. You've got miners talking about supply from one end, We've got electric vehicle teams talking about even demand from one end, and then you've got the hydrogen team talking about electoralizer. So the whole idea of TMO was to really aggregate all the different conversations we have at BNF around supply chain into
one document, but then extending that to the industry. I think for us a keep out of our job. It's really taking all these different end US sedgement conversations that you talk about and compiling them into that one narrative for us to ask the fundamental question is enough metals to meet the needs of the energy.
Transition And just to add on that quasi so benef recently hosted the TMO outlook as part of the LME Week, and I think that came out quite prominently from our panelists to say, you need to understand the supply chain from end to end, and we this is a time with the energy transition to actually start talking to each other because in the past we always had our end users didn't understand where the metal came from and we
didn't understand how the metal transformed into the end. Using what challenges they have with the energy transition, we see a lot more collaboration from end to end. One of those examples is like Tesla that's now very integrated into understanding where the demand or where the supply of its material is coming from and to build out its supply chain understanding exact nuances.
So LM being the London Metals Exchange Week and then this conversation came up perfectly. So while I know neither of you is going to pick a favorite metal, I am going to ask you to pick a favorite source of demand in terms of how much you I think it's influencing prices at the moment. Is it the electric vehicle space or is it energy storage that you're more focused on, or something that maybe I'm missing.
I would say we're focused on the electric vehicle space. Energy storage definitely has its place because from a renewable energy point of view, you need something to store the energy when everything is varied. But I would say from an electric vehicle space, I'm not sure about you crazy.
I mean, I jump on the buzz where that has become pretty popular in the enerty in hydrogen. So for us, this is the first time that we actually looked at the metals that were going to the production of electrolyizers. I'm used to produce hydrogen, and obviously PGM will play a key role. So for us, it was really from a research and analytical perspective. It's really that particular end use that stretch our thinking as to how can we actually accurately estimate this when there's so much noise in
the hydrogen market. And I'd like to say that I think we did quite well in trying to give this estimating. With that that makes it my favorite end use.
Introduce a new metal to the conversation, one that actually crosses between a source of emissions and also as part of the solution, so manganese sits between steel and then the batteries that we've been talking about that are part of the solution. Can you talk a little bit more about manganese and way many people think it might be a forgotten metal.
Thanks for the question, Dana. I was just waiting for that, because no one ever talks about manganese. It is the forgotten metal. From a market cap point of view, it's one of the smaller ones compared to copper and nickel. But you are right to say that, yes, it plays an important role in the steel industry in that ninety seven percent of manganese consumption goes into steel, but also the more exciting part of my career now I was looking at it from a battery metal point of view.
It's one of those that we hope to help cheapen battery chemistries because it's becoming quite popular in chemistries like LFP, So a lot of people are now looking into MFP as a substitute. So manganese is really good at substituting, similarly to elimini.
Went to LFP and MFP stand for.
So it's a battery chemistry variation that has these specific metals in it, specifically lithium. Obviously within manganese is a component iron and then phosphate. As we saw in this year's EVO, LFP, which is lithium ion phosphate, is taking quite a big share of the market. But we also see LMFP coming into play as it has similar characteristics
to LFP, but it's slightly cheaper. So yeah, Dana, it would be great to actually come back and have a chat with you about manganese's role in the battery and specifically the lithium ion battery market.
So manganese forgotten, no more Rose crazy. Thank you so much for joining.
Thanks for having us, Dan, Thank.
You for having us, Dana.
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