 There will be one hour, one of the guys will hold up a sign and when it's 15 minutes left. Okay, which of these? You'll just tell me when, okay. Okay, welcome everyone. Really, really a pleasure to be here in Tianjin and to see many friends here at this World Economic Forum meeting. For those who don't know me, I'm Jason Bordoff, a professor at Columbia University where I direct the Center on Global Energy Policy. I'm excited for this conversation and want to start by just saying this conversation is one part of a series of initiatives that the World Economic Forum has developed to deliver net zero industrial ecosystems. There are many, I won't take the time to read them all, but there's the transition industrial clusters. The main objective here is to catalyze the decarbonization of industrial clusters through supporting existing co-located facilities and defining their significant emission reduction goals and the path to achieve it. Accelerating clean hydrogen and also clean power for the future of industry, which aims to accelerate the decarbonization of energy emissions in industries across the material sector through facilitating the implementation of electricity from clean sources. We really are here today and I'll just remind everyone we're live streamed as well. So for those joining online, welcome and feel free to post about this session on social media using the hashtags AMNC23 or AMNC. What we're gonna spend the next hour talking about really are fundamentally the building blocks of a clean energy transition, the materials that we need to transition the economy to a net zero one from one that is largely today still as it has been for a long time. Run on fossil fuels materials like nickel and cobalt and lithium and copper and graphite. And we all know by this point that any sort of clean energy transition requires massively scaling the production and use even with efficiency and even with recycling and I'm sure we'll talk about in the next hour. You can't get around the fact that we need a massive increase in the materials that we're using. You can't electrify an economy without a lot of copper not to mention the rise in lithium and many other materials. The International Energy Agency projects critical minerals demand increases sixfold by 2050 in their net zero scenario. And there are a lot of challenges with that. Obviously mining has significant implications can have significant implications for communities for equity for justice for in the US where I am tribal and indigenous communities. Most of a lot of these materials are within very close proximity to Native American reservations. There's a lot of geographic concentration in where some of these minerals are produced. You know the largest producers of oil around the world the US, Saudi, Russia each between 10 and 15% of world supply the largest producers of nickel of lithium of cobalt each of those countries produces more than 50% today of world supply. So much more geographic concentration and certainly geographic concentration in the refining and processing a lot of which happens right here in China and we're seeing in some parts of the world that that is raising concern about energy security and about geopolitical influence at a time when we need more cooperation and more collaboration to scale these supply chains at the pace that we need to that challenge of fragmentation globally is a risk. I just finished chairing a year and a half long task force report that developed a series of recommendations for the US government about a critical mineral strategy. And I think among other important findings was the fact that even with significant domestic increases in production there's no way to get around the fact we need more or not less trade more or not less cooperation. It's going to be very difficult for countries or regions to go it alone and try to secure all the minerals that they need. So the stakes here are enormous. I think failing to secure these supply chains risks geopolitical strife, economic headwinds and of course would risk slowing down the energy transition and we need to be moving much faster than we are today. Emissions are still going up, not down. So we need to be sprinting much more quickly than we are. So I'm really pleased that we have such an excellent group of people to help us understand this topic today. State Secretary Bujinovic is the State Secretary of Croatia's Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development. Benedict Sabotka is the Chief Executive of the Eurasian Resources Group and a co-chair of the meeting here of new champions. Ni June is the Chief Manufacturing Officer of CITL and Minhue is Executive Director and Founder of the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress. So without further ado, let's jump into the conversation. Maybe State Secretary, let me start with you. I'm curious if you could give us your perspective on this topic sitting where you are in Croatia. How is your country and how is the EU thinking about security of supply, diversification? What does it look like to address the opportunities and also the challenges that exist with trying to secure these resources at the scale we need to with Europe coming out of a pretty severe energy crisis not too long ago. Yeah, you put it very describely and we're right, Jason, and I think you're right for this. Basically I will, let's say, try to color it from the two angles. So one is Croatia. So the country without any significant raw material sources and this one and then plus what is more important as the member of EU means the collaboration because I think the biggest challenge now in the world is drifting and we are decoupling. So means that collaboration is needed even more than ever but now we are in completely different situations. So regarding the EU, as 27 members we are doing the great collaboration as the Green Deal, the most important agenda with digitalization for the EU is basically built on two founding pillars which are the currently acts, acts of net zero which is intertwined with the critical raw material act. So that act is stipulating and trying to find the best potential way in order to avoid to be dependent on the fossil with the new dependent as you said. Currently we have the geographical concentration. One country currently like 90% of the sources is from one country as you said. How to mitigate those? Basically you're trying to build up the great number of the free trade agreements. Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan and maybe is currently negotiations and try to build it even more. Second thing let's say but it's more important is from the great number of the countries which are scarce resources are the processes of energy efficiency. All the savings, circular economy but the issue is as you said the massive scaling. Currently it's not economically, currently it's not commercially for many materials to do the recycling. So what we need is first to go through the current paradox that even more polluting to create those needed renewable source materials in order to build it up to massive scaling which will then produce the circular economy efficiency. And tell me just how you think about what the policy objective is, what a security of supply look like is it about concern about dependence on any one country? Is it import dependence generally? I mean a lot of these are not located within Croatia you'd be importing. Basically all the supporting except the recycling from the perspective is the specification geographically. Also the issues of the ethical and the dependency on non-democratic let's say countries et cetera. And of course there are some sources in the European Union such as Norway, Portugal and it's pretty much the very low level. As you said six-fold is the times that we need a critical and monetary increase so there will not be a country in the European Union which will satisfy from the domestic sources. Geographical diversification and of course the issues which as you said the mining. Currently always looked at that as the polluter and not the creation. So we'll see how the innovation and the R&D into the mining will be needed in order to maybe put it in the more higher efficient level of the less pollution in that segment of the industry. Benedict I'm curious for your kind of take on the outlook for developing these resources and for the industry. When we throw numbers out there like six-fold increase and oh we can do that. Copper demand is gonna somewhere around double by the end of the decade and we're not even on track for our climate goals yet. Give us a sense of what should we understand about what it means to really take those numbers seriously. How big a challenge it is and also what the opportunities might be to scale these supply chains at the rates we need to and for the kind of climate goals we're talking about. Yeah, thank you. Thank you Jason. It's exciting to be here around this table. I remember five years or 10 years ago this table wouldn't have existed and we wouldn't have actually talked about this topic which is funny because China is a country in a region that has historically had a very long-term perspective on pretty much everything. Long-term plans thinking on 100 year horizons. Actually the discussion we have today of critical raw materials or criticality of raw materials is an historic norm. It is not the exception because over the last two or 3000 years of human existence raw materials were critical. I mean the reason why the Romans occupied Great Britain was in order to get tin from Cornwall to mix it with copper to get bronze. Cornwall was the only major producer of tin in the world of that time. So the Roman Empire needed tin in order to make bronze. You can have the same for the Habsburg Empire that was based basically on silver production. The silk road shouldn't be called silk road. It should be called a silver road because the main product shipped on the silk or it was not silk, it was silver from Japan. So we actually in a situation where we returned to the criticality of materials for the world, what has really struck us is that this is not a linear development. Over the last 50 years we've had more or less a linear development material consumption grew with GDP growth, right? With a little bit of a multiple, meaning every single year the human consumption or use of the materials grew roughly with the GDP in some case more or less. What we see now with the energy transition is that we see an exponential growth, right? We did at the Global Veterans Alliance, we had a, when we started 2017 or 2018, we made a report on raw materials needed in energy storage. And the demand for those was predicted to be increasing 10-fold. It was a very leading consultancy that did all the numbers and calculated in the 10-fold. I was like, ooh, that's a big number. That's impossible to achieve. We updated these numbers last year. We now know it's going to be 18 times, right? This has never been done in the history of the world to increase production 18 times. But it's incredibly difficult to increase by 10% per year. And this is not software, right? We can just multiply your products by pressing the button on your computer, and I'm exaggerating, software is a lot more difficult, but it's scalable, right? Mining is heavy, capital intensive. It's in complicated jurisdictions. It has a lot of complications that you mentioned in the beginning with community, with water, with environment. ESG requirements, because as an industry, the mining companies want to be racing to the top. They don't want to race to the bottom in order to achieve those targets. So we're actually in an environment where demand is going up exponentially, but supply cannot catch up because we want to do it right, right? We do not want to expand production at all cost, and that's going to be a very significant challenge. And how much does the, you know, I kind of, in my little opening scene setter, commented on these broad trends of fragmentation and geopolitical tension. It'd be hard enough to scale at that rate if we took advantage of the gains of trade, and we allowed companies to figure out where the most efficient places were to mine, produce, refine, process. But now we have even more concerns now about after the pandemic, after the energy crisis, about diversification of supply, about excessive dependence on anyone or certain countries. How big a complicating factor is policy, politics, geopolitics? Yeah, surely it's not going to make it easier. And we've initiated, as part of the World Economic Forum, the Governors Group Metals Mining Group, called SMET, which is Sustainable Minerals for the Energy Transition, where we talk about what are the main impediments, the main risks, the main concerns about expanding production for critical raw materials, and what can be done about it? We made a list of all the risks and obstacles to expanding production, and it was along a very long list, a very long list. And for some of those, there's no solution, right? There has to be a lot of political will in order not to fragment the supply chains because certainly if you want to buy an electric car, let's say in the United States, the unit of lithium or the unit of cobalt that is in that battery will have been produced maybe somewhere in Africa. It was then sent to South Africa, and it was from South Africa, sent maybe to China for refining. From China, it was sent to Korea. From Korea, it was sent back to China. From China, it was sent to Japan. From Japan, it was sent to the United States. From the United States, it was sold at a car shop in Germany. So that unit has actually shipped 80,000 kilometers in its life, right? And we're not even talking about recycling, which could be very complicated with all these material flows. And I think the borders in between that and are nationalistic about the production, nationalistic about the supply chain, it is going to be incredibly difficult. Nizhune, obviously a lot of the minerals we're talking about are needed for batteries. Just give me a sense of what you see in terms of some of the evolving dynamics in the material value chain for clean energy technologies such as batteries. From our viewpoint, we've seen two major dynamics going on. First, the dynamic is really the surge in the price of the raw material. I think those are mainly caused by one is increasing the EV penetration into the market and secondly, the disruption in the supply due to the COVID over the last several years. And thirdly, because some speculations, people think they will continue, they will be shortage of raw materials. All the three factors combined have driven the raw material price really more than 10 fold actually. Three years ago, probably a ton of leasing, probably it's under range of $30,000 to $50,000 in R&B here. But now the highest probably went to above $60,000. No, $600,000. So that's really outrageous to increase. But when we look at- I'm just curious, do you see markets responding to that? You know, the best cure for high prices is high prices, lithium prices go up and everybody goes to work and looks for more and the market sorts this out or not. The people who speculate, they not only try to expand, they try to hold on to their supply. Artificially create a shortage of the result, the prices will continue. So of course the market reacted to that and the price go up and the demand for EV products start to slow down. And people see the demands are actually not that dramatic. So when we look at the prediction for the raw material, based on Bloomberg's energy future prediction, by 2040 and people think in the EV market, they probably will reach 4.5 terawatts. We already talked about the terawatt hours, not gigawatt hours, so that's tremendous in terms of the- And also if you consider energy storage system, ESS that add another one to two terawatt hours. So people think, wow, if you calculate the amount of this thing required to supply this demand, will be tremendous, but we calculated the reserve actually far more than that. Based on the listing, probably we can currently discovered reserve already can supply 160 terawatt hours. But that's not a part of it. We don't believe that raw material is a bottleneck because the technology innovation continuously tried to find a new way to extract it. So we actually start to extract the listing from the ceramic clay from the low grade, not like traditional people talk about high grade listing extraction, but even that, just like an oil, people have been talking about we run out of oil in 10 years, we'll continue to see that happen. This thing the same thing. Another thing is we people looking at the, because of technology innovation, we actually see alternative to listing. For example, CATL in 2021, we announced the sodium ion battery. Of course, there's a vast amount of reserve worldwide for sodium, okay? Also sodium as alternative offers a better performance in temperature sensitivity, low temperature performance, and the price is also very attractive. So that's one dynamic we've seen. The second dynamic we've seen, the entire battery industry, many companies are driving for a cleaner raw material production. So because we are in the business, for example, CATL, our vision is to contribute to the human kinds transition from the fossil fuel base, the energy economy to maybe renewable, clean, green, sustainable. Because we are in that business, so the entire value chain, people start, we can see people start to do many things. For example, in CATL, we try not only use green energy, but try to use less and use it smartly. So we do internally, try to use technology innovation, R&D investment, try to cut down our energy consumption and also remission reduction. So those efforts have been, we've seen, as a result, we also invest heavily on recycling. We talk about circular economy. In fact, our current technology, as of today, for nickel, cobalt, magnetism, we can recycle up to 99.3%. And even for this thing, we can also recycle up to 90, 92%. Also for graphite, we've seen the trend will continue. People see, if you extract the lithium from raw mine, it's, you talk about 2%, that's considered as a very high-grade mine. But when we do recycling, it's much higher. So we think this is the mine in urban city. So recycling, it's high-tech. Recycling is not just burn and bury. It is a high-tech. How do you produce the high-quality, reusable material, consume less energy, produce no or low pollution? So those are the challenges. So CAT, we see response to these two dynamics. I think the industry is moving in the right direction. Q-man, let me ask you to pick up that theme in both dynamics that we just heard. Technology plays a really big role. And I'm curious what you see in the potential for innovation and research to affect the outlook when we have certain assumptions or we think we know today what the outlook is going to be for critical minerals demand, which critical minerals we'll need. How do you see innovation potentially changing that for better or worse moving forward? Well, obviously having this conversation and raising the awareness of the complexity and urgency of this issue is very important for innovation. And I think this is probably one of the first few dialogue, open dialogue in China about this topic. And we have heard a lot outside China, kind of finger-pointing sometimes. But I wanna start with when we talk about innovation, what is the real problems? It seems that we talk a lot about concentration of resourcing. China playing a bigger role, 90% of concentration. But I think what at the core of the problem is really about reducing the material intensity of clean energy technology. And that's what Professor Ni has been talking about. That is the key for the innovation and that's the target for innovation. We should have developed the whole system of strategy, policy, investment, subsidies, and everything focusing on that. Instead of trying to create, I think sort of, I mean, I don't know whether it's a real or false problem about the concentration of the resourcing. I think the status of the market now is a result of globalization. That is how the market allocated resources in the most efficient way. But it's a lot of industry in China because it's more efficient than the other places. And a lot of industry in several developing countries because they probably have lower cost of environmental compliance. I have to, we have to admit that. But I think of the focus really should be reducing the material intensity. And we could learn from the energy crisis, as we said not last year, but from the 70s when we had the oil energy crisis and some country, including Japan, they have invested heavily into improving energy efficiency technology and the lighting, the air conditioning and a lot of technology we're using right now consume much less energy electricity than before. And that was the shortage itself was the driving force fostering innovation. I think that's very, I really wanna make this point here. And secondly, still, long-term vision. We have to emphasize long-term vision of NETZERO. We really need to stick to it. It seems there is noise about doubting whether it's feasible because of critical mineral problem and whether the paradox that minister just mentioned. But we do need that long-term vision that will provide a stability of policy and that will drive capital into the research and development that's very important. I'm curious what you see and maybe I'll come to you Professor Knee next and everyone, Benedict too, and how big a role technology advancements can play. The International Energy Agency, for example, I think finds in their NETZERO 2050 scenario that 10% of the growth in critical minerals demand can be met by recycling. So 10% is a meaningful number, but it's not 50, it's not 80. So what do you see in the technological advancements around recycling and also in how battery chemistry might evolve that could change what minerals we think we need? I don't know if you have thoughts about that. That's a good point. I want to highlight the China policy that in China we have this within our carbon picking and carbon neutrality strategy of China. There is this so-called one plus N policy framework to achieve the picking goal before 2030. So there's a whole system of policy. One of it is the picking plan, action plan to pick non-ferrous metal industry carbon emission. And there is a goal set already to recycle the metal materials. And for the goal here is 24% for, I mean, probably that's mainly for copper and aluminum which is more, you know, the common metal we have been using for many years. But for aluminum, it's 30% that's the goal set by the government by 2025. My point is, yes, now we see it's probably unlikely to reach the 10% goal or I think it's lower. But I myself really believe in the market force and the technology advancement. People will find the way. I think I'm probably pretty optimistic about the recycling potential. Professor Nidhi, do you want to comment on how the, I do fully believe the power of technology innovation, R&D investment in reducing the dependency of the raw materials. We've seen several things that are trained in our industry. One is increased energy density, better utilization of the material, efficiency from the design point of view, from the engineering, from the production, and we try to increase the yield. That's why. Secondly, the reduction in the cost of the entire the vehicle and the cell of the batteries. So those are the examples, but for example, I can use few recent example. Right now, this year in Auto Show in Shanghai, we announced we have produced 500 watt hour per kilogram. And that's really high in terms of energy density. But that's really already one step closer to even aviation application. Because you have such a small volume, but yet produce such high power. That is amazing. Another example, this year, actually it should be end of last year, when we announced this Chilean battery technology. In fact, it was rated by Times Magazine as the innovation of 2022, gives you 1,000 kilometers by one full charge. Those means technology innovation. You can design the products smartly and using less for more output. So those are the example. Another point I want to make, we are entering new energy phase. I call the existing energy old energy, and now we're entering new energy. In the old energy, basically it's a resource-dependent energy paradigm, right? You have oil, you have a gas, you have a coal, you burn it. It's not renewable, it's not recyclable. The new energy is a manufacturing-enabled energy, like solar, wind, battery, even nuclear plant. And it's a manufacturing technology that allows us to harvest from the sun, from the wind. And I think that makes us dependent less on the raw material because it's renewable. We can recycle the battery. Like I said, 99.3% of the near-cold cobalt magnesium can be recycled, reused. But oil, once you burn, it's gone. So that makes us hopeful, as a humankind. Benedict, I'm curious if you have thoughts on what you see in the technology, how that's gonna change the industry. And also, I mean, related to that are concerns about dramatically expanding this industry. It's energy-intensive, it can be carbon-intensive, and the mining industry has a, frankly, mixed record in how it's engaged with local communities, indigenous communities. What do we have to do to make sure that this transition is equitable and just and clean? Yeah, the innovation in this space is, frankly, is staggering. The improvement in battery performance, whether it's for mobile devices, whether it's for electric vehicles, for stationary battery applications, and everything related to the energy transition. I mean, the efficiency improvements are absolutely staggering. And that's great news. At the same time, because it's becoming more competitive, it is being used more widely. So the more competitive renewable energies, the more ubiquitous it is going to be. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way. So it doesn't change the fact that we will need a lot more materials. So we have to build a supply chain very quickly, and we have to push it very hard. But if you push a supply chain too hard, you do get bad behavior. You get secondary effects. You get collateral damage that is not intended. If a supply chain is built well, sustainably, of course, it has tremendous effects on, in particularly, the host countries of those mineral resources. I mean, the transformation effect of the copper boom, for example, in Chile, has changed the country. It has the same potential to do the same to Pakistan, to Serbia, to, and I know you're not from Serbia, but Serbia has the potential to be transformed by a major lithium resource. So, and you have, or the DRC, or Zimbabwe. So you have countries that really have the possibility, if it is done well, to be transformed into middle income countries. Now, the challenge really is today, you cannot really tell whether the unit of a certain material has been produced in a sustainable way, or whether it has not been produced in a sustainable way, because there's no data. So the battery today, I have in your car, you have no idea. One of the flagship projects we have at the Global Battery Lines is a tool called the battery passport, which has the intention to bring transparency to the energy storage supply chain. So we launched the product in January in Davos. Some of the electric vehicles driving around in Davos, you actually had the little barcode on the back already, so you could scan it. And a web page would go up, it's open source, you can look at it, and it would tell you this unit of nickel was produced in this mine, and it was refined in this company, and this location, and this is the CO2 footprint, and this is the ESG score, and this is the human rights score. This is what we have to get to. We have to create transparency in order to assure that this incredible built out, which can have significant social and economic benefits to the host countries, is done in a sustainable way. So I think the glass is half full, but it doesn't change the fact that we will need a lot more material. State Secretary, I wanted to come back to a couple of things human brought up and see if you might engage with them. You commented about how conversations like this don't happen maybe as often as they should, and I think they're productive when they're frank and open and tackle challenging issues. You brought up the example of the 1970s oil crises and the lessons countries learned from that. One of the lessons, correctly or incorrectly, they learned was to try to reduce import dependence and to try to reduce dependence on a particular region of the world. You said that the same concerns exist now in Europe, reducing dependence on imports and reducing dependence on any one country. And I think particularly there are concerns about heavily heavy dependence on China. And I was just wondering if you would kind of speak to those and see if we could get a response or just a conversation. Basically as a conversation, always the biggest crisis bringing the biggest opportunities. So what's happening, I truly believe in the market. As I said in oil and we had situation also with the semiconductors. Europe basically led this strategic industry and now is in a position that only few percentage of the market share. So when we saw what happened with the breakage of the supply chain regarding the after the COVID and of course the European Union then we fought with the act chip and trying to bring up also the bigger investment into the basically also future needed strategic asset which is the chips and processors. So always when the situation was in globalization that short term was winning the longer term like China always had a vision and a longer term which brought you in the perspective that you're building up of the 90% of this. Why? Because you had the resources but you build up the scalability. And that's the reason that China is in this good strategic place which is always good to have this position but when you have this size of the population and the resources it's easier I must say than when you're four million people of small country but then with collaboration you try to build up your forces which we are trying to also do the strategically in European Union. I'm just curious your thoughts you meant I mean you made two points you said like part of the reason so much activity happens here is because it's cheap and it's efficient and that's what global trade and it does but you also did you know bring up this example about lessons learned from a half century ago about excessive import dependence and those two could be intention. Yeah well I agree with minister that the time changed you know the ideal solution will be free trade but obviously there is trade barrier policies coming up so we do need to adapt to it business need to adapt to the elephant in the room which is the geopolitical situation nowadays around the world so that's the reality so we have to adapt to it and I agree it's diversifying it's always helpful to everyone but as the economist by training I think diversifying not only means the geopolitical I mean geological location it's about having more market players and having better information transparency that will be helpful to you know ensure the level playing field comparatively then we can have a safeguard the commodity market supply chain so with you know in any of the geopolitical situation I'm thinking of when we had the inflation reduction act in the United States I think I'm getting it right I remember a comment Senator Joe Manchin a deciding vote made at the time something like we don't want to go from dependence on the Middle East for oil to dependence on China for critical minerals how would you respond to that? Well that's very challenging question to me I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that I think we never talk about this kind of questions in China about oh we have a lot of independence on certain commodity from certain country we need to de-risk from it we need to de-link from it it seems this I think a Premier Lee yesterday in his opening remark he talked about something I think very very wise is that please let the business talk to each other please let the business to find the solutions and the world is not about some government or politician or some organization to create a hypothesis problem or it could be a part of a problem it might not be the major problem I mean we have so many kinds of problem which one we pick to argue to debate to focus on that's very important that's why I keep saying the real problem should be the material intensity that we're going to face in the age of material right but How big a problem are those geopolitical issues when CATL is looking to do business with Ford or anyone any other companies around the world these days I think it is a big issue for business we try to help the global community not just to help China or one particular country we try to help global community transition but we only have one planet that's it so how do we save the planet it's a need that everybody's contribution we need to unite it when every region try to abandon internal combustor engine there's a need so CATL is not only ready to set up our own factory but we are willing to even licensing technology for our partners for example in Ford case you just mentioned so actually open minded is a way to actually further advance the industry because we believe if you cooperate everybody brings different expertise we cooperate, we collaborate with not only our upstream supplier but we collaborate with downstream our customer and as well as the even end user the consumer so that's important but the second you need to invest everybody need to invest in the technology to bring down the consumption of the raw material to improve the utilization of the raw material Bennett maybe to build on what you said Professor Nidia and I mentioned this yesterday at the session with Premier Liya the green energy transition will not happen without China we make in the west or in the US in Europe we may like that or we may not like this but the reason we are at grid parity with renewable energy for the most part is due to relentless innovation investment scale in China right if the green energy transition didn't have access to the scalability and the incredible manufacturing prowess that you have here in China we would not be a grid parity we will still not be driving electric vehicles because the batteries wouldn't have the energy intensity so the ability to scale the supply chain for the most part of the last 10 years has been thankfully to the developments in China to entrepreneurs like CATL and other companies and so there's no debate we need China to be part of this otherwise the world will not achieve its objectives for the Paris goals can you say a word about the role of policy in scaling this industry at the pace we need to what are you worried about or what policies would you like to see and I'm curious State Secretary for you too what you think kind of the right policy framework needs to look like from your standpoint well maybe I can start on the critical raw materials act in Europe I think this is an act that is well intended it is intended to increase investment in the green energy transition in Europe there's nothing bad about this to develop mines in Europe is fantastic if you can find competitive mines in Europe go and invest in those you will struggle to find many but the intention really is to expand the supply chain also in Europe and that gives incentives but this is not against someone it is in order to achieve the broader or the larger goal for humanity which is the energy transition so we need a lot of those critical raw materials initiatives that are non-competitive they're supposed to increase investment and why I say investment the mining industry is a very good example as part of this 50 trillion US dollar investment in the green energy transition over the next 30 years 1.5 trillion per year 2 trillion have to go into the mining industry the total mining industry spends about 100 billion a year that's about two weeks of the oil industry it's a tiny industry the typical valuation of the average mining company is a five times forward price earning whereas companies in the high-tech and other areas that wouldn't exist without the mining industry trade at 25, 30, 50 times forward multiple which means the industry is very small it's under-capitalized and it's not very exciting for investors how do you expect the industry to deploy all this capital that you need in all these different jurisdictions to bring all these materials to the companies that need these materials for the green energy transition it's a conundrum interesting I'd love to hear your thoughts on policy and then people should think about questions they have because we'll pass a microphone around after the state secretary basically as we said and what's happening you mentioned the IRA and we have the new Europe, the EC we have in India, we have in China so the massive investment is coming so no doubt and I think as we said in the market and innovation technology and that will bring the efficiency so the policies are basically here and I think we don't first time maybe in the I don't know in the last few centuries we know where we are heading at least in the segment that we are heading into the net zero age and followed by all those challenges before that we have many, many directions in a different in this one I think we globally all share the same vision or the same mission so there's no doubt in that segment regarding truly believer in the market as we will see those challenges that will be with technology, with irony, with innovation with scalability, salt so but of course it takes time the issue is sustainability because we are also writing very good materials because we have to set up the policies in order to boost and foster the issue is of course to balance it with sustainable growth and the piece yeah, several questions great I think someone please have a microphone and then we'll go here and here I don't want to miss people behind me either yeah, so question for Mr. Nijing as two points you raised are very interesting you mentioned there are big potential for recycling and Benedict also mentioned this battery passport both of these are actually specified in the new EU's Battery and Recycling Act some in China would think this would be an obstacle or disadvantage for Chinese companies do you think it would be case or it is the case that some Chinese companies might be in a better position to comply with the requirements of that and you also mentioned a sodium ion battery have great potential as well as Chi-Ling battery capital markets reception for these two haven't been that good do you think kind of capital markets are looking to short term or it's the sentiment of the time, thanks good questions, pass it over there okay, let me try to address the question first of all, I think when the capital market when they look at I do believe they have very near term my advice is wait and see because for example this year in the Shanghai automotive show we not only announced the Chi-Ling 1000 kilometer we also announced the 4C fast charging solution and it's coming in the fall you'll see in the market when the vehicle rolls out there may be the capital investment people start realizing wow we should purchase that stock much earlier but anyway, this is a side story back into your question when Europe or other countries set up as long as they are uniformly applied to all players that's what in the US we say fair playing field, right? if everybody applied to the same standard regardless where is the origin then I think for the whole world community that's good thing to have have a higher standard have a better control of the mining and the mineral processing all the value chain I think we for it, we really support that require the continuous innovation to bring down the material for example, like you said over the last eight years our energy density more than triple sometimes quadruple and also the price have come down 80% without this effort I don't believe we talk about EV no EV well there's question here and I'll ask folks to keep the question brief and get as many as we can and then over here I'm Felipe from Peru so I have a question for Benedict I'm sorry, I'm behind you so for me one of the biggest challenges for the supply chain is the social risk so I come from Peru we are top three producer of copper in the world and last year one of our biggest minds one of every seven days could not operate because of social risks so basically what we do is we work with large scale investment rates in Latin America to help them have social acceptance and sustainable relationship with their stakeholders over time so my question is Benedict from your experience which are the biggest challenges on achieving social acceptance on the ground? Yeah, I can't specifically come out in Peru because we're not present there but of course a mine similar to an oil field or a gas field is an intrusion right because by definition you make a hole in the ground that's been like this for 2,000 years and not going to change of course there are attempts to go and now look at seabed mining or asteroid mining and other things but they're many years away and the legal and regulatory frame is very uncertain so we will be stuck with this type of activities for the long term but of course there's ways to do this right and I mentioned in my opening comment about racing to the top as opposed to the racing to the bottom there are ways to mine differently there are ways to mine in a sustainable fashion there are ways to mine in a way that it creates local equity and the stakeholders around these operations ironically the ICMM which is a large organization for the mining industry they made a survey and actually on average the closer a person lives to a mine the more he accepts the mine which sounds contradictory because you would expect the opposite but as a matter of fact is when communities see the benefits and they share the benefits then you have a very different discussion but it's one of the most important questions for the mining industry is maintaining the social license to operate but I think it's a shared responsibility because let's not forget certainly the environmental concerns the social concerns are very local very local but the economic benefit of the products are very global and quite often they're not shared in an equitable way so this is why we often talk about not just about the energy transition but about a just energy transition we need to be able to distribute the benefits fairly across all stakeholders involved and not just one side or the other it's a very important piece of that task force report I just mentioned I co-chaired sort of how to make sure we have benefitting the communities where this is taking place yeah please thank you professor and thank you all for sharing I'm a journalist from Tiananmen a Chinese news agency and you have discussed extensively about the supply chain issues of the criminal minerals so my question is focusing on the demand of perspectives in the short term and there are concerns in China within industry regarding the potential over capacity of in the power batteries and so my question is specifically for Mr. Nijui from CTA or how does CTA view this issue and will this issue lead to the decline of significant decline of lithium prices in the following days thank you thank you well this is a very interesting question that's what the speculation and sometimes when they see the lithium price going up they want to invest and when they see the EV market start to grow people invest capacity but I would have to say EV battery also including the energy storage battery they are different animal than your consumer iPhone or it's different animal and we have to really be cautious on the safety the high quality I like it any question let's reach for the top not reach for the bottom because many of the capacity over capacity people think oh I have money I can do it buy a piece of land build a factory put a production the consequence of producing low quality battery is more damaging to the industry you not only heard that consumers safety but also for the industry you waste the mineral you waste the opportunity so I think I see if I will invest I look at the high quality I think that the lithium industry need like pharmaceutical industries for example in the pharmaceutical industry we have a GMP good manufacturing practice worldwide if you want to produce a drug or medical device you better certify I think for the lithium battery industry we need the same global standard otherwise we'll have many of the low quality thing that they invest a little money they can produce a pack and sell to the market then we have all the problem we see in the market that's what I think it will eventually the market will correct itself question behind me and then one behind you we'll go here first information two questions one is where do you see LFP technology evolve considering you launched a sodium mine battery with very high density and the second question the CATL question for me yes okay what is LFP what is the question how do you see the LFP technology evolve considering you've put in sodium mine you've released a new battery with sodium very high density sodium mine you see that LFP will face down and sodium will take over or any other technology and the second question is what is your perspective on solid state yes the first question in view of the LFP with the sodium new type of material electrochemistry I think for different application there's different uniquely required battery for certain application LFP is a primary I think a winner in my personal view but for other application even NCM and they have their own unique performance and unique characteristics but for sodium ion battery for other because their energy density cannot compare with FFP and the NCM but they are a sumo stability they are low temperature performance and the price advantage also plenty of supply of raw material is unique maybe for energy storage application it's not so sensitive to the energy density maybe that'd be good alternatives second question regarding the solid state people have been researched worldwide if you find the energy-related journal technical journal there's thousands of paper people publishing try to really crack the solid state battery people talking about oh it's coming soon have we seen that yet? personally I see probably still many of the technical challenge have not been resolved yet so industrialization I think a few five, ten years yeah please I'm coming from Germany and so the question wasn't mentioned do you see the possibility because also as many batteries for buses not only for cars for buses for trains they believe that if everything would be made which they want to make these battery raw materials would not really reach very long so they believe that in shorter time that would be not sufficient number one number two they see that we don't have enough material is that that's what you mean the first question? okay yeah and then the second is that they should start today with the recycling because it will be a catastrophe to have all the batteries later on yeah recycle or try to recycle it and it will be very expensive and this should be calculated into the price and the third one is that for the electric cars especially in Germany together with the new requirements for electricity as well for IT and everything the electricity would not be enough to really load all the batteries which are then in the cars and to really make use of what we want to see as green technology yeah I mean I think the the question sort of comes to where I started which is just understanding the scale right so can can we grow the supply chains quickly enough and then of course can we generate enough electricity and make sure it is zero carbon um I don't know how to people would anyone have a anyone want to comment on the concern that we just maybe let me comment on the concern regarding recycling and the CETL we founded the recycling we are now the largest battery recycling in the world and we believe recycling is a must otherwise when the vehicle retire what do you do with the large mess it's a polluting the soil it's a difficult dangerous and can be explosive so recycling must be a part of the whole solution but the battery alone does not solve our green energy issue it doesn't generate energy it's a store energy so we need to go renewable like solar wind hydroelectric and biofuel or even I in my view nuclear power plant that should be considered because in Europe I understand there's a different disagreement France and Romania and a few other country believe nuclear power is a clean energy but Germany and others probably still did not agree personally I believe that if we can solve the safety problem nuclear power is a cleanest if you look at life cycle cleaner than solar cleaner than wind and cleaner others but so after we combine those with a battery then we probably have a better future so the response to the question about whether we can generate enough electricity from the person in Germany is more nuclear power right we have we have time for one more question the woman back there thank you my question goes to Mr. Niju from CATL currently there are an increasing number of Chinese leading companies which expand their global footprint so what is the next goal or what is the next step for CATL in terms of overseas production thank you CATL even though it started in China but we view ourselves as a global company because our company's vision statement state we are trying to help humankind to transition to a new sustainable energy era so we do not view ourselves just to produce in China we actually already we invest heavily in Europe we have production in Germany we are building up our factory in Hungary and we are considering other alternatives and even in North America we are working with our partners and also we have plans to invest in Asia as well because this is the we only have one planet as I said let's do things for the whole planet so CATL is aggressively considering global market and global we are finding global partners as well for example in the recycling business we are talking to a European partner I cannot tell who but we are looking at the setting up recycling sites not just one but sites in Europe we are also looking for partners in North America because that's a way to go the circular economy need to do it locally this is a great discussion I really want to thank all of you for being part of it and for the questions and especially our panelists we covered a pretty broad terrain of environmental issues and policy issues and technology issues and really appreciate the spirit of the conversation which was to be frank and candid and tackle difficult topics as well openly and constructively and I think we identified a number of challenges that need to be addressed the scale of how quickly this industry needs to grow how to do it in a way that maintains socialized and stop-brained as respectful of the communities that may be impacted do it environmentally responsibly and geopolitics an important challenge right now but we got to remember why we're doing it which is we need to move a lot faster than we are to get to net zero emissions by mid-century and we're going to need a lot of minerals to make that possible to store the energy we need and make the clean energy technologies and products we need so a lot of work to do and look forward to continued conversations about it with all of you please join me in thanking our panelists