 I'm very pleased and extremely excited to introduce our speaker today Simon Moore's rather than go through his extensive and very impressive bio. I'd like to make three points about Simon as followers of the energy seminar may remember at the last pre COVID live seminar we did an auditorium was by previous Kumar, who's actually a principal in Simon's operation called benchmark mineral intelligence, and he gave a talk on lithium ion batteries supply chain issues that was very well received by the audience. It was great excitement I remember sitting around with the Thevis and some of his he was in the Stanford MBA program at that point, but some of his MBA colleagues and other Silicon Valley Titans. And we asked the group who else would be good to talk about in this area and to a person there are probably a dozen people there they said, Simon Morris is your guy you ought to go after him and we did. But it was difficult because we were then in COVID lockdown so we had to work out a way that we could have him speak, but not travel here and not be up in the middle of the night so that's number one. Number two is, if I told you I had predicted a lithium ion, or that the 2020s with the, the decade of lithium in 2018 you would have not been very impressed but as far as I can figure and reading up Simon predicted this about 2006. We all stand to learn many lessons about technological forecasting and the interface of that with with business, and the last distinctive thing about his talk today is, it is the first time we've done a asynchronous one. There are over three people, primarily in Europe that are on inconvenient time for the frames and Simon was the top of our list but if this works out well we may try a few more. So with that further ado I'd like to turn it over to Simon to explain this magic that he has to foresee the future and execute a business plan even before that future arrived Simon take it away. Thank you very much john and I appreciate you and Sarah inviting me to speak here after the business talk. And I'll be speaking about a similar one the same subject but maybe a different angle building this lithium ion economy and I would love to think that back in 2006 when my career started I predicted where we would be today. I didn't. I mean I joined a publishing company that covered minerals metals mining commodities as a whole. And I was given lithium, and I liked it because it was different it was using technology. It wasn't using what most of these minerals and metals are used in which is like steel, big industrial markets, it was actually tech markets and a year later the iPhone came out and then about a year and a half after that and if the Nissan leaf came out it was the first full say commercial electric vehicle pure EV that was on the road. So that's kind of how it started and then ended up in benchmarked in 2014 creating this company and collecting data but I'm going to share some slides data to outline really what we do at benchmark and how we see this, this lithium ion economy. So, this is how we just kind of describe it. It was, it was how vivis explained to the last year and I'm Washington DC event vivis called this a platform technology. And he's absolutely right which is why I've had so many comparisons to semiconductors. So we're going to look at everything to do with this supply chain. So this is the supply chain is we see it. And as you can see there's three main components the four main components. You've got mining everything comes from the ground you either grow it or you mine it. Something as simple as that is actually can be quite stark when you actually think about every all these different types of products we use but everything comes back to the metals and the fundamentals of digging it out of the ground. These are the key ones that the critical mineral inputs the critical elements that go into batteries that's why we selected these you could have copper in there as well you can have aluminium. But the critical ones that are going from the niche to the mainstream and take quite a lot of speciality. So that's why we collect data on these for now. First you dig out the ground mining then you go into chemical processing making these into battery grade materials. The next step is cathodes and anodes, then you're making a battery cell, then you're putting putting it into a car now. And the key thing we do is we collect data on every single part of the supply chain, the midstream of the supply chain is absolutely. It's difficult as crucial. Most of these companies are private companies so we created a system where we know these companies are collected data on a monthly and quarterly basis. And it's all commercial supply chain data. So really tracking what's actually happening what's actually being built. The last point about this slide is the bit at the top which I think from a culture perspective companies is fundamental. You've got three main cultures that are clashing and not quite agreeing. Mining is one a very unique culture that is set on decade decade long time zones and longer than that chemical processing in the middle. I'd include cathode and anodes and that as chemicals guys. Now, that is a very specific also semi long term industry speciality, not a commodity. You've got battery manufacturing and car making, which really does fall into the, the assembling the manufacturing side of things. And of course you can say batteries a speciality manufacturing but it's important to know it's still manufacturing you're not chemical processing. And these three cultures of these different parts of the supply chain have to align in order to build out this this lithium ion battery and electric vehicle supply chain for this energy storage revolution. Just one slide on benchmark what we do because you can follow us on social media. LinkedIn and Twitter we put a lot of information out on that we sell subscriptions, data products and analysis, what we call actionable intelligence for people that are either actively in this supply chain like our lithium price assessments which you use the on tracks, or other bits of data like we track every lithium ion battery plant in the world that's active now and that's also being built, including the chemistry is behind it the capacities, capacity utilization so on and so forth. Then we also do an analysis on the news as well so it's like tears of information but we put it out there in lots of different forms so you can go on our website. You can just view our articles and you'll slowly be entered into the benchmark world. So the three main things I want to address over the next about 20 minutes or so now would be. It's number one, the, what I call the trend and the gold from what is a global battery arms race through to building a lithium ion economy. This building a lithium ion economy is, I'll talk about it in context of the USA, but the European Union is starting from school all Western economies are starting from scratch here. China really in earnest started about five years ago from scratch building the supply chain. The key thing here and this is what I was saying to the Senate last year in the US was when was the last time the US built a heavy industry from scratch. And you have to go back really to, you will know more than me because a lot of you imagine would be American on this is webinar, but this is back at FDR days this is before our lifetimes. So that's a challenge ahead. And the question remains how much does government get involved in order to help build this this basis blueprint. The challenge, as I mentioned, so this building it is building it on time. And the future, you know, is other any blockers, such as the raw material side, pure chemistry pure geology. Are there any obvious blockers to make this not happen. So that will be addressed near the end as well. I wanted to look at the story of the lithium ion battery through lithium for the first three slides now really get started coming on the radar as I mentioned, not just because this is a. This was my one of my first articles when I just started my career in 2007 analyzing where lithium is coming from and where it's going. I called it between a rocket assault like the two main sources of lithium I quite like that. I like that headline but 2007 when it was on the radar lithium was just going through a price spike. The price doubled over a period of about two years from three and a half thousand dollars a time to about five just over five five and a half. And that was because it was finding new uses in power tools. It wasn't before the electric cars it was mainly power tools mainly laptops. It was a high phone bump a few years later. So, this is the first layer of demand from lithium ion batteries. Second layer of demand came in 2014. Yeah, 2014 when this started to happen Elon Musk and JB, and the team, the small team at Tesla decided to build the Gigafactory because they couldn't get their tier one lithium ion batteries from their in in volume and on time. They decided to build their own battery plant in the test of Gigafactory one. And that was the first supersize battery plant that was planned around the world. I'll explore where we are a bit on that there's a lot more now. And that was layer two of demand from electric vehicles so it's a good. It's been eight years for the second layer of demand start coming through. And this is the third layer of demand now it's the commercialization of that second layer of the EV, the electric vehicle. The revolution phase two of its growth. That's where I describe it so on the left. 2009, one of the first articles I was quoted in but I love the title here, lithium car batteries may shift the balance of industrial power. Leo Lewis who's now at financial times it's a brilliant article, the headlines even better. Now we are in this, what the Wall Street Journal called in February. The battery is ready to power the world or in this this new phase of growth and actually scaling of the opportunity, not just establishing the beginnings of it. And this is what it looked like through the lens of lithium carbonates price. And this is what I want to start. You can always see what the story is through the price data and this is what we collect a benchmark for all the raw materials for batteries, the price curves show you the story. This price surge one, which peaked around April 2009. And then we were established benchmark was established in 2014 to collect this this, these prices in this data in far more detail and the more specialist nature price surge to was 2015 to 2018. It really topped out in October. And late, yeah, it would be late October 2017 that took a while to come down. So just beginning the third price surge for lithium carbonate. Well for all of your products, which began really in November. And the question is where will this, where will this lead will it be higher than the last time the demand is bigger and more customers are buying lithium there's more of a scramble for a lack of supply that hasn't really built out much since the last term. This is the last surge as many things to talk about on that, but the, I want to put these blue dashed lines onto the screen. Now for me the blue dashed line was where the, the lithium commercial price for lithium carbonate settled. So before the first wave of battery demand, if you like in that that I mentioned in 2007 before the laptops and the power tools were sucking up new lithium. So it was around the $3,000 a ton mark, a natural setting point for lithium carbonate. After that price surge price surge one it started to set it around the $5,000 a ton mark. Interestingly, there wasn't much settling time this time around as you can see from that chart. That's volatility because of the demand we can we're talking about but that that settling mark, the bottom of that that lithium carbonate price was around the $8,000 and $7,500 a ton mark. Where will it go next, I mean the rationale behind this is quite simple you need a high lithium price a higher incentive price to bring on more supply, because not all of it is going to come on stream as the lowest cost sources in the world which back then was a salada at karma in Chile. So a wide variety of sources wide variety of extraction and processing prices to get new supply into the market. So it's really interesting to see where we go next on this. And the central story for me is what you know it's a trend we call the global battery arms race. So that's a race around the world. Specifically between China the EU and the US to build as much lithium battery capacity as they can to gain dominance in electric vehicles. The global battery arms race is very much a continental thing is continents and regions are racing to build this capacity. Next will be the supply chain in order to get dominance in this new, this new industry, because those that can produce these electric vehicles quick enough, a high enough quality will take the market. And that with companies like Tesla with what's happening within China, but the big boys are just starting to enter the legacy OEM makers are starting to enter this market and begin to understand the importance of lithium batteries and that captive supply and owning that part of the supply chain. Battery mega factories for us it's multi giggle our facilities we track every single one of these in the world and we assess the quality and the validity of them as well. Three years ago those three of them. Foxcom was planning to build a battery plant and they didn't in the end invested in CATL Foxcom will most of you will know make the Apple iPhones so there's a connection there. But three back then, you now have 200 in the pipeline. At 3.4 terawatt, terawatt hours of total capacity by 2030. So last year at $65 billion was committed to these projects, of which about $45 billion was located in China. Not much really was in the US single digits. In terms of capacity, not not just individual plants but you know how does this capacity build out of battery cells change over time. And this is how we view it at present. So as you can see by the end of this year, we will begin next year is the best way to think about it. Next year was 755 gigawatt hours globally of battery capacity nearly all of which is destined for EVs. That's about 14 million EVs worth the average we use is 55 kilowatt hours per battery per EV. That's that's globally it's just a good average. We know there's a huge range and especially in the US, the cars are getting bigger. So that's a good range, good a good rule of thumb average. And then that's going to 3.4 terawatt hours, which is about 63 million vehicles. Now if you think about how many vehicles going to be needed for that zero aside actually just to replace even some of the fleet, not all of the fleet that's existing to for new consumers and want to buy new vehicles per year so that's about 80 to 100 million vehicles are sold a year we're nowhere near that number here at present then you've got energy storage systems that use the same batteries that's emerging an emerging industry it's quite starved of tier one battery cells at present. And even Elon said, back in January they're delaying the roadster, and they're delaying the Tesla semi, because they haven't got enough batteries they are self constrained. So that's, it's a thing that it's not just, as you can see, total battery supply, it's having the right quality of batteries as well those tier one battery cells, if you're someone like Tesla, or someone like General Motors for example. Then viewing it through the lens of raw materials. This is a important slide linking the, the batteries to the raw material inputs. So this is our 30 gigawatt hour average. So these are averages that we've done an average waiting over the next 10 years. We haven't got manganese on here which would be higher than cobalt. But the smaller than nickel so a manganese a good a manganese average he'll probably be about 8000 to 10,000 tons on this on this slide. But what it shows is a 30 gigawatt hour NCA facility sorry NCM facility, the Gigafactory is an NCA facility we understand that it's just a good image to use to show you people that one of these battery facilities if it's 30 hours consumes this amount of raw material. In medium terms that's the whole mines worth a graphite. That's a graphite anode it's not flake graphite or, and what you know what flake it's flake graphite coming from a mine that will be times that by to. So, it's a lot of raw material, lots of new mines have to be built effectively for one of these facilities. I think a lot of investment and the scale of this is is an issue for the upstream at present. Now, this is important because this shows the speed of what's happened for a traditionally conservative mining and chemicals industry in 2015 demand for lithium. All lithium produced in the world. 32%, if you can chemicals it says 32% was consumed in batteries, only five years later, five was five, yeah, five full years later, 67% of all if you can see produced was consumed in if you mind batteries. That's exactly a 180 degree flip. The market's gone from 170,000 tons to nearly 400,000 tons this year is what we forecast. And so it is a complete 180 and what that means is lithium ion batteries and electric vehicles dictate the lithium industry. It's the same for Cobalt, because they're niche industries going to mainstream. It's not the same for nickel. It's not the same for graphite. It's not the same for manganese because they're much bigger industries, where only a small select portion of that goes into into batteries. And that is very different in lithium and that's why lithium in Cobalt, but lithium especially is the proxy for this EV revolution says picture of Andy Miller I thought I put some, some pictures of mining in there this is, this isn't the salata as carna and that is that's a lithium liquor, he's, he's touching. But this is going in a bit more into building this this phase to building a complete lithium ion supply chain on time. So back to the just a reminder of how we viewed the supply chain how I explain that the start. It's trying to link all these things together. So, firstly, goal one is to build capacity, you need the volume in the market to meet the demand. The problem is its demand that's never happened before. So imagine the corporate level decisions and discussions that are happening when someone someone in the business asks for billions and billions, probably tens of billions of dollars to build to build capacity for something that hasn't happened before. That's been the challenge over the last five years. They're starting to get the grips with it but it's still a big risk. The companies the majority of the automotive space are stuck in the headlights with this, but capacity is key capacity is building, you know, is having that supply chain ready on time. Quality is the next big challenge now quality allows each of these links in the supply chain to connect. You can't use all lithium and lithium ion battery. You can't use all lithium ion batteries and all electric vehicles. It says tears of quality that cause bottlenecks throughout the whole supply chain. And this explaining this simple principle is actually something that a lot of people and a lot of companies don't quite get. They don't get yet until they subscribe to our data and we can explain layer by layer link by link. So the story is, but as you can see the lithium out of the ground. Not all of that will be able to go to make battery grade quality hydroxide carbonate. Then not all of producers that make hydroxide and carbonate would go into the cathode and so on into the battery cells so it's understanding where those bottlenecks are. But the key goal here is volume and quality capacity and quality. That block isn't the moment. This explains the point I made earlier you can't use all lithium ion batteries in the Navy. And this is a really important point, especially for battery cells at the moment because I feel the EV story certainly in North America is turning into a lithium ion battery story. You've seen lithium ion batteries become geopolitical at the top of the White House agenda. Both mentioned in an executive order in the American jobs plan. Also the White House stepping in with a dispute between LG, chem and SK innovation a dispute on on American soil. So very geopolitical and cut as a result is it's it's the US needs to actually attract all of these tier one and the future tier one produces into this into this zone. Into the domestic US just hammering home the the other point the next point is there's no geological shortage of these raw materials, any of them. The problem actually is investment this is a we are example of lithium demand versus unfinanced some finance and some recycling supply in there over the long term. You can see there's a big gap and it takes five to seven years to build a lithium mine if you had a lithium mine and a chemical plant if you had all the money in the world. Didn't have to worry about the raising of the cash you could probably do in four years. But that money is not there, not in the, the quantity not in the long term nature it's needed for these companies. Well, a lot of the industries even reliant on the incumbent producers that are generally public companies that can only make three year long decisions. Or it's junior mining companies or let's say, yeah junior mining exploration stage companies that are on stock markets also that have to get go to the public markets to get the cash. And it's just an inefficient way for what is a long term fundamental brick in this, this whole thematic. And this is why really that it's, it's hard for existing corporates to expand quickly in the existing industry. So back in 2009, if you're a raw material by a battery plant like that, Gigafactory slide I showed earlier. In 2009 or the Gigafactory didn't exist then but if you're a battery plant in 2009, you'll probably be buying lithium about 800 tons a year. That would be what you have to buy for the next year it's pretty predictable growing 5% a year done. Then in 2014, when that next layer of demand started to come in, you're probably buying about 2 to 3000 tons a year in and you're expecting some volatility but it's still relatively predictable. In 2017, you've got three to 5000 tons a year for your needs. And you might have to double that in the next three or four years, but an increment so you'll be looking at adding 10% 15% more maybe 20% maximum to your to your purchasing over, over the course of time which is within the pressure and the points of these companies, both in finance and and risk appetite and everything else. That's pretty strong that's pretty predictable. The problem now is if you're a, if you're buying raw material now for the next three to five years, it's in the 30 to 50,000 tons a year quantities. Maybe it's, it's the growth spur the big growth period that we're going to experience next is the first big one for EVs the next one is post 2026 27, and then we'll be into the 2030s where it'll be a different world. So, unless your mindset changes over this the course of these years. I mean a lot of a lot of the guys that were buying raw materials that back in 2009 even 2014 and not in the industry anymore. You know it's been a big culture shift to handle these these quantities which are literally that are an order of magnitude shift. That term is used a lot in different industries but for batteries it is very much an order of magnitude shift. So, if you look at nickel sulfate. If you look at nickel sulfate as example because nickel and lithium and the most talked about raw materials I wanted to give you the same idea from the nickel numbers perspective. So, there we go. So, in 2021 this year. I expect nickel sulfate demand to be sorry, this is the amount produced is 276,000 tons 276,000 tons of demand this year. The vast majority is lithium batteries. There's a surplus of 58,000 tons. So how do you go to your bosses and say I want $3 billion or even a billion dollars to expand your supply or invest in a new mine. You're going to be short, but then you say to them, well no, this is benchmarks forecast but in many forecasts, we're going to be 1.1 million tons short come 2030. It's a problem because you have to be a really true believer if you're going to invest in even half of that capacity for an industry doesn't exist. I don't necessarily see too much of a long term problem with nickel capacity but the short term the next five years is absolutely crucial because now I'd say nickel is the furthest behind of all of these battery raw materials. It's also why another reason why you have OEMs looking at this in a big way. It's why they're building a nickel chemical refinery in Austin at the tera factory along with lithium. So it's something to watch and another point I put there isn't CATL which is the biggest battery produced in the world based in China. Their annual demand will be as big as the industry is next year for one consumer so you can see the shift that we're going through here. Another really key point is the, as the battery cell cost goes down to $110 a kilowatt hour which is our number for large contract automotive last year it's a good average. And even though there's many prices different prices of battery raw materials. The portion of the raw material pie becomes much bigger back in 2014-15 when the lithium battery price was averaging $280 a kilowatt hour, the portion of the pie of raw materials was about 40 to 50%. The portion of the pie is 70 to 80%. And as that cost comes down, it becomes more of a raw material cost becomes a bigger portion. The guys making batteries and even the guys buying batteries have to become masters of these key input raw materials, both in terms of as either owning supply or it's owning it in a contract that's watertight and fixing the price as well. So if you have a battery price or eliminate volatility of these key inputs to ensure your battery price is as stable as possible for the foreseeable future. This is what our data is used for. And that's what we exist as a independent business as well, but it's really important that when the price comes down, the raw materials aren't coming down the same right. When the raw materials are going up, if you look at what's happening at present, you talk about the lithium battery price coming down if your price is going up, nickel prices going up, cobalt prices going up. But five years ago, but over the last five years actually when when this battery price trend has been dropping, lithium prices rock bottom, well, rock bottom for this period, nickel price was rock bottom and cobalt was the same. But now you're going to a rising raw material price environment that the battery makers and even makers have never beaten before. How they're how they react as well will be really interesting. So they own the assets are their long term contracts. In fact, we are seeing long term contracts. You see Glencore is a world on the world's biggest cobalt producers. They're actually publishing and signing lots of long term contracts, one of which is 10 years long. And Glencore 18 months ago as a business that didn't do any long term contracts. They mind it, they sold it, whatever the market price was, we're happy with that. Allow them to control, get a better price for it like the traders, the traditional traders they are now it's a completely different business model at Glencore as a result of a where we're heading. One of the two slides is in a while if you mind batteries here to stay. So this is a price drop that I mentioned. You know, if you can take a straight line average of the last five, six years of lithium batteries and say that is a strong performance and it is 14.9% compound average price decline of these battery cells since 2014. But you break it up into two and 2017 is important because 2017 was the start, the first year of these giga factories that were coming on stream the scale that I mentioned earlier. Before that, really the the first two three giga factories are up and running but the test the gig factory wasn't until 2016 for example, but you started having scale in the battery industry where 21.6% 21% average price decline was that period where scale started to really impact the manufacturing improvements the scale started to really help push that price down. But since 2017 2020 that that decline is more than halved three times three X slower than it was. So you've kind of gained those easier wins of scale and raw material prices are a bigger portion of the lithium ion cost pie. I'm not saying it's going to flat line or go up necessarily, but that's a risk you're facing as you go close to $100 a kilowatt hour. It means you've got to be more creative on the way you extract lithium on how you make nickel on the pricing of how you lock these in contracts and that's really key. This is a battery forecast I just put it in here just so you can see how we see this growth from a lithium ion battery perspective. You know right now we're on that red dot in 2021 right in the middle, but you can just look from the size of the bars it's, it's, it's silly we're going from a, a 400 300 gigawatt hour industry give or take to a 2,500 gigawatt hour industry. It's, it literally is a different world that we're heading into final few slides. For me this is one of the most important slides that I've presented here in the past, it's one that I present to the Senate a number of times and keep driving home. You don't have to have to necessarily mine all the raw materials in the USA, if you want dominance. In fact, the whole goal here is building this lithium ion economy. Building the midstream at scale in order to have dominance. So what this, this chart shows is China's percentage share of production in 2020 of all these key parts of the battery supply chain. In China, people might think China mines all these raw materials. domestically it's not true they only extracted 23% of the world's battery raw materials, but they refined domestically 80%. 70% 76% of cathodes and anodes made in China. As a result this year 75% give or take of lithium ion batteries made in China but of course China won't be exporting lithium ion batteries China will be exporting vehicles China will probably be exporting American Tesla vehicles. So you can see the midstream building that capacity ensures those raw materials flow into into your country into where these hubs of demand are. Now, for the long term you've got to the US and Europe will want to build their own base of raw materials supplied domestically we say that should be 25% should be your target. 25% should be coming from the most economic and the most available sources around the world. And that's a good long term goal I think for any governments that are looking to have a plan on this. Final slide, or final, but one slide. This is just to take away. To see where all the zeros are in every step of the supply chain in a bit more detail, of course the US. It doesn't do much mining, let alone the critical mineral mining, but it's every stage that is a bit bereft, but from battery cells which we we think will be a first step forward for the US. The US has four of the six tier one lithium ion battery makers domestically. That's a strong position to actually start building huge capacity on to. And that's something US has to do, not just build the batteries start building big cathode capacity big anode capacity, then the whole, the whole economy will start building of course battery cells, sorry battery cell recycling is becoming a thing is becoming an industry with some pioneers in there that have big plans you need that but you need that also for the midstream. And this is, you know where the red circle is where the lack of investment is. And the green circle is where the last five years is in big investment. Final slide here it's, it's a story from last week battery metals are hot but these miners can't get investors really good story from the Wall Street Journal and it's, it kind of sums it up. People understand five years ago people understood electric vehicles are coming. So we have the biggest surgeon, the battery mega factory capacity investments, although there a lot in China the most in China, definitely in Europe and some in the US batteries with the story three years ago. The next three years chemicals and raw materials will have to be the story it has to be the focus otherwise it all falls apart. And the trend of the next three years. Otherwise, the EV revolution will be significantly delayed on that I'll pass it back to john. Great. Thank you so much time and as expected that was just terrific covering, you know, corporate strategy national strategy national security environmental impacts and whatnot. But even though we had a relatively small real time audience, I thank them for putting forward an excellent set of questions so I'll try to consolidate them. And a lot of interest in in all different, all the different dimensions it is interesting I could see you would be a great. Probably done this world economic forum speaker because of your depth and breadth across public and private sector, companies, small companies, international relations and whatnot. The first couple of questions are kind of on the, I'm kind of an old school, probably amateur at this point strategy guys so there's kind of the Michael Porter structural view the, the resource theory of the firm and the, my colleague here at Stanford Kathy Eisenhart, develop the simple rules thing I see in your approach to this and the companies, you describe a little bit of a blend of all three. First of all, do you agree with that that there's a little bit of looking at the structure of the industry a little bit of do we have this strategic assets and a little bit on, let's not spend too much time building like someone like I would do a big model and actually take some shots and see what happens and learn from that. I think there needs to be a strategic, a baseline of strategic capacity across every part of the supply chain. And the big part of that is with the two from a sort of top down perspective you like the, the most important things one is having the skills long term to make to extract and make these materials at quality to make the end product and not outsourcing that around the world, having that condensed into the country the continent. And the second thing is to actually have the capacity there to make these products at present, the skills, or the know how tends to sit in universities but it's not, it's not been acted into into a large scale commercial operations and I think that's just not not necessarily just a challenge for the US it's the same for Europe and you need money for that you need money to make sure these investments and assets are there and the key thing here is you're building everything from scratch. And I think really exists at scale at the moment. So it's kind of at what point do you start and when, and which is why we always focus on that midstream the cathode downloads, battery cells, and then the inputs will come. Great. Now so a little bit a lot in that regard on kind of market segmentation and competitor analysis so just to get an idea of how broad you look at things and in what depth to related questions. So you're doing doing similar kinds of things for the stationary battery market. And in that regard is the stadium likely to be more hot going forward than lithium. Secondly, not directly related but kind of a market segmentation thing. Just by as soon as we were convinced you immediately, people like me somewhat more grudgingly that EVs were a big new thing. People said, Well, what about that hydrogen stuff when I was a Defense Department analyst 40 years ago. We were going to have a hydrogen economy and we're still in our third or fourth round but I have to say looking at that field that does seem much more likely there'll be some hydrogen in our energy economy as we move forward so how are you tracking those two dimensions of the things you're looking at? And do you think these are big threats? Are these things that you are already positioning yourself to take advantage of? Is that somewhat of an expansion of your current line of business? Yeah, so we track these hydrogen and other competing battery technologies as a thematic, not yet as an intensive data collection process internally. And two things I'd say on energy storage. One, they use the same battery, lithium ion batteries fundamentally, they come from the same battery plants. So when we track every single battery plant in the world, we also track how much of that capacity is being committed or let's say sold into ESS, how much is being sold into EV. And the reality is at the moment, hardly any into ESS because the prices and the contracts, the better prices, the long term contracts are going into EV. And there's a shortage of those tier ones, which is going to be a problem for energy storage over the next five years. I do think after the next five years, once these battery cells are scaled, then ESS will have its day because you're going to get some good deals on lower costs, the excess capacity of these plants. But so ESS is that that's on one thing and then with vanadium on the energy storage market, but I am, you know, in theory is a better battery to use for this market. But for me, if you're a buyer of battery capacity in an energy storage energy storage unit, you want your balancing costs and availability. And now with vanadium, it's still very niche vanadium being produced for a vanadium flow batteries, it's sort of very niche industry. Whereas with lithium ion batteries your scale you've got availability of supply, eventually, and that's another reason why people are turning to lithium ion in the energy storage system but I do think that market and that field is a lot more open. So definitely longer term vanadium will have its role there, but you need someone to commercialize it you need someone to build the Gigafactory for vanadium, and then you'll start having these kind of movements and for hydrogen. I think it'll be a big part in the low carbon economy I don't think it will compete with lithium ion electric vehicles but I think hydrogen used to make steel for example is really interesting hydrogen using long long term transport like trains and and long haul works I think it's also interesting so hydrogen will have its day but it is a long way behind lithium ion in the commercialization and scaling process at present. So, a specific kind of strategy. Market positioning market power question one. What I'm looking forward is, what is your opinion of the, I think it's fairly recent proposed now I think actual merger between or recovery and galaxy I guess these are two big got had to look it up, Australian companies. What do you view what's going on there and how do you think it affects the overall market dynamics and what you will do differently of anything in reaction to that. The galaxy resources, and our corporates really interesting because five years ago, they were just starting production. So, when I change that lithium price chart way back in 2009, they were the juniors they would have developers that that you know we're struggling to raise money back then when I, when I knew them at the start, then during that second price spike, they raise the money enough to get into production. And the next five years they've established themselves as two really quite separate producers one is a spodumene producer a hard rock spodumene lithium concentrate producer. Sorry, spodumene concentrates a hard rock lithium source in Australia that gets sold to China and China does the refining of that and value ads. So it goes in our recovery they mine from the Brian fields in Argentina and make lithium carbonate into a chemical, and that's going into the Asia Pacific market also imported in China but as a as a chemical. And so it made sense both of them coming together because one you have scale to you have two different types of sources, three you have a globe much bigger global reach. You have a pricing power with that comes with the scale and so I think that's those three things are what's going to change the market. Will it change it will be interesting to see how others react because our copper and galaxy getting together to compete directly with Albemarle American company, directly with the two biggest Chinese lithium producers gang fang and Tianchi. I think it's a good move for lithium because you at the top you can't have seven or eight big guys you really need to three or four maximum to push this forward. Great. Now, fortunately for me I was going to preempt and ask my own question but the last question we got was the one I wanted to ask most because it's really a hot topic here in California for a number of reasons ready, ranging from helping with the low greenhouse gas transition to environmental justice and whatnot and that is, what is your opinion and assessment of the use of the salt Brian lithium attraction project in Imperial County and the so called sea which I believe is mostly geothermal resource development where they found allegedly substantial quantities of lithium. Yeah, yeah new sources of lithium. And the traditional sources I mentioned with galaxy in our recovery new ways to extract it. They call it the early in the lithium issue direct lithium extraction absolutely needed. So I mentioned that the price chart that I showed earlier, in order to simply get more lithium into the market at all price points doesn't have to be the lowest in the world, because you just the price is going to be so much higher you just need as much opportunity to get lithium out of lots of different sources that we've had before in the past. And that's why in California and Salton see perfect example of this new 21st century lithium. Now the key thing here is not so just the deposit right it's actually the technology and the know how, and the brain power that's going into extract. And lithium using this new processing techniques. And for me that's, that's crucial for this next phase of demand growth, otherwise long term you're not going to, you're not going to have that lithium there the end of this decade when you need it. And so you need as much money flowing towards those projects as much brain power as possible to solve this problem because the energy storage revolution relies on it. So one last geopolitical strategy. Question, sorry to load them on but I find them fascinating. One questioner points out that Simovac lithium deposits are probably the biggest in Europe, and you probably know what the question is can look back and afford to lose access to that supply source to Tesla. Well, the good question. You know if you're VW VW or any of the big OEMs. The question is, I guess, how would you secure that supply. Now, at present that they've only really addressed VW certainly publicly has only really addressed lithium ion battery supply. VW wants to build four giga factories in Europe, they announced that on their power day. Tesla, six months earlier announced they want to build a terra factory plus they want to build cathode capacity plus they want to live human nickel refining on site. So Tesla taking a big even bigger step upstream, which means they'll be a direct buyer of these raw materials whereas VW won't be yet, because VW just making want to make batteries. There will be competition for all the all deposits. Certainly the near term large deposits, the ones that are two years away from production. There will be a scramble very soon for these assets. As I mentioned in that Wall Street Journal article at the end Google that article. Everyone will be reading that you realize that they realize once they have these battery plants and these OEMs become battery makers. All of a sudden there's a big gap on raw materials and lithium is the same. So, yeah, I think that's that sets the tone on the trend nicely for the upstream. And one general actually go a lot of late coming excellent questions which we can forward to you but one last question that came in early that I think might be on viewers minds now and later in the day is, you haven't talked a lot about the environmental impacts of all the mining across the different materials that you're tracking. Do you think that is a major factor and one thing I've observed is if you wanted to say, how do you think about the V movement, you can always pick the worst maintained regulated mind in the world come up with a pretty good story. But how do you how do you think about that from a strategic level. Obviously, if the public gets concerned or government gets concerned about the broader sustainability issues through the mining part of the industry. Where do you think the big challenges are from your point of view in that regard. I think it was a bit unfair on the EV industry this supply chain that's been built from scratch that you know if you're building it now you're going to be placing the most stringent the stringent rules regulations and the principles on to how these are extracted and processed. Now, of all of these supply chains, all the key inputs. There's nothing, especially lithium a lot of it's coming from Brian which is very low impact. You can argue on the water resources domestically is certainly in South America is an issue that's constantly trying to be solved, which DLE tries to solve that that issue but I would say it's always a bit unfair, but at the same time, if you're building anything now any new supply chains in the 21st century, especially today going forward, then you should be aiming to build the most sustainable the most transparent. In addition to being as low cost as possible. Now the this ESG movement, you will see price premiums in contracts for the most sustainably extracted raw materials. You'll see it now but I certainly think you'll see it three, four years onwards, where companies that can sustainably extract and produce these materials but it might be it might cost you more. Companies are going to be willing to pay for that but I guarantee those car companies will need a base don't need a base load of raw materials that are the lowest cost in the world first and the ESG thing will go on top. This is just the beginning, and I will see how the, we'll see how the cards fall, but it is crucial and it is important so yeah it is also something we're doing a benchmark so collecting data on the ESG of the supply chain starting with lithium. Final question, the probably most coveted of many coveted market segments for this seminar are the students particularly those registered. What advice would you give them that they want to kind of be like you are getting on the action you're describing here from any angle. Are there any particular skills, skill sets of perspectives career paths that you would recommend at this point. I know you're kind of a tremendous almost self made at times success story, but if you had to do it all over again would you have gotten more training in this area or more experience in that area. It's a, it's a really good question. But the biggest problem in our industry is bridging the gap between science and research and commercialization. I find a lot of times people and this is the industry not just academia. And indulge in the research and the science of it. Now, you have to have a base fundamental base of understanding of whether catheter is going with the anus going the implications of cost and so on and so forth. But for every question, and every job you apply for any anywhere in the supply chain, you have to ask yourself, link the research to the commercial reality. For example, if we make a cathode like this or we research adding this into the cathode what is the implication and cost. More importantly, can you get that element freely enough from the supply chain. So it's the bridge between science and commercialization. If you can sit in that zone, then you will make a lot of money. It doesn't matter if you're in a battery company if you're a car company if you're a chemicals company or even mining people. If companies is new and existing will need brains and people that can translate the, the science into a commercial reality. If you can do that. Then you are on a good thing and that's probably the best thing I can, I can say, I think. That's a terrific inspiring kind of an answer I've noticed the business schools, you're kind of a folk here as I already mentioned in several business school. I've seen a tremendous transition and sustainability and general, they are in the interest in it with people with technical backgrounds you get the MBA, maybe one, one of many pathways to get there including vivas of course. So with that said, I'd like to thank you for as expected a just fabulous seminar that will probably also wow the audience at 4pm local after midnight your time so we very much appreciate your willingness to do this remotely I think it's been a very for my point of view totally biased a tremendous example of what we might be able to do a secret as long as we're stuck in this thing we do hope you will come visit us. There's Stanford and we can set up some meetings and pay for travel and whatnot after it's safe to travel so thank you once again for a great and very inspiring seminar assignment. Thanks and thank you, John and Sarah I appreciate your inviting me. I'd like to add my thanks to Sarah who hugging there to make it all happen. So once again, Sarah comes through. So thank you one and all particularly Simon and Sarah.