Why electrification needs nickel – and a Plan B

Electrification of our built environment will increase our demand for energy. To achieve the scale up needed, within climate goals, means the source of energy needs to be diversified. Image credit: Tom Trott, ArtGrid.

Energy shapes our modern lives. It’s the force behind how we move, trade, work and play, and our demand for energy continues to grow.

Today, the focus is to ‘electrify everything’ and shift toward renewable energy sources to reduce air pollution, lower carbon emissions and improve health outcomes.

Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro can support national prosperity strategies too, as local production from abundant natural resources can create local jobs, provide energy security for businesses and boost local productivity.

Since the oil crises in the 1970s, renewables have shifted from being the energy sector’s Plan B to becoming primary sources of energy generation.

Renewable energy needs storage solutions to ensure we have consistent supply and access to power when we need it. Image credit: Timelab Pro, ArtGrid

The Achilles Heel of renewables has always been intermittency and reliability. When the sun shines, the wind blows or the water flows, we have energy. Holding onto that energy so it’s available when we want it demands high-performance storage solutions.

At a grid level, energy storage needs to balance supply and demand over hours or days, but compact energy storage has different needs: it needs to be lightweight and pack more energy into less space.

The backbone of these compact energy storage solutions are high performance batteries, storing power for everything from electric vehicles to e-bikes, electronics to home energy systems.

Innovation in the battery sector has surged dramatically in the past five years, as inventors seek to meet the electrification challenge and the growing demand for compact energy. Inside many of these high-performance batteries are nickel cathodes and is why nickel plays a starring role in compact energy storage.

Why electrification needs nickel

Nickel can pack a punch when it comes to getting a lot of energy into a small space, which is ideal if you’re on the move.

This is the primary reason nickel is a favourable ingredient in cathodes for lithium-ion batteries that power EVs, e-bikes and electronics.

Digitised life means we rely on portable energy solutions that charge fast and last the distance of our days. Nickel is a mineral that provides this energy density our devices need. Image credit: Animedias, ArtGrid

Nickel’s characteristics mean these high-performance batteries can store more energy, charge faster and will last over time. When nickel is combined with other minerals such as manganese and cobalt to create NMC cathodes (nickel-manganese-cobalt), the outcome is higher energy density and longer lasting energy delivered consistently.

Why we need a Plan B: Supply and Sustainability

Like any natural resource —nickel isn’t unlimited. Most of the world’s high-grade (‘Class 1’) nickel comes from just a few countries, which means availability can be quickly impacted by geopolitics or supply issues. Today, the world demands about 3.4M tonnes of nickel per year, but the demand is forecasted to rise significantly due to the growing demand for high-density, compact energy storage solutions. Without a change to the current paradigm, we’re facing energy storage uncertainty due to:

• Demand pressures: Demand for nickel, as well as other battery minerals like manganese and cobalt, is increasing as global EV and battery manufacturers compete for limited resources in a concentrated marketplace. Beyond batteries, nickel is critical to high-grade stainless steels, fuel cell technologies and electrochemical processes, applications that are also forecast to grow in an electrified future.

• Environmental concerns: The way every critical mineral is produced today has environmental impact. Nickel mining and refining is no exception and can bear responsibility for deforestation and pollution from mine tailings. While nickel’s carbon emissions are small on a global contribution scale (~0.27%), it is carbon intensive to mine and refine, generating between 5-22 tonnes of CO2e per tonne of nickel.

• Geopolitical risks: Concentrated supply chains for nickel, from sourcing to refining, make the mineral’s availability vulnerable to disruptions.

Plan B: The Aspiring Materials Process

To achieve the clean energy transition so it replaces the fossil fuel sources of yesteryear, efficient, on-demand energy storage is paramount. For a truly sustainable clean energy sector, the minerals that enable electrification must have a smaller environmental footprint and be more readily accessible.

But how?

It turns out there is another way to source nickel, and it results in dramatically less impact on the environment. This novel and stunning solution can also be deployed globally, which completely changes the nature of access and supply.

The Aspiring Process, researched, developed and run by Aspiring Materials, derives nickel, as well as manganese and cobalt, from a new source – olivine rock. This rock is found in abundance all over the world, often set aside as waste from existing mining activity, and is the key to how nickel supply could become a domestic product for many nations and their local industries.

Aspiring Materials uses the Aspiring Process to extract nickel from olivine-rich rocks. This novel process contrasts traditional nickel mining - producing no harmful waste and next to no emissions. Image credit: Megan Danczyk, Aspiring Materials.

Aside from opening up local supply, the Aspiring Process produces nickel that is free from mine tailing pollution, does not demand major land-use change and avoids the carbon emissions characteristic of nickel mining and refining. The inefficiencies experienced with existing mining and refining are replaced by a single efficient and clean production process.

Nickel is just one of five products the Aspiring Process can deliver, all extracted from olivine rock one by one. The silver lining is this process transforms waste into a valuable resource.

Achieving parity in today’s nickel markets

Producing nickel differently is a step in the right direction, but for it to displace current sources, that nickel needs to be on par with industry standards. Aspiring Materials has achieved that, producing a nickel-manganese-cobalt mixed hydroxide product (MHP) that meets market requirements for high-performance cathodes*.

The beauty of the Aspiring Process is that nickel and the NMC hydroxide is just one of several products produced, so cost efficiencies mean we can match on price as well as performance.

Nickel produced by the Aspiring Process is not just significantly less harmful to the environment, it meets industry standards and can match on price, giving manufactures a new choice that helps them reduce their environmental impact. Image credit: Erwin de Boer, ArtGrid.

Making Plan B the A-game for clean compact energy storage

Shifting energy generation to renewables requires energy storage to keep pace with changing demands. To do less harm and provide an equitable playing field for all nations in the energy transition, we need sustainable supplies of core minerals (like nickel) that underpin energy storage.

At Aspiring Materials, we’re proud to make it possible for Plan B to become the A-game in compact energy storage.

Our Aspiring Process is a clean, waste-free and dramatically lower impact solution to nickel production. It’s not the only solution but it’s a huge step in the right direction.

The electrification of everything is a momentous transition for humanity and we’re excited to be part of the new set of solutions that can deliver the critical minerals needed to power energy storage in the 21^st century.

*Comparison of Aspiring Materials’ NMC with three different NMC product specifications published on Fastmarkets.com.