CLT Alliance Talks

CLT Alliance Talks: Exploring the Power Behind Lithium, EVs, Battery Storage & Sustainable Energy with Piedmont Lithium’s David Klanecky

July 01, 2021 Season 2 Episode 24
CLT Alliance Talks
CLT Alliance Talks: Exploring the Power Behind Lithium, EVs, Battery Storage & Sustainable Energy with Piedmont Lithium’s David Klanecky
Show Notes Transcript

As the world moves toward a low-Carbon future, there is a growing range of technology and equipment facilitating the transition to more sustainable energy sources.  In the transportation and energy production sectors, electric vehicle (EV) developments have expanded demand and interest in sustainable battery storage.

When looking for sustainable solutions, many see the City of Charlotte and the 15-county region as a growing hub for the Lithium and EV market. Last month, the CLT Alliance partnered with SelectUSA and the U.S. Embassy Japan to showcase our region as a leader in this emerging market. You can listen to that presentation here.

Today, we followed up with local lithium supplier Piedmont Lithium and spoke with their Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, David Klanecky for a deeper dive into the world of Lithium, EVs, and battery storage to find out why the Charlotte Region is making such a major impact on this industry worldwide 


Speaker 1:

Welcome to CLT Alliance talks a podcast on business topics, information and tools focused on building an economy for all in the Charlotte region.

Speaker 2:

Hello everyone. My name is Eileen Kai vice president of economic recruitment at the Charlotte regional business line. As the world moves towards a low carbon future. There's a growing range of technology code and facilitating the transition away from fossil fuel transportation and energy production are two sectors are desperate needed to reduce emissions and developments in electric vehicles. And the battery storage are rapidly changing. Both markets. Lithium is a key component in energy storage and the increasing years the man has skyrocketed today. We are very fortunate to have David clinic. SK-II executive vice president chief operating officer with[inaudible] a company based right here in Gaston county, North Carolina, to talk about lithium and how it impacts future battery and the Evie industry in North Carolina and the United States. David, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Could you please tell us a bit more about yourself and your company?[inaudible]

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Great. Thanks Eileen. Appreciate the time today for everyone. And, uh, again, my name is David[inaudible]. I'm the chief operating officer of Piedmont, lithium, uh, really thankful for the opportunity to be able to talk to you today about Piedmont, lithium, and it a little bit about lithium and the lithium market itself and the, the growing opportunities that we see in the world today. Let me give you a brief introduction about Piedmont lithium. We are lithium hydroxide, raw material supplier headquartered in Belmont North Carolina. Our asset base is focused on the production of lithium hydroxide from a spaza bead resource, uh, and the world's first integrated project of his time right here in the United States. We're very excited about the opportunity to be able to produce these type of materials for the energy store segment inclusively, the battery production for electric vehicles. And we're very committed to be able to provide a sustainable supply of lithium with one of the lowest carbon footprint plants in the industry around the world. We have an extremely strong leadership team that we've built up this far with years of proven experience in the market. And we're really excited about the customer base that we're currently building to be able to consume them product that we're making from our asset here in North Carolina. Thanks Eileen for the quick introduction. Thank

Speaker 2:

You, David. Um, many audience will ask where does Leatham come from and how could that impact those Kalana and the United States?

Speaker 3:

Correct. That's a great question. If you, if you've done any reading on lithium, lithium is in a lot of different parts of the world. It really typically comes from two different types of resource bases. One is, uh, in indigenous frog, uh, basically called spa bean is where you'll, you'll hear the word spot mean. So lithium is contained in spa[inaudible] time resource, and it's, it's a lot of it's in pegmatite type rock area, formations around the world. And then also it is actually coming from an extracted from lithium chloride salts that can be found in, in different Bryon pools. So you have a, a hard rock, like a solid rock material that's in the ground, or you can extract it from a brine resource, almost like a very salty type water that it can be extracted from those resources. Some of the largest deposits of lithium in the world are located in places like Chile, Argentina in south America, also Bolivia. So you'll hear the term, the lithium triangle in south America, and that's Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia that corner of the, where those countries meet. There's a high concentration of a Brian field there. The Celerity on a calm is one of the Brian feels that isn't Chile, where a lot of lithium is extracted. You also have a similar type setup in Argentina. And then if you get into places like Australia and even here in North Carolina, those are the resource bases that have the hard rock or the rock formations where lithium is contained in the spa and material. Again, like I said, North Carolina, the 10 spots me bell here that runs through North Carolina is a very large resource, whether there's a lot of lithium containing spot to meet, that is where our project is going to be based where we will be cruising lithium, you know, having the capability to develop a region for the U S and how that impacts North Carolina in the U S is really important. And that's part of our mission here at Piedmont. Lithium is really to operate the largest, most sustainable spot to mean to lithium hydroxide operation in north America, to be able to impact North Carolina from a jobs perspective and economic impact perspective is something that we're really excited about. And then it also means into the opportunity for us to help develop that supply chain for lithium-ion batteries in north America. You know, I always say it's great to build batteries, but you need lithium to make the lithium-ion batteries work. So everything starts with us being able to, to mine lithium, and to be able to produce it sustainably and cost effectively here in North Carolina. And as I've mentioned, we'll have one of the lowest footprint lithium operations globally. And our goal is to be highly integrated with our community to ensure that we build a safe environmentally friendly lithium operation right here in North Carolina, in Gaston county. There's a lot of other ways to extract lithium that are being developed as well. Direct liquid extraction, geothermal Brians are being talked about, but a lot of those have a lot of technical risks and really no environmental impact studies have been, have been conducted on those to determine its sustainability and viability, but we're extremely confident that our operation here in North Carolina will provide a sustainable, safe supply of lithium for the United States. So that's kind of a quick overview, uh, Eileen of where lithium comes from. And there's a lot of lithium around the world. It also in really trying to explain a little bit the impact here in the United States and specifically in North Carolina with the Piedmont lithium project and asset that we're going to build here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, David, for the great information. I think the next question might be a little bit technical. Can you explain what applications lithium is used in and what is specifically, what is DCMS row in the lithium Aron battery?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, that's a great question. You know, Lithium's been around for a long time and lithium-ion batteries have a band around. And, you know, since the early nineties in a lot of different consumer product applications, everybody that has a mobile phone or a laptop or a tablet, computer lithium-ion batteries are in them. And they've been around for, you know, 10 plus years, you know, there's been all kinds of different battery developments that started in Asia, specifically in Japan, uh, where lithium-ion batteries were actually invented, but that's only one application and I'll come back to batteries in a little bit, but the other applications are really wide and diverse. And this ranges from things like glass and ceramics. And you can think about your, whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone, whatever it may be, the screen on that phone has lithium and it actually to provide Hartness and protection of your device. So it doesn't get scratch or break. So lithium is used in screens and computers and phones, laptops, things like that to provide a property that allows them to be more durable. It's also using things like greases and loop for kids. If you go to the, any of your hardware stores and you look for any type of grease for like a garage door opener or things like that, you'll see the word lithium. And on the label, it says it's a lithium based grease. Um, and it provides a lubrication, uh, property for Greece is that that's really unique as a, as an element. And then, like I mentioned, lithium-ion batteries is, is something that's that's, it's obviously in today, it has a lot of different properties. Lithium is a very, very unique element. That's on a periodic table. It's the lightest metal provides. Like I mentioned, a lot of processing advantages in things like glass and ceramic production. And it's also used at lithium-ion batteries because it's able to really provide that a charge discharge mechanism and have a high level of energy density. It can hold, you know, one of the things that a lot of people may have heard of, but I'll, I'll mention since again, lithium is used in a lot of diverse applications. It is actually used in the healthcare industry, uh, quite extensively, uh, to treat mental health issues like bipolar disease. So a lot of medications or they're using it for things like Alzheimer's now, but it is also used as a chemical treatment process for mental health issues like Alzheimer's and bipolar disorder. Let me answer the last question you had about really what's the, the role of lithium lithium-ion batteries. Like I mentioned earlier, you know, a bad lithium-ion battery doesn't work without lithium in it, obviously. And really the role of lithium ion battery is that when you have, you basically have lithium ions and move back and forth between the negative electrode of a battery to the positive electrode of a battery. So if you look at any battery, you have, it has a negative and a positive electrode on it. And what happens is the lithium in that battery moves back and forth between the negative and positive electrodes. And that happens when you're charging it. So it goes back to the negative electrode as you charge your battery. And when you discharge it, it goes to the positive electrode. So that's what really creates that energy and allows you to, if the energy is dissipated and it allows you to power your phones or iPads, or it also is used now in electric vehicles to power your electric vehicle, kind of the application and how it's used, or the role of lithium in a battery in one other area to watch. And I'm just, just mentioned this as a side note, you know, there's a lot of talk about wind and solar energy and in renewable resources of energy, which I think are great and are going to help climate goals is things like wind solar in the way you can store that energy. If it's not being able to be put back into the grid is stored through lithium-ion batteries. So as it, when it's sunny during the day or windy during the day, you could store all that energy that you're generating from that renewable source into a battery. And then at nighttime, when the consumer might need it, when they get home and they turn on their air conditioner or plug in their car to charge that energy can be dissipated back into the grid and help manage the loads of the, the, the grid system across the United States, as well as manage the cost. So that's another little app out there that's slowly getting, uh, getting popular and a lot of work is being done using lithium-ion batteries in bridge storage.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, David. Thank you for the explanation. Um, it looks like lithium is such important materials in many industries. Can you tell a little bit about the importance of, uh, having locally sourced supply the lithium? It looks like, uh, the supply chain has been a great issue during the pandemic last year. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. Yeah, we, we learned a lot about supply chain challenges, I think over the last 12 to 18 months with the pandemic, for sure. And in a number of areas and you'll lithium in the future is not going to be, to assume other there's, like I mentioned, there's only certain parts of the world where lithium is found and produced in making sure that, you know, as a country and I'll speak as the United States, Europe is doing the same thing. You know, China has been very focused on lithium-ion batteries have been focused on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. And that has been driven primarily by electrification of their transportation fleet in, in China and other countries are falling along. Europe is big. Like I said in the United States now has really started to kick in, but having that locally sourced supply lithium it's, it is a couple of things. One, you know, it gets you closer to your customer, um, and it localizes the supply chain and the, and the ability to, to, to move materials into, uh, the production of, for example, batteries. Right. Um, can, if you look at today, it's just the kind of history of how lithium is evolved and how conversion of lithium materials has evolved. You know, like I said, China really has been pushing hard around electrification of the transportation grid and that's, that's necessitated the need of, of lithium and lithium ion batteries. So nearly a hundred percent of spa. I mean, so the hard rock resource that I mentioned earlier today, curves in China to produce those lithium chemicals, because there's a, there's a very large demand in China and in Asia, Pacific Korea, Japan, other areas as well that need lithium from those sources. So that creates challenges right, for other, other parts of the world. And it creates challenges for the industry and the ability to make sure that we've got a long-term sustainable supply. So, like I said, in Europe, in the United States, that's an evolving market. Now it's growing the automotive OEMs for example, are looking for ways to localize their buy chain and source more materials locally, which is something that you try to do for a number of reasons. One is security of supply. The other is, is obviously costs. Um, and in the United States, you know, if you've, if you've read the news or watched any of the announcements recently about the transportation bill infrastructure, buildings like that, there's a lot of support both financially and policy driven to help set up a localized supply chain for the production of electric vehicles and lithium-ion in the United States. And that's great because there's an opportunity there for spending in the areas of, you know, the supply chain for AB is whether that is building, um, you know, again, buying chemicals for, for batteries, building material plans for building actually battery plants for the lithium supply to demand supply chain, uh, uh, value. So I think there's an opportunity there. And really, if you think about it, um, to be able to, to really regionalize the, the supply chain for the United States, it makes sense for everything to move closer to your customers. So as the us bills, more battery manufacturing, more automotive OEMs, for example, build more electric vehicles in the United States, trying to regionalize that supply chain is going to be absolutely critical because that gives you better costs, faster speed to market. And also it just helps over reduce your overall carbon footprint as a, as a company. So that's something that's really important. And, you know, I know North Carolina and Piedmont, lithium are very strategically positioned to take advantage. As I mentioned, the resource in North Carolina, as well as the project that we have with Piedmont lithium, um, it's proximity to Europe is also important. As many of the European OEMs are also looking to do the same thing about localizing their supply chain. And, you know, just a couple quick antidotes Eileen to, to mention, um, you know, arrival has announced that they're going to bill, you know, their micro factory here to produce electric, uh, delivery mans in Charlotte. I think that's a phenomenal opportunity for Mecklenburg county and for Charlotte to be able to attract a electric delivery van company here to the region to be able to build those vehicles. That's really incredible to see that. And I think that's one of many that you'll see. Um, and then you have companies like general motors in the United States who has said, they're going to produce only electric vehicle, uh, fleet by 2035. And it sounds like it's a long ways away, but it's really not. When you think about the transition that that company will go through over the next 10 plus years to basically invest billions of dollars to electrify their entire fleet. Um, you know, Ford came out just a couple of weeks ago and said the same thing that they really want to have over 40% of their vehicles, electric five by 2030, they're investing in, you know, 20 some billion dollars of investment in, um, you know, really investments around electric vehicle and electrification of their fleet. So if you think about the amount of energy and the amount of investment that's now being, um, put in place in the United States, for example, having a localized supply chain and a localized supply chain specifically with lithium is extremely important. Um, remember lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles don't move without lifting them. So ensuring that we have a localized infrastructure for that and a localized supply chain to be able to produce a supply lithium for the United States is absolutely vital for, uh, for our goals in terms of what we have for a country.

Speaker 2:

Wow. This is a lot of important information. Thank you again, David, for sharing your insights. We're looking forward to hearing more about[inaudible] and upcoming news in the new future, all the best to you and the PMR lithium for the audience. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Allie.

Speaker 1:

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