Amerika ruošia akumuliatorių gamyklas – jai taip pat reikia kasyklų

„Ateikite į netoliese nuo jūsų esantį rajoną: mineralų kasyklos ir chemijos gamyklos.

 

    Didelės investicijos į elektrinių transporto priemonių baterijų gamybą JAV vis didėja, pastaruoju metu iš Japonijos. „Toyota“ trečiadienį pranešė, kad, be gruodį skirtų 1,3 mlrd. dolerių, skirs dar 2,5 mlrd. Pirmadienį „Honda“ paskelbė apie bendrą įmonę su Korėjos akumuliatorių gigantu „LG Energy“ kuriant JAV elementų gamyklą, tikriausiai Ohajo valstijoje. Praėjusią savaitę „The Wall Street Journal“ pranešė, kad „Panasonic“, ilgametis „Tesla“ akumuliatorių tiekėjas, svarsto galimybę išleisti 4 mlrd. dolerių gamyklai Oklahomoje.

 

    Visa tai reiškia, kad automobilių gamintojai, galbūt, gali pradėti atsipalaiduoti, galvodami, kur gaus elektromobilių baterijas. Dabar sunkesnis klausimas yra, kur jie gaus baterijų medžiagas. Turi vykti dar viena investicijų į žaliavas, tokias, kaip apdorotas litis ir nikelis,  – ir su nauja skuba.

 

    Prezidento Bideno infliacijos mažinimo įstatymas, įsigaliojęs rugpjūčio 16 d., išplėtė esamą 7500 dolerių EV mokesčių kreditų režimą ir agresyviai susiejo jį su vietiniu tiekimu. Norint gauti kreditą, elektromobilius reikia surinkti iš karto Šiaurės Amerikoje. Nuo kitų metų pusę baterijų komponentų vertės reikės pagaminti Šiaurės Amerikoje, kad būtų gauta pusė mokesčių kredito. Kita mokesčių kredito pusė yra susieta su JAV arba laisvosios prekybos partnerių išgaunamų ar perdirbtų „kritinių naudingųjų iškasenų“ verte.

 

    Turbūt labiausiai varginantis faktas, kad elektromobiliams, kuriuose naudojamos dalys iš „susirūpinimą keliančių užsienio subjektų“, iš grupės, įskaitančios Kiniją ir Rusiją, nuo 2024 m. netaikomi subsidijavimai už akumuliatorių komponentus, o nuo 2025 m. – už svarbiausius mineralus. Atsižvelgiant į tai, kad Kinija yra pasaulinis baterijų gamybos ir mineralų rafinavimo centras – veiksmai, kurių metu ličio ir nikelio iškasamos formos paverčiamos naudingomis baterijų įvestimis, automobilių gamintojams bus sunku tai išspręsti.

 

    „Ford“, kuris ėmėsi Kinijos tiekėjų, skubėdamas parduoti pavyzdinius elektromobilius prieš „General Motors“, gali atsidurti ypač keblioje vietoje. Liepos pabaigoje ji paskelbė apie daugybę baterijų ir jų įvesties saugos sandorių, įskaitant su Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. arba CATL. Pranešama, kad ši Kinijos baterijų milžinė svarstė galimybę statyti gamyklą Meksikoje arba JAV, bet sustabdo šiuos planus dėl pastaruoju metu kilusios įtampos dėl Taivano. Ar elektromobiliams, kurie gauna baterijas iš CATL gamyklos Šiaurės Amerikoje, būtų galima gauti subsidijas, yra vienas iš daugelio neaiškumų, susijusių su naujais mokesčių kreditais.

 

    CATL konkurentai Pietų Korėjoje ir Japonijoje, tiekiantys baterijas visiems pagrindiniams automobilių gamintojams, labai priklauso nuo Kinijos tiekimo grandinių. Gyeonginas Hwangas, Korėjos pramonės ekonomikos ir prekybos instituto mokslininkas, teigia, kad Korėjos žaidėjai apytiksliai 70% savo indėlių gauna iš Kinijos, o sukurti panašius perdirbimo pajėgumus namuose būtų brangu dėl aplinkosaugos taisyklių. Tikriausiai, „Panasonic“ situacija nesiskiria.

 

    Kaip toli ir kaip greitai elektromobilių ir baterijų gamintojai turi suktis, priklauso nuo to, kaip Iždo departamentas interpretuoja Infliacijos mažinimo įstatymą. Šis procesas, dėl kurio ateinančiais mėnesiais bus vykdomas intensyvus lobizmas, gali susilpninti kai kurias stygas. Abigail Wulf, advokacijos grupės „Securing America's Future Energy“ svarbių mineralų strategijos direktorė, mano, kad, kalbant apie „baterijos komponentus“, kuriuos reikia „pagaminti arba surinkti“ Šiaurės Amerikoje, yra daug vietos neaiškumams.

 

    Akivaizdu, kad Vašingtonas gali susitarti dėl EV tiekimo grandinės įvairinimo nuo Kinijos. Vienaip ar kitaip, automobilių gamintojai, turintys ambicijų klestinčioje JAV elektromobilių rinkoje, daro spaudimą visur, kur tik įmanoma, lokalizuoti Amerikoje. Tai nebus greita ar pigu: mineralų gavyba ir ypač jų perdirbimas į chemines medžiagas yra sudėtingas ir dažnai nešvarus verslas. Demokratinėse šalyse projektai susidurs su tokia vietine opozicija, kuri Kinijoje negauna didelio balso. Aukšti aplinkosaugos standartai bus čia svarbiausi.

 

    JAV gali susidurti su dviejų tipų konkuruojančiais elektromobiliais: kai kurie su pigiomis baterijų dalimis ir kai kurie su mokesčių kreditais iš Vašingtono. Su kiekvienais metais bus vis sunkiau gauti naudos iš abiejų, kaip tai darė daugelis gamintojų iki šiol.“ [1]

 

1. America Is Getting Battery Plants -- It Also Needs Mines
Wilmot, Stephen. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 Sep 2022: B.12.

America Is Getting Battery Plants -- It Also Needs Mines

"Coming to a neighborhood near you: mineral mines and chemical plants.

Big investments in electric-vehicle battery manufacturing in the U.S. keep rolling in, most recently from Japan. Toyota on Wednesday said it would plow a further $2.5 billion into a cell-production facility it is building near Liberty, N.C., on top of roughly $1.3 billion committed in December. On Monday, Honda announced a joint venture with Korean battery giant LG Energy for a U.S. cell plant, probably in Ohio. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Panasonic, Tesla's longtime battery supplier, is in discussions to spend $4 billion on a plant in Oklahoma.

All this means car makers can perhaps start to relax about where they will get EV batteries. The tougher question now is where they will get battery materials. Another wave of investment in inputs such as processed lithium and nickel needs to follow -- and with a new urgency.

President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which came into force on Aug. 16, expanded the existing $7,500 EV tax-credit regime while tying it aggressively to local sourcing. Starting immediately, EVs need to be assembled in North America to qualify. Starting next year, half the value of their battery components need to be made in North America to get half the tax credit. The other half of the tax credit is linked to the value of "critical minerals" mined or processed in the U.S. or free-trade partners.

Perhaps most onerous, EVs with any inputs from "foreign entities of concern," a group including China and Russia, are excluded from subsidies starting in 2024 for battery components and 2025 for critical minerals. Given that China is the global hub for battery-mineral refining -- the steps that turn lithium and nickel from their mined forms into useful battery inputs -- this will be hard for auto makers to work around.

Ford, which has embraced Chinese suppliers in a rush to get flagship EVs out ahead of General Motors, could be in a particularly awkward spot. In late July, it announced a series of deals to secure batteries and their inputs, including with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., or CATL. China's battery giant was reportedly looking at building a plant in Mexico or the U.S., only to pause the plans following the recent tensions over Taiwan. Whether EVs that get batteries from a CATL plant in North America would qualify for subsidies is one of many uncertainties surrounding the new tax credits.

CATL's rivals in South Korea and Japan, which supply batteries to all the major car makers, are extremely reliant on Chinese supply chains. Gyeongin Hwang, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, says the Korean players get roughly 70% of their inputs from China, and that building up comparable refining capacity at home would be expensive because of environmental regulations. The situation probably isn't much different for Panasonic.

How far and how fast EV and battery makers need to scramble depends on how the Treasury Department interprets the Inflation Reduction Act. This process, which will be subject to intense lobbying over the coming months, could weaken some of the strings attached. Abigail Wulf, director of critical minerals strategy for advocacy group Securing America's Future Energy, sees wiggle room in language like "battery components" that need to be "manufactured or assembled" in North America.

What is clear is that diversifying the EV supply chain away from China is something Washington can agree on. One way or another, pressure is building on auto makers with ambitions in the booming U.S. EV market to localize wherever possible. This won't be quick or cheap: Mining minerals and processing them into chemicals in particular is a difficult and often dirty business. In democracies, projects will face the kind of local opposition that doesn't get much of a voice in China. High environmental standards will be key.

The U.S. could end up with two types of competing EVs: some with cheap battery parts and some with tax credits from Washington. Benefiting from both, as many manufacturers have done to date, will become harder with each passing year." [1]

1. America Is Getting Battery Plants -- It Also Needs Mines
Wilmot, Stephen. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 Sep 2022: B.12.

Students pitched their tents under the windows of the ministry: our message is very simple - those rent prices are cosmic

 

We will emigrate. Scandinavian banks think that the territory of Lithuania has long been the land of the Scandinavians and have been keeping high the prices of apartments. When we're all gone, the Scandinavians will buy everything. They get normal salaries.

 

    "Students organized a protest in front of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports on Wednesday. The organizers of the action want to draw attention to the ministry's lack of economy and lack of a vision for higher education.

 

    Protesters pitched tents on the lawn near the ministry. This is how they protested the fact that not all students can get university dormitories this year.

 

    "Our message is very simple. We have clearly seen for some time now, the Government, the representatives of the authorities see that a huge social crisis has developed in the country's major cities.

 

    Renting an apartment price is simply fantastic, cosmic.

 

    Now you can pay 550 euros for renting a one-room apartment in Vilnius, plus utility costs, and where is the living: food and the like," one participant of the campaign told LNK.

 

    He said that this price is simply unbearable for students.

 

    "Of course, if you want to work at the same time as a courier, everything is possible. But we live in a state that prides itself on the attributes of some sort of welfare state. By normalizing this situation, saying that it is just the way it is, saying that we have no control over it…

 

    We demand that control from the Government in a broad sense, but what affects students - the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports the most," he ironized.

 

    A participant in the protest explained that a measure must be created to help students who want to rent an apartment in the private sector.

 

    "A mechanism must be created so that universities can share information about the dormitories that are occupied and where there may be spaces. And we also have to take care of the renovation of the dormitories, hygiene standards," he said.

 

    The organizer of the protest, Justina Motiejauskaitė, told LNK that the Vice Minister of Education, Science and Sports who came to talk to the protesters did not see a single student who came and could not find a place to live.

 

    "But it should be understood that first-year students have just left home, just left their parents, they don't know how to live yet. (…) I think that the problem exists, it is visible, there are examples. But those people don't know how to approach higher-ranking representatives of the university," said the girl.

 

    The Vice Minister calls for finding apartments and using compensations.

 

    According to her, there is quite little information about possible compensations, especially for a person starting to study.

 

    "You have to have already started your studies, study well to get them," she said.

 

    The organizer of the protest said that this year this situation arose due to rising real estate prices.

 

    "We see that the rent prices for the smallest room start from 200 euros, even more. In addition to those 200 euros, invisible fees are added - you pay the broker, the tenant, the deposit. (…) We have prices that add up to a thousand euros for the smallest apartment in Vilnius, which is in a remote corner. This way, you cannot normally go to the university, to the job that you are forced to find, instead of devoting all your time to studies," the girl told LNK.

 

    Although there are thousands of students in the country, a few tens came to this protest.

 

    "We can see from the number of attendees and the contingent that this is not a national problem," said Vice Minister Gintautas Jakštas.

 

    He said that the ministry is not responsible for the dormitories and does not own them."