Tapping Canada's Battery Metals
Lofty green bonds coming due; Keeping cool in India; Grid batteries keep getting bigger; China installed 100 solar panels a second in May; Brampton's $4B electric bus deal
Hi everyone,
This issue we get to see how Western Canada offer incredible potential for battery metals, while also linking this to a new imperative: electrifying economies.
As usual, there are plenty of signpost stories, many with my comments. I encourage you to see what I have to say here too.
Thanks for continuing to read and share this with others who may be interested.
Peter
Peter’s Take: Why Battery Metals Matter
Western Canada could support a globally competitive value chain in battery metals. That’s the conclusion of a detailed report that recently came out showing governments the roadmap for tapping this incredible economic opportunity. I’m proud to say that many of the people involved in preparing the report are or have been associated with the Energy Futures Lab, of which I was a Fellow and now remain as an Ambassador.
The report, Towards a Western Canadian Battery Value Chain, appropriately incorporates some great hockey analogies: “give and go” and “bar down”. At least read the Executive Summary to understand how the clusters identified could work together synergistically to tap Canada’s resource bounty and create new industrial capacity. The report was covered by media:
How Canada’s critical minerals push may spur hundreds of thousands of jobs
Western Canada holds potential to become a 'critical minerals processing behemoth,' expert says
This isn’t just any industrial capacity that would create jobs, it is a capacity associated with the growing economic opportunity associated with electrifying energy use. It would deliver high-paying jobs boosting economic productivity and creating long term economic wealth for Canada. And as we are witnessing, the onshoring of a domestic supply chain and technical know-how in battery metals works to our advantage in a world increasingly fractured by trade wars.
For a model of a country doing exactly that, look to China. It is harnessing its resource bounty and manufacturing strengths to be the first “electro-state”. As proof, China manufactures 70% of the world’s EVs, over 75% of batteries, and 80% of solar panels. These are all things in more demand globally and which also lessen its own dependence on coal and imported oil.
So how does Canada compare when it comes to electrifying its economy. See the chart below from Ember on the right shows how China is electrifying its economy at a pace of about 10% per decade for the last two decades. Bloomberg unpacked this for a number of countries, including Canada. Together, these graphs show the US, UK and Canada are basically flat, with Canada less electrified than the US and UK.
So, what exactly, can governments do to support the development of this new economic capability? The report offers recommendations specific to each cluster. To name a few, they include things like making green electricity abundant, which requires supportive policy for new generation and for building out related transmission infrastructure. Getting resources from the north for processing in the south will also require investment in transportation infrastructure. It also means having the vision to invest for the long-haul for building a workforce with the specific skills needed in the battery and critical minerals value chain.
Western Canada is blessed with a resource bounty that it could leverage to create new jobs fit for the economy of the future: electric. It is up to us to elect governments that have the vision to make it happen.
Finance & Sentiment
Green Bond Volumes Nearing $3 trillion. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) produced a very detailed report on green bonds. Some key points coming from this report:
There has been substantial growth since the 2015 Paris agreement, with issuers from a variety of sectors - governments, financial institutions and corporations
When GHG regulations tighten, more bond issuances typically follow
When issued by corporations in high-emitting sectors, it is a good indication of their pursuit of emission reductions.
Yet there is the risk of not meeting the target(s) associated with the bond's more attractive lending rate, as some companies are finding out with some of the more ambitious green bond deals. Bloomberg reported that hundreds of companies have to hit ESG goals this year or pay up. Remember - there was a lot of frothy ESG ambition a few years ago. Some companies have found it challenging to deliver on those lofty ambitions.
Credit: BIS Quarterly Review, March 2025
Hydrogen
Pull-back on hydrogen by companies continues. Australia's largest green hydrogen project has been officially scrapped by lead developer. Honda is scaling back its plan to build a massive hydrogen fuel cell factory in Japan. And Chinese automaker Geely has scrapped a 100-million-tonne green hydrogen-to-methanol project.
Carbon Capture & Removal
Microsoft signs two multi-million tonne carbon removal deals: 4.8MT for improved forest management and 2.8 MT for regenerative agriculture, both in the US.
Urban Design & Buildings
sonnen launches virtual power plant in Canadian sustainable home community. Granted the scale isn’t that large, though an important marker for demonstrating the value proposition for VPPs. Nice to see this happening in Edmonton, where I grew up.
French company offers router capable of redirecting surplus solar to water heating. Another example of pairing hardware with smart software in service of greater electrification.
Octopus Energy partners BYD to offer free EV charging. This story could have gone in the Transportation section, though it really is more about leveraging EVs as grid-batteries, again, enabled by smart software - in this case Octopus’ Kraken software. Very creative. Octopus continues to impress.
The Grid
Texas firm aims to build world's largest data energy complex with nuclear, gas, solar. Very ambitious plans that I expect will be tempered with the realities of the difficulty in getting new nuclear and gas generation built. They will be getting in a line growing longer for equipment orders.
Forget AI. Keeping cool is the bigger power sector problem. A bit of a longer opinion piece by Reuters - helps us understand the projected growth of air conditioning, particularly for India. Lots of graphs and granted these are projections but still worth noting. When graphs are at least half history, the projections tend to be more credible.
Key Australian transmission link delayed by two years due to extra regulatory and consultation work.
Nuclear
New York Announces Ambition for New Nuclear Plant to Support Clean Energy Goals
Energy Storage
Moment Energy reaches full-scale production of BESS using second-life EV batteries in Vancouver. Nice to see this happening in Canada too.
PowerChina begins construction of 1GW/6GWh BESS project. Whoa, that is very, very big.
World’s largest vanadium flow battery goes online in China.
China Energy Engineering launches record 25 GWh storage tender as prices hit historic low. This is a pivotal moment in China, as they move to market-based pricing systems. And with the low bid prices coming in, it shows how battery costs continue their descent as scaling of energy storage continues.
BW ESS, Ibersun to develop 2.2 GW of battery storage in Spain
Alinta Energy green lights South Australia’s largest BESS project. A rendering of the 250MW, 1000MWh facility is shown below, courtesy of Alinta. I’m seeing a recent shift to longer duration storage - in this case four hours, when many of the early grid battery deployments were two hours. I chalk this up to shaving more of the peak load using renewables.
Tesla, Shanghai sign $557 million energy storage station deal, Yicai reports
Solar and Wind
WorldOne Energies to set up 1 GW solar module factory in Canada. If I posted stories on new solar manufacturing facilities, there’d be way too many. But here we have a modest one coming to Canada, in Ontario.
“Just staggering:” China installs 100 solar panels a second as total PV capacity tops 1 terawatt. China made a policy change that took effect on June 1st which moves renewable projects from fixed pricing contracts to market-based trading (Contracts-for-Difference). It has triggered this rush to complete projects in May. A slowdown in installations for the balance of 2025 is expected by many, though a need to stimulate their own economy in the face of tariff wars could act to counterbalance the policy change. I’ve learned to never underestimate China.
India launches tender for 1.2 GW of solar with 600 MW/3,600 MWh of storage. Pairing of solar plus batteries is a winning combo.
ACE Power receives green light for 800MWh solar-plus-storage site in Western Australia. Again, pairing of solar plus batteries is a winning combo.
GCL Optoelectronics finishes 1 GW perovskite PV module factory in China. This is a milestone to be marked, as it is the world’s first gigawatt-scale manufacturing facility for perovskite solar modules.
Meta Secures Nearly 800 MW of Renewable Energy to Power U.S. Data Centers
First Nations developer seeking federal approval for one of Australia’s largest hybrid renewables projects.
The project proposes to combine up to 1000 megawatts (MW) of wind and 500 MW of solar generation facilities, with the option for energy storage, and associated hardware and infrastructure.
Ikea begins offering balcony solar kits. Only in Germany for now. The system can be also paired with a battery that comes in two sizes. I didn’t realize Ikea also sold heat pumps in Germany. They are also chasing circularity in their products. Earlier this year I heard they were trying out “furniture banks”, similar to food banks. It is a remarkable sustainability agenda for a privately held company. Not having to be judged by quarterly financial reporting has been said to be a plus for advancing agendas that take a longer time to see results.
Transportation
Construction starts on $5.9B CATL-backed EV battery plant in Indonesia
BYD tests solid state battery it says can deliver 1,500 km EV range. Testing is planned until around 2027.
City of Brampton, Zenobē strike $4 billion electric transit bus deal. They say they plan to buy Canadian-made e-buses. Curious who those will come from.
Xiaomi gets 200,000 orders for new EV in incredible first 3 minutes. Reuters separately reported Tesla’s share of the Chinese EV market has been halved in recent years:
As domestic rivals increasingly win over Chinese consumers with snazzy new features, Tesla's share of the Chinese EV market has fallen from a peak of 15% in 2020 to 10% last year and then again to 7.6% for the first five months of 2025.
Uber to launch battery-swapping moped pilot and boosts EV charging in London
Hi Peter, just noting that by my read of the charts Canada has a higher level of electrification than the US and the UK. We are trending in the wrong direction though, which is a bit of an issue.