Li Liangbin, deputy to the National People's Congress: Encourage overseas mining to ensure the supply of new energy batteries

As climate issues become increasingly prominent, new energy transformation has gradually become a global consensus. In recent years, the development of the upstream and downstream layout of my country's power battery industry chain has shown a trend of rapid growth and intensive investment, and a series of forward-looking content related to it has also become a hot topic at the National Two Sessions.

Li Liangbin, deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman of Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Industry Group, suggested that the upstream layout of the new energy industry should be accelerated and the protection of key mineral resources should be strengthened.

On February 14, the European Parliament passed the "2035 European Agreement on Zero Emissions of New Fuel Cars and Small Trucks", which aims to stop the sale of new fuel cars and small trucks in the 27 EU countries in 2035.

In the past few years in our country, discussions on the establishment of a timetable for banning the sale of fuel vehicles have never stopped. Combined with the international energy crisis that broke out last year, this dynamic has aroused great concern in the domestic energy industry. Some people believe that under the background of increasingly severe environmental protection situation and declining traditional energy reserves, the development of new energy vehicles is the general trend.

Li Liangbin told the reporter of "China Economic Weekly" that the trend of stopping the sale of fuel-powered vehicles in many EU countries will increase the demand for energy storage systems in various countries.

If lithium batteries are used for energy storage, according to the current capacity planning statistics of various battery factories, by 2030, the global lithium battery production capacity will exceed 5,000GWh, and about 3 million tons of lithium carbonate will be needed to meet the battery plan. The production capacity is about 700,000 tons.

According to Li Liangbin's observation, in the new energy industry chain, the upstream resource end is often unable to match the expansion speed of the downstream battery end, resulting in an imbalance between the supply and demand ends of the industrial chain.

According to his further analysis, since most of the upstream resources such as lithium mines are distributed in relatively underdeveloped areas overseas, in addition to conventional project construction during the period, it may be necessary to rebuild infrastructure, such as power stations, transportation routes, etc., a mature lithium mine It generally takes about 2 years for a project to be constructed and put into operation, and the immature period will be extended to 5 to 8 years. As for the power battery industry downstream of the industrial chain, it only takes about a year for its production line expansion and construction process.

Li Liangbin believes that in the development of the new energy industry, attention should be paid to solving the problem of energy raw material supply guarantee, and put forward a series of specific suggestions.

Considering that my country's local lithium resource reserves account for a relatively low proportion of the world, Li Liangbin suggested that we should broaden our horizons and go overseas to find, invest, and develop more low-risk, low-cost high-quality mine resource projects, and give certain policies to overseas companies Or resource support, establish economic and trade cooperation mechanisms including trade, investment, and technical cooperation with resource countries, optimize the approval system without weakening supervision, promote business facilitation of foreign investment cooperation, and shorten project investment and construction cycles .

As far as the status quo of domestic resources is concerned, Li Liangbin believes that in recent years, the domestic industry has continuously iterated in lithium extraction technology, and resource projects have the advantage of rapid construction compared with foreign countries. However, the current domestic lithium resource geological survey lacks stable output, that is, new Fewer projects have become one of the important reasons for limiting the increase in domestic lithium production capacity. Therefore, it is suggested that, with the support of professional departments, integrate government and enterprise resources, concentrate efforts on lithium ore resource exploration, find more high-quality local mineral sources, and increase resource self-sufficiency.

From the perspective of resource recycling, Li Liangbin believes that with the arrival of the first wave of power battery decommissioning, the proportion of lithium resources extracted through waste battery regeneration will continue to increase in the future. It is recommended to vigorously carry out industry-university-research cooperation, and universities, institutions, and enterprises to participate in technological breakthroughs at the same time, realize efficient battery recycling as soon as possible, and prepare for the upcoming wave of decommissioning; at the same time, on the basis of the existing list of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, further improve the battery Recycling regulations, formulating clear reward and punishment rules, so that the entire industry can achieve sustainable development.