Sudbury needs to put its “best foot forward” in anticipation of an economic payoff in the burgeoning Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) industry according to an educator at Cambrian College.
Steve Gravel, the manager at the Centre for Smart Mining, was speaking Thursday at a brief workshop to outline how the world automotive industry is making the shift toward electric vehicles.
He said the shift is truly significant. On a global scale, Gravel said there were roughly 11 million passenger BEVs in 2020. He said this number will range from 145 million to 230 million passenger vehicles by 2030.
Accordingly, said Gravel, this jump in the demand for BEVs is going to inspire a jump in the demand for battery-related metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium.
Gravel said this is why the critical minerals strategy is being called "a generational opportunity" for Canada.
"So when we're thinking about that and what they talked about, the critical mineral strategies they talked about was in terms of a generational opportunity for countries like ours that have mineral wealth. And as a lifelong Sudburian, what I think about it often is, this is a generational opportunity, but the degree to which we take advantage of it is not necessarily settled," said Gravel.
Another point in favour of the North he said is there is a growing demand for industrial land vacancies.
This means that people will be looking to rural and Northern Ontario to find new industrial sites to service the critical minerals supply chain, said Gravel.
He said this doesn't mean Sudbury is going to land a battery production plant, but Gravel said there could be opportunities for "precursor production facilities".
He also spoke of the benefit of a recently passed bill in the United States known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Gravel said despite its unfortunate acronym, stands to provide US$370 billion in climate and clean energy investments that would include the auto industry.
The other good news, Gravel said, is that Canadian minerals and cathode materials are included in the supply chain for the purposes of those US incentives.
Gravel also said Cambrian is working hard to adapt to new technologies to ensure that its students are ideal candidates to fill job vacancies in the future.
One of the newer areas of study he said is black mass — that is the industry term to describe a type of e-waste made up of end-of-life battery materials that would include lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and other materials.
Gravel said this will be important for battery recycling.
"So in order to re-feed these into smelters, or different processing cycles, we need to know what's in them," said Gravel.
He said this will add to Sudbury's continuing strong reputation as an integrated centre for mining, processing, and recycling. He said Cambrian College will contribute to that by providing students who are skilled and able to fill relevant vacancies.
Len Gillis covers mining and health care for Sudbury.com.
