Alexander Borsch
Master Thesis - Environmental Engineering - 2019
Efforts to mitigate climate change have led to a rise in demand for decarbonised transport. The electrification of passenger cars is imminent, with battery powered propulsion being the most promising path of technology. Cobalt and Lithium play important roles in current state-of-the-art Lithium-ion batteries, which makes their supply crucial for the European Union to achieve its self-set goal of becoming a world leader in battery technology and its aim for an Electric Vehicle (EV) market share of 30% in 2030.
Thus, in this thesis, the future Cobalt and Lithium demand is modelled by means of three scenarios enabling the assessment of the supply side. The passenger car demand, which represents the basis for all scenarios is built using a stock-driven Material Flow Analysis (MFA) model to estimate the market up to 2050. It turns out, that the technology development has a sizeable effect on demand in the long term. The near future demand is dominated by the utilised battery capacities and minor energy density improvements.