Cobalt Prices Rising Sharply This Year
October 29, 2021
By Paul Homewood
It’s not just energy prices that have been rocketing this year.
Cobalt prices are 70% higher than last year, and are fasting returning to the spike seen three years ago:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cobalt
Lithium has already overtaken 2018 spike, which was created by short term speculative forces, and stands 3915 higher than a year ago:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
And neodymium has doubled:
21 Comments
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Copper could also become a problem…
Low global copper supply imperils climate goals, Freeport CEO says
“There’s going to be a time when the world is going to be very short of copper,” Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson told investors after the company posted better-than-expected quarterly results. “Supply is a real issue for this industry.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/freeport-quarterly-profit-jumps-higher-copper-prices-2021-10-21/
And that is despite copper being the most recycled metal or long lived metal having read somewhere that around 95% of copper produced in the last century is still in use.
The law of supply and demand pricing. It is like the laws of thermodynamics, it is absolute. How we are ever going to make all the batteries and motors/generators that the net zero green idiots in government are betting on, at an ECOMOMIC cost? A lot of .our politicians have a degree in PPE, the E stands for economics!
This is a very crucial point that shows that battery cars will not get cheaper. This is another CCC lie that underpins their NetZero fiction. And as demonstrated by a pub chat a few weeks back, a lot of people will struggle to understand how this can be given that volume production brings cheaper prices in their minds.
But there already is volume production of EVs and all the other Green gizmos like heat pumps. The CCC appear to believe EVs are built in pre-Ford handcrafting workshops. But they are built in state of the art extremely modern automated factories. And since many components are shared with ICE cars, there is litte if any room for reduction in price due to scale. The same applies to distribution, marketing, corporate costs etc as these are all established brands. And unlike say mobile phones, there is no network effect.
EVs are not a brand new technology nor is their manufacture.
The fossil fuel devil we know gets infinitely better results than the Green devils we are getting to know, to our justified dismay.
CO 2 is becoming exonerated as the main climate controller, now becoming replaced by the sun and water vapour/clouds, influenced by cosmic rays.
All the decarbonisation costs are being wasted!
Yup, supply and demand. There must be a law of economics about that somewhere.
It was pretty obvious that the prices of these metals was going to go up big time. The CCC were even given a research paper, in 2019 on the finiteness of the metals needed for net zero. I doubt that it ever got further than their in tray and certainly it wouldn’t have made it’s way to Cabinet much less Boris.
I’d imagine that most here have read it but I’ll post the link again. I think I might post it off again to my MP who ignored it last time.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/leading-scientists-set-out-resource-challenge-of-meeting-net-zer.html
Should have bought some futures.
I stocked up on copper tube and fittings, also electric cable.
Would that be 391%, rather than 3915?
Inasmuch as all of these important metals must be mined and refined to make them useful, if the “greens” are successful in eliminating the fuels (biofuels) that are required for transportation the price won’t matter… nor will they even be needed. More “dim-bulb” policy making?
Likewise tin, of which the major use these days is in electronics, aluminium, nickel and others. A lot of this is supply chain issues, unlike the situation in natural gas, where the shortage appears to be lack of capital investment, to some extent due to green opposition, much exacerbated by the recent closure of a major storage facility.
Thanks Paul! In deed, up and up goes the price of these “transition” metals, while demand is increasing year to year at double digit, exponentially rising rates. I what would happen to the price if the authorities insist on land restitution instead of the horrible bloody mess the miners leave behind them now?
https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/the-ravages-of-lithium-extraction-in-chile/
Not to mention magnesium. With China controlling 90% of global supply and, having recently shut 35 of their 50 magnesium smelters to save energy (magnesium smelting being five times more energy intensive than steel fabrication), prices have hit record highs and exports dried up. Without magnesium, Western auto and metal alloy manufacturers will soon be forced to cease production as existing stocks are exhausted. Yet another unintended consequence of current energy and economic policies in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Is it unintended?
I would answer yes.
It is intended. They want you tn stay close to your home and rarely travelling far..
The only ones left with ICE powered vehicles will be the likes of law enforcement and the military.
This is what we can expect far more of now that we have allowed China to monopolise most of the world’s raw materials.
There is a programme on Channel 4 this evening about cobalt mining n the Congo. According to some silly woman in the Radio Times “cobalt is the clean fuel for the green revolution”. And no, I’m not making this up.
Chuck another cobalt brickette on the fire, dear.
It was an astonishing exposé on the environmental damage and harm to black African’s health and lives. It seems to have disappeared from the old Dispatches episodes on Channel 4. Was it too honest about their exploitation especially in light of the COP love-in?
The question is whether there can be substitution or not. Historically metal usage is switched as prices fluctuate because there are alternatives which might not be as “good” but which can still do the job – or sometimes are better but uneconomic until prices fall because their other uses stop e.g. silver in photography. High prices will encourage alternatives.
Net zero requires more Copper, Lithium, Cobalt and Rare Earths to be dug up in the next 20 years than have been produced in the whole of history. Most identified technically recoverable resources of Copper, Cobalt and Rare Earths are low-grade, implying that prices will have to go up, a lot, to make them economically recoverable reserves. Yet our idiot CCC assumes that all costs of net zero decrease over time.