'Known unknowns' for electric cars

Pedal to the Metal: A Model 3 Tesla. The CSIRO has released a report on the future supply and demand of critical metals needed to support the transition to a low emissions future.

A new report from the CSIRO is titled: "Known Unknowns: the devil in the details of energy metal demand".

A report that references an infamous quote by the late US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is surely worth our attention.

Of course, Rumsfeld was a notorious spinmeister - so let's hope the CSIRO isn't going down that path.

The CSIRO says its report uncovered "powerful and counter-intuitive insights into the future supply and demand of critical metals needed to support the transition to a low emissions future".

The report examined three electric vehicle [EV] battery metals - cobalt, lithium and nickel - under three different scenarios.

CSIRO's critical energy metals mission-in-development lead, Dr Jerad Ford, [crikey what a job title!] said: "We know that demand for many metals will increase substantially as the world transitions to a low carbon economy".

"But unsophisticated models based on current supply levels and basic recycling rates lead to many mischaracterisations of the real opportunities in both metal mining and recycling.

"They ignore the dynamics of material flows on a global scale and the expected changes in underlying technologies."

He said it was commonly assumed that demand for newly-mined metals like cobalt and nickel would continue to increase for the foreseeable future, as they are essential for high performance lithium-ion batteries used in EVs.

The CSIRO made its forecasts with a fancy tool called the "Physical Stocks and Flows Framework".

It found that changes in battery chemistry, quicker EV uptake and higher levels of recycling meant cobalt demand may have "an extremely short demand window before an extended glut".

As for nickel demand, it was predicted to peak early then fall back sharply, while demand for lithium "remains stronger for longer before also trailing off".

"This challenges conventional wisdom that the demand for these battery metals will mirror each other," Dr Ford said.

However, the CSIRO also said its "Physical Stocks and Flows Framework [PSFF] tool" was "not intended to be used as a prediction tool".

"Even a fully comprehensive PSFF cannot provide completely accurate forecasts because there are so many unknowns, interactions and complexities around the future demand for metals," Dr Ford said.

And there it is, Rumsfeld's known unknowns.

The CSIRO then added that its fancy forecast tool does "enable the development of internally consistent scenarios to explore how views on major components of the energy transition will play out and interact with each other".

We hate to say it, but we're seeing shades of Rumsfeld again with that technocratic quote.

Vax in the Blood

You may have heard that Oxford Languages declared "vax" word of the year for 2021.

As the overseers of the Oxford English Dictionary, the organisation is well placed to make such a declaration.

Its latest language report is titled "Vax: A report into the language of vaccines".

"The word vax, more than any other, has injected itself into the bloodstream of the English language in 2021," the company quipped.

That dad joke is ... well ... as sharp as a needle.