It’s critical: Calls for Australia to go big and fast or miss green minerals boom

A week ago, Ford was awarded a $US9.2 billion ($14 billion) loan to build battery plants.

However, Buckley said China was likely to maintain its lead in the clean energy race, outspending the US four to one.

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“China is going to exit this decade with a higher global market share than they have today because they’re moving faster than anyone,” he said.

Meanwhile, Australia’s efforts are more modest. In June the federal government gave its Northern Australia Investment Fund an additional $500 million to support critical mineral projects.

Buckley called for government support proportional to the size of the opportunity.

“Five hundred million dollars is one step, we need 100 steps,” he said.

The opportunity for Australia is to move from the dig and ship model of coal and iron ore to creating more value by processing the mineral here.

Dusci – whose company mines nickel, copper, cobalt and lithium in WA – thinks processing minerals for batteries would logically be done in two different hubs. Highly refined chemicals would be produced near the mines of the raw material, and batteries would be produced with those chemicals near electric vehicle plants.

In April IGO and Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo Metals secured land in the Kwinana industrial area for a possible plant to refine nickel and manufacture material for battery cathodes. Nearby it is invested in a lithium hydroxide plant with US firm Albemarle and China’s Tianqi.

Dusci believes in the less established sectors of batteries for power grids and heavy equipment, Australia may be able to support some manufacturing.

Australia’s opportunity starts with what is in the ground: more than 20 per cent of economic resources for lithium, cobalt and nickel and a significant share for many others, according to the federal government’s resources energy quarterly released on Monday.

But the opportunity is moving quickly: global production of batteries has grown 40 per cent a year for the past five years. Ever-cheaper batteries have helped the boom, with costs dropping 86 per cent over a decade.

Independent member for Curtin Kate Chaney said it was hard for governments to get their heads around the scale of the critical mineral market and the speed at which they needed to respond.

Chaney said WA had to repeat its past successors at investing in new industries, citing the water pipeline to Kalgoorlie that allowed the gold rush and the first gas exports from the North West Shelf project.

“We’re now on the cusp of the next big wave of opportunity, and it will require similarly bold thinking to make sure that we don’t get left behind,” she said,

Chaney said the dominance of gas in the discussion of industrial development in WA could be slowing the state’s pursuit of critical minerals.

“Whenever there is a huge structural transition, it’s perfectly natural the industries that lose out of that will find reasons to delay and put it off for as long as possible,” she said.

“I think we’re seeing that now with the gas industry.”