Form Submission: Participation Entry

Lithium has been used for an extensive array of application: production of lubricants, as an additive in the production of glass and ceramic, and more recently in rechargeable batteries. This latter category is already one of the dominant consuming sectors of lithium, and is expected to utilize more than half of the global yearly production of lithium by 2020 because of the anticipated rapid increase in the number of electric vehicles. This research is intended as a first milestone in creating a better understanding of the current and future global consumption of lithium. To do so, we outline suppliers, sectoral consumption, and outflows, for the globe and the US. This research is tailored towards the ongoing debate on the evolution of the automotive sector and its resource demands, and provides a fundamental database that will be exploited in future research to generate forecasts of the extraction and consumption of lithium.