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There are 7M tons of cobalt reserves in the world. That is a “we don’t have enough of it” problem.
by sk2020 5y ago
There are 7M tons of cobalt reserves in the world. That is a “we don’t have enough of it” problem.
- brohee 5y agoKnown reserves, not reserves. (https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-cobalt.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-cobalt.pdf). Same known reserves were 4.5M tons in 2000. (https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/cobalt/210300.pdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium...). Despite all the extraction that happened during those 20 years, we now have more known reserves than before, because unsurprisingly, the more you look for something, the more of it you find.
- sk2020 5y agoDiscovering 2.5M tons in 20 years does not come close to the demand. You would need at least 3X the rate of discovery forever assuming we only ever serve the need of passenger vehicles and never increase world vehicle production. That’s a big hand-wave.
- brohee 5y agoReserves grew despite increased extraction. So far we are discovering faster than we can extract. Obviously it is something to keep an eye on but panic is not warranted.