Top Ten International News of Battery New Energy Industry in 2021: Labor pains and hopes exist side by side

If we do this again and again for a year, we have to be even more busy with everything. Battery Network (micro: mybattery) collates the top ten international news of the battery new energy industry in 2021, reviewing the 2021 years of pain and hope.

This year, nickel, cobalt, lithium "one mine is difficult to obtain", the global battle for mineral resources is once again white-hot.

This year, more and more traditional energy giants turn on "elephants" to accelerate their embrace of new energy and new materials.

This year, the global automobile enterprises collective core pain, chip shortage and electricity shortage spread.

This year, China's battery new energy market is still popular at the same time, production and sales hit new highs.

This year, the capital market "rose" constantly, Tesla became the first car company with a market capitalization of more than a trillion dollars, and Ningde era became the first company with a market capitalization of one trillion dollars on the gem.

This year, the field of new energy vehicles and energy storage recalls frequently, a huge recall fee caused the industry to think deeply.

This year, the global green transformation has become increasingly determined, and China's new energy generation has broken the trillion kilowatt-hour mark for the first time this year.

This year, battery recycling and echelon utilization again, attracting more and more enterprises to enter the track.

This year, under the dual-carbon goal, it has become a global consensus to strengthen green technology breakthroughs, and advanced battery technology has become the key technology to promote carbon reduction in the field of transportation.

This year, the global energy storage industry began to enter a period of accelerated development, Huawei signed the world's largest energy storage project, energy storage scale up to 1300MWh.

Global ore grabbing

On October 22nd, the Global Mineral Resources Strategy Research Center of China Geological Survey released the Evaluation report of Global Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, Tin and Potash Mineral Resources reserves (2021). Data show that by 2020, the global lithium ore (lithium carbonate) reserves of 128 million tons, resources of 349 million tons, mainly distributed in Chile, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia and other countries. Cobalt ore reserves of 6.68 million tons, resources of 23.44 million tons, Congo (Kinshasa), Indonesia, Australia and other countries are the most enriched. Nickel reserves are 90.63 million tons and resources are 260 million tons. Indonesia ranks first in the world in reserves, while Australia, Russia and other countries are rich in resources. From the consumer side, the global consumption of lithium (lithium carbonate) is about 400000 tons, cobalt about 170000 tons and nickel about 2.4 million tons in 2020, an increase of 6.2%, 15.3% and 7.3% respectively over the same period last year.

In 2021, the demand for clean energy and strategic emerging minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel increased sharply. Under "one mine is hard to find", prices soared collectively, and the global battle for mineral resources heated up again: in December, Pilbara, a leading Australian lithium mining company, sharply lowered its lithium ore shipment forecast to 380000-440000 tons for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. The company conducted three spodumene concentrate auctions in 2021. The highest price is US $2350 per ton (FOB,5.5% grade), far exceeding the high price of lithium ore around 2016. In November, the Chinese Embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo issued a notice that the provinces of Iturri, North Kivu and South Kivu in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are safe and high-risk areas, and recently, there have been a number of vicious cases such as armed robberies involving Chinese citizens. Earlier that month, the New York Times reported that 15 of the 19 existing cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were operated or funded by Chinese companies; in October, French New Caledonian mining company Prony Resources announced a multi-year nickel supply agreement with Tesla, which will purchase more than 42000 tons of nickel.

Net comments: in 2021, it can be clearly felt that the profit distribution of the battery industry chain is tilted to the upstream raw materials, and the price increases of many materials are higher than expected. A number of institutions predict that the pressure on the raw material side will continue to increase, the supply and demand of mineral resources with high demand in the battery field will still be tight in 2022, and prices may remain high or even reach new highs.

The giant turned around

Behind the tight supply of lithium, cobalt and nickel, the higher-than-expected growth in the downstream demand market is the main reason. Recently, Wu Hui, general manager of the Research Department of Ivy Economic Research Institute and director of China Battery Industry Research Institute, predicted that global production and sales of new energy vehicles will reach 22.4 million in 2025 and 47.81 million in 2030. In 2025, the global demand for power batteries will reach 1268.4GWh. with small batteries and energy storage batteries, the total shipment will reach 1615GWh. in 2030, the global demand for power batteries will reach 3083.5GWh. together with small batteries and energy storage batteries, total shipments will reach 3927GWh.

In 2021, car companies at home and abroad have announced to increase investment in new energy vehicles and batteries and expand the selection of "carbon neutral models": great Wall Automobile will invest 100 billion yuan in R & D in the next five years, focusing on research and development in the two major fields of new energy and intelligence. Volkswagen plans to invest 89 billion euros in electric vehicles and digital research and development. Toyota will invest 4 trillion yen to develop electric vehicles by 2030, raising the amount of new investment in batteries to 2 trillion yen. Nissan plans to invest 2 trillion yen over the next five years to accelerate the layout of electric-driven products and technological innovation. According to an analysis released by Reuters, global automakers plan to invest about $515 billion in the next five to 10 years to develop and build new electric vehicles and phase out internal combustion engines.

At the same time, under the high market boom, more and more traditional energy giants are turning around. The major domestic and foreign traditional fossil energy and chemical industry giants such as ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Duke Energy, Total, BASF, Dow Chemical, PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC, Yanzhou Mining Energy, Yongtai Energy, Dian Energy, Shandong Energy Group, Hubei Yihua, Guizhou Phosphating and other domestic and foreign traditional fossil energy and chemical giants are speeding up the layout of landscape power generation, recharging power stations, hydrogen energy, battery materials and other fields.

Comments on this net: with the same frequency of the times, with the same trend, often get twice the result with half the effort. Under the strategic goal of "double carbon", the transformation of energy structure is accelerated, and the traditional energy giants are pressing the "decarbonization" acceleration key.

Global core pain

In 2021, GM, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover, Renault and many other car companies were forced to temporarily suspend or cut production due to chip shortages. According to the data released by AutoForecast Solutions, as of December 19, 2021, due to the shortage of chips, the global automobile market has reduced production by 10.272 million vehicles, of which the Chinese automobile market has reduced production by 1.982 million vehicles, accounting for 19.3% of the total production reduction. AFS expects to reduce production by 11.309 million vehicles for the whole of 2021.

It is worth noting that under the tide of lack of core, in addition to BYD, auto companies such as SAIC, Geely, Great Wall, Xiaopeng and Zero have also begun to seek self-production and research on chips, and chip distribution has become the norm for new energy models and high-profit models. Mercedes-Benz, GM, BMW, Catesla, ideal, Xiaopeng and other car companies choose to temporarily "reduce" delivery of some new cars.

SciDev.Net comments: although "core pain", but the determination of car companies to intelligent transformation is still strong, chip enterprises also gradually shift the focus of research and development to the intelligent and electric direction of new energy vehicles. In 2021, there will be a lot of money in the field of autopilot and chips. For example, Momenta completed about 6.4 billion yuan C round financing, Waymo completed US $2.5 billion financing, Horizon completed US $1.5 billion C7 round financing, Shangtang Technology Hong Kong stock listing raised a total of HK $5.775 billion, and so on.

China takes the lead

In the field of new energy vehicles, China continues to lead the world, and the number of new energy vehicles accounts for half of the global new energy vehicle market for a long time. In 2021, it will lead the world in sales of new energy vehicles for seven consecutive years. At the same time, Chinese car companies have long occupied more than six seats in the global market capitalization of Top 20.

On December 16, 2021, BMW held the "New year's online Annual meeting" in 2022, which described the upgrading of the enterprise's China strategy with the perceptual theme of "Home in China": keeping the corporate strategy in synergy with China's development goals, adhering to the principle of "China first", giving priority to the needs of the Chinese market in new product development, and constantly strengthening win-win cooperation with Chinese partners. Looking forward to 2025, BMW Group will accelerate the development of electrification, digitization and sustainable development in China, and maintain the same frequency with China.

In the field of power batteries, Ningde Times firmly ranked first with a market share of 31.8% from January to November 2021, 10 percentage points higher than the second LG New Energy (20.5% market share), according to data released by South Korean market research firm SNE Research. Panasonic, BYD and SK On ranked third to fifth with a market share of 12.5%, 9% and 5.8%, respectively. Ranked 6th to 10th are Samsung SDI, China New Airlines, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, AESC, Yiwei Lithium Energy. Among them, compared with the same period in 2020, 5 of the six Chinese enterprises achieved three-digit growth, while Japanese and South Korean enterprises showed an obvious downward trend. Taking into account the accumulation of gaps in the installed capacity of enterprises, Chinese enterprises will take the lead in 2021.

Comments on SciDev.Net: with the continuous deepening of reform and opening up, the demand potential of the Chinese market, a sound industrial chain layout, a strong and resilient economic environment, and solid and effective epidemic prevention and control have enhanced the confidence of multinational enterprises to increase their localization layout in China. We believe that there will be more and more "BMWs" who "home in China".

Huge recall

In 2021, GM recalled 140000 Chevrolet Bolt EV, vehicles at a cost of about US $2 billion due to battery safety concerns, and its battery supplier LG agreed to pay GM up to US $1.9 billion. Hyundai Motor recalled about 82000 electric vehicles worldwide to replace battery systems because of the risk of fire. The cost of the recall is 1.4 trillion won, and Hyundai and LG have borne 30% and 70% respectively.

Not only GM and Hyundai, but also a number of new energy vehicle companies announced recalls in 2021: at the end of December, Tesla recalled nearly 200000 electric vehicles in China and 475000 in the United States; brilliance BMW recalled 1974 domestic iX3 electric vehicles in December; Shanxi successfully recalled 5900 pure electric vehicles in August; and Porsche recalled 43000 pure electric cars worldwide in July. In June, Cheetah announced a recall of 4117 CS9 pure electric vehicles. Among them, in the Chinese market, data from the defective Product Management Center of the General Administration of Market Supervision show that by the end of June 2021, China had recalled a total of 1.2838 million new energy defective vehicles, accounting for 22.13% of the total number of new energy vehicles at that time.

In addition to the field of power batteries, there are also huge recalls of energy storage batteries. At the end of May 2021, LG New Energy said that to avoid potential fire hazards, it recalled ESS batteries produced at its factory in Nanjing, China, between April 2017 and September 2018, at an estimated cost of about 400 billion won. Prior to this, LG New Energy has also recalled ESS in the United States and Australia.

Comments on SciDev.Net: as the country with the highest number of new energy vehicles in the world, the number of new energy vehicles in China has exceeded 300 million, while the number of new energy vehicles has not yet exceeded 10 million. It is estimated that it will take 20 years or more to reach the number of 300 million vehicles. However, at present, the car recall has become normal, with the improvement of market penetration, the recall of new energy vehicles will also become the norm. Recall is a double-edged sword, the current public opinion is relatively negative, but the recall is also the embodiment of corporate social responsibility, but also can force enterprises to improve product quality and safety performance.

Market capitalization take off

In 2021, the capital market is very popular for the new energy vehicle track, and the listed companies in the related industrial chain have both high market capitalization and high growth.

On May 31st, the share price of domestic power battery Ningde era hit an all-time high of 429 yuan per share, and the total market capitalization exceeded 1 trillion yuan for the first time, becoming the first trillion-yuan company on the gem, and once exceeded 1.6 trillion yuan. It has become the second listed company in A-share market capitalization. By the end of December 31, 2021, Ningde era had a total market capitalization of 1.37 trillion yuan, ranking fourth among A shares; in addition to Ningde era, BYD, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Enjie shares, Ganfeng Lithium Industry, Salt Lake shares, Tianqi Lithium Industry, Huayou Cobalt Industry, Pioneer Intelligence, Pu Tailai, Tianchi Materials and other lithium battery concept stocks have also had a market capitalization of more than 100 billion yuan.

Tesla closed 12.66% higher at $1024.8600 on Oct. 25, with a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion for the first time, reaching $1.0267 trillion.

Rivian launched on Nasdaq on Nov. 10, and IPO raised $12 billion. On Nov. 16, its market capitalization soared to $152 billion, surpassing Volkswagen to become the world's third largest carmaker by market capitalization after Tesla and Toyota. At present, although the market value of Rivian has dropped significantly, it is also maintaining the market capitalization of global car companies in the Top 5 industry, ranking ahead of traditional car companies such as GM, Daimler, Ford, BMW and Ferrari.

Comments on this net: battery Network query Oriental Wealth related data found that A-share battery new energy-related plates were collectively popular in 2021 and closed on December 31, 2021. The new energy vehicle plate rose 43.75%, the charging pile plate increased 43.63%, the automotive chip plate rose 35.48%, the self-driving plate rose 32.46%, the lithium battery plate rose 76.38%, the salt lake lithium plate rose 75.47%, the sodium ion battery plate rose 67.36%, the solid state battery plate rose 71.19%, and the solid-state battery plate rose 71.19% this year, the new energy vehicle plate rose 43.75%, the charging pile plate 43.63%, the automotive chip plate 35.48%, the self-driving plate 32.46%, the lithium battery plate 76.38%, the salt lake lithium plate 75.47%, and the solid-state battery plate 71.19%. The hydrogen energy sector rose 68.6% this year, and the energy storage sector rose 79.67% this year. According to the research reports released by major brokerage institutions, the battery new energy track will continue to be a high-growth track in the capital market in 2022.

Green electricity is lit up.

A few days ago, the International Energy Agency ((IEA)) released a report on the Renewable Energy Market 2021, predicting that the total installed capacity of global wind, photovoltaic and other renewable energy generation will exceed 290 million kilowatts in 2021, setting an all-time high for the second year in a row. IEA predicts that the global installed capacity of renewable energy will further accelerate in the next five years. By 2026, the total installed capacity of renewable energy in the world will increase by more than 60% over 2020 to 4.8 billion kilowatts, which is equivalent to the total installed capacity of fossil fuel power generation and nuclear power in the world. China will be one of the brightest performers. IEA predicts that by 2026, the total installed capacity of wind power and photovoltaic in China is expected to exceed 1.2 billion kilowatts, which will also meet China's wind and solar installation target four years ahead of schedule.

According to the data released by the National Energy Administration, in 2021, the installed scale of renewable energy power generation in China has historically exceeded 1 billion kilowatts, hydropower and wind power have both exceeded 300 million kilowatts, and the installed scale of offshore wind power has ranked first in the world. the annual generating capacity of new energy has broken through the 1 trillion kilowatt-hour mark for the first time, continuing to maintain a leading advantage.

Net comments: 2021, low-carbon launch, green light: the European Union issued the latest low-carbon development policy "Fit for 55", China launched a pilot green power trading, the United States to promote carbon neutralization has also been accelerated. With the global move towards low carbon, the requirement of the carbon footprint of the battery life cycle, whether to have green power, has become an important consideration in the location of new projects.

Recovery wind

In 2021, battery recycling and echelon utilization will rise again, favorable policies have been introduced one after another, and the layout of related industrial chain companies has been accelerated, which has attracted more and more enterprises to enter this field.

In the international market, Volkswagen Group's parts division's battery recycling pilot plant in Salzjeet was put into operation at the beginning of 2021; Nissan plans to build new battery recycling plants in the United States and Europe before the end of fiscal year 2025.; Battery Resourcers announced that it has reached a lithium-ion battery recycling agreement with Honda; SKI plans to start a battery recycling program in 2022 and expects to recycle 30GWh batteries in 2025. LG New Energy and Eco Pro Group are beginning to commercialize the battery recycling business of electric vehicles. The two sides plan to recycle more than 40% of the 15000 tons of waste batteries as the core material of the battery. BASF plans to build a battery recovery test device at its (CAM) production site of positive active materials in Schwarzhead, Germany, and plans to launch the device in early 2023. Northvolt announced that it will increase the annual recycling capacity of the Revolt Ett recycling plant in Sweden to 125000 tons of batteries.

In the domestic market, Sinorama Science and Technology announced that it plans to invest 454 million yuan to build a high-efficiency comprehensive utilization of waste lithium batteries and the expansion of high-performance battery materials in the existing plant; Green Mei plans to invest 1.8 billion in the construction of a circular economy industry project of new energy materials and supporting raw materials, and plans to layout power battery recycling plants in Europe during the 14th five-year Plan period. The Feidong Guoxuan battery material base with a total investment of 12 billion has started construction, covering the front-end raw materials and back-end battery recycling and echelon utilization of lithium-ion power batteries. Tianqi shares plan to invest 5 billion in the next five years to build a production project with an annual output of 30, 000 tons of ternary precursors and 12000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate. Tianci material plans to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to invest in the construction of 100000 tons of iron lithium battery recycling project; Ningde Times invested 32 billion to build the Bang Pu Integrated Battery material Industry Park project. In addition, in 2021, the list of enterprises that meet the "industry norms and conditions for the comprehensive utilization of waste power batteries of new energy vehicles" has been issued in three batches, and the "regular army" of the industry of comprehensive utilization of waste power batteries of new energy vehicles has been expanded to 47.

Net comments: power battery recycling hundreds of billions of scale to start, the tuyere has come! At present, the "decommissioning tide" of power batteries, especially the "decommissioning tide" of ternary lithium batteries with higher profits, has not really come, and there is a big gap between theoretical and actual recyclables, and the support and supervision at the relevant policy level need to be strengthened, the profit model of enterprises is not yet clear, and the market chaos continues. However, there is no doubt about the market prospect of power battery recycling. With the help of policy, capital, resources and other forces, the investment layout of industrial chain enterprises is more enthusiastic, and the cooperation between upstream and downstream enterprises in the field of recycling is also further deepened. It can be predicted that with the continuous expansion of the scale, the improvement of the recycling system and the strengthening of policy supervision, the battery recycling market will gradually move towards a benign development track.

Innovation comes first

On December 28, 2021, eight departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued the "14th five-year Plan for the Development of Intelligent Manufacturing", which pointed out that the global new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change are developing in depth. New technologies continue to break through and accelerate integration with advanced manufacturing technology, which provides a historical opportunity for the high-end, intelligent and green development of the manufacturing industry.

In all kinds of top-level design of the government, "innovation" has become a high-frequency word. At the same time, the enterprise level is also speeding up the research and development of advanced technology and industrial application.

Just over the past year, a number of domestic and foreign car companies and battery companies have announced a lot of technology innovation and R & D: Northvolt and Volvo announced that they will set up a joint battery R & D center in Gothenburg, Sweden; Volkswagen invested 70 million euros to build a new battery R & D center, and Audi also announced that it would set up a high-performance battery R & D center at its Nekasulm factory in Bavu Prefecture. Ford Motor has set up a new global battery innovation center Ford Ion Park, and invested US $185 million to build a cooperative learning laboratory in southeastern Michigan; SK On has set up a next-generation battery R & D center and plans to build a test production line; in the latest 45 billion yuan fixed increase plan of Ningde era, 7 billion yuan will be invested in the R & D and application project of new energy advanced technology in Ningde era. Honeycomb Energy has invested more than 5 billion in research and development, and 25.2 billion yuan in the next five years.

Comments on SciDev.Net: for a long time, in the interview questions of the media, many enterprises will be asked "how big is the gap at the technical level at home and abroad", "how many years will it take for China to catch up with the level of Japan and South Korea" and so on. In 2021, faced with similar questions, we often hear such a confident answer: "in the field of new battery energy, China has taken the lead!" With the wide application of green low-carbon technology and the sharp increase in innovation system and innovation capability, China's battery new energy industry is moving towards the high end of the global value chain.

Store energy and run fast.

In 2021, the global energy storage industry began to enter a period of accelerated development. On October 18, Huawei Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd. and Shandong Electric Power Construction No. 3 Engineering Co., Ltd. successfully signed the energy storage project of Red Sea Metro in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest energy storage project in the world and the largest off-grid energy storage project in the world with an energy storage scale of 1300MWh. it is also the largest off-grid energy storage project in the world.

According to forecasts released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the global energy storage market will grow at an average annual compound rate of 33 per cent by 2030, and the cumulative installed capacity will reach 358GW 17GW/34GWh 1028GW by 2030, more than 20 times the size of GW by the end of 2020, and will attract $262 billion in investment between 2021 and 2030.

Wu Hui, general manager of the Research Department of Yiwei Economic Research Institute and president of China Battery Industry Research Institute, is more optimistic: the cumulative installed scale of the global electrochemical energy storage power station will reach 150GW by 2025 and 550GW by 2030.

Comments on SciDev.Net: two overseas energy crises in 2021-the Texas power crisis in the United States and the natural gas crisis in Europe, as well as the phenomenon of power cuts in many parts of the country have sounded the alarm for the energy transformation: promoting the transformation from traditional energy to clean energy is a long-term process, which must be done step by step and must not be done in an one-size-fits-all manner. At the same time, in this process, in order to ensure the safe and stable operation of clean energy, the energy storage industry will enter a new era of large-scale and high growth.