Media
The Prize (Cobalt): EVelution Energy’s Gil Michel-Garcia – 13 November 2023
The Prize (Cobalt): EVelution Energy's Gil Michel-Garcia
Navaid Alam on Bloomberg TV – 27 Sep 2023
Nice to see EVelution Energy CEO @Navaid Alam interviewed on Blooomberg TV about our solar-powered cobalt sulfate processing plant project in Arizona and how it fits into the bigger picture of U.S. clean technology independence.
Bloomberg’s @Matt Miller and @Jon Erlichman talked to Navaid what U.S. production of EV battery materials looks like now and how legislation supporting green technologies effects the project’s success.
“We’ve been planning on doing this for over four years, that was well before the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law came into effect,” Alam said. “We should be a preferred supplier under the Inflation Reduction Act because we are qualified under the Act and we are not using any materials from China. So that should work in our favor.”
Even though almost all cobalt is mined in Africa, Alam pointed out that there are 30 cobalt processing plants in China, while @EVelution Energy’s solar-powered facility will be the first commercial scale solar powered operation of its kind in North America. Investment is soaring in plants to process EV metals into EV batteries and their components.
“It’s important that we bring this material directly from Africa to the United States, and then we process it here and sell it into the new factories that have been announced in Canada and the United States by General Motors, by LG, by Umicore, by Ford, by Samsung,” he said. “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on the EV transition to bring on these new factories.”
Case in point: Stellantis and Samsung SD today announced a new $2 billion investment on a second U.S. battery plant.
In the longer run, EVelution Energy will start working on recycling used batteries as well as producing cobalt metal, which is a critical strategic material used in defense applications such as hypersonic missiles and stealth bombers, and it is crucial to have this material onshore, Alam said.