Electric cars and renewable energy could drive new outback mining boom

[Ntgthegamer]

Electric cars and wind turbines could be pivotal to fuelling the next outback mining boom, with resource companies and start-ups worried Australia is not making the most of a new wave of mining activity across the nation. As scientist Ray Wooldridge tells it from his laboratory in Pine Creek, two hours south of Darwin, "lithium is one of the flavours of the moment". Mr Wooldridge spends his time analysing minerals being dug out of the ground by resource companies, and recently he has been studying a lot of this soft, silvery-white metal. "It's pretty substantial. It's really been building up the last few years," Mr Wooldridge said. Lithium is piquing the interest of mining companies due to it being a key component in batteries for renewable energy storage and electric vehicles. There are no active lithium mines in the Territory but an ASX-listed company is hoping to open the first next year. In Western Australia, lithium is booming. In the past decade the state has gone from having just one lithium mine to seven, turning Australia into the world's biggest exporter of the mineral. And it is not just lithium that has seen this interest, said Gavin Mudd, an associate professor of engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne. "There's been an increasing demand for a lot of metals we call critical," he said. "That's been driven by a lot of these rapid changes in technology we're seeing, whether that be the uptake of renewable energy, energy storage batteries, and this new exponential growth in electric vehicles. "It's not boom times yet but certainly we're seeing an evolution. Some of the traditional elements like coal are being challenged." But just like coal mining, many of the elements that are being dug out of the ground in Australia are being exported as a raw product to overseas markets — mostly China. "Australia has a long history of just shipping out the raw concentrates and material and not taking advantage of value-adding," Mr Mudd said. "I think it would be really great to see Australia break that historical trend."