Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world’s battery-metal shortage

Pushed by theIEAIEA threat of , rich countries are embarking on a . Britain, France and Norway, among others, plan to ban the sale of new internal-combustion cars. Even where bans are not on the statute books, are growing rapidly. Power grids are changing too, as and solar panels displace fossil-fuelled power plants. The International Energy Agency () reckons the world will add as much renewable power in the coming five years as it did in the past 20.All that means batteries, and lots of them—both to propel the cars and to store energy from intermittent renewable power stations. Demand for the minerals from which those batteries are made is soaring. Nickel in particular is in short supply. The element is used in the cathodes of high-quality electric-car batteries to boost capacity and cut weight. The calculates that, if it is to meet its decarbonisation goals, the world will need to be producing 6.3m tonnes of nickel a year by 2040, roughly double what it managed in 2022. That adds up to some 80m tonnes of nickel in total between now and then.