Gil Michel-Garcia is co-founder of EVelution Energy, which is building a solar-powered cobalt processing facility in Yuma, Arizona that could supply enough material for 1 million EV batteries a year to US auto manufacturers. And how competition for critical mineral supplies between China and the West will shape his sector as well as a lot of the politics of the next decade.

Cobalt is one of those minerals that has seen wild price swings over the past couple of years: 

We spoke just as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with her Chinese counterpart and US President Joe Biden is expected to meet with President Xi Jinping this week, to deescalate recent tensions over among other things those critical minerals vital to the energy transition, and where a tit-for-tat trade dispute over them threatens to either temporarily disrupt supply chains or reconfigure the world into ever more decoupled trading blocs. 

Gil talks with 

Richard Delevan about how the sector is being shaped at this moment, and whether he’s worried about how next year’s elections could affect his business and those like it.Subscribe at news.wickedproblems.uk to get this and other episodes with co-host 

claire brady

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