The Canadian Battery Metals Association details the case of Western Canada’s battery hubs, focusing on the importance of jurisdiction-wide coordinated strategies to strengthen key mineral sectors and create specialized industry clusters for economic growth and resilience.
Defining your strategy is just the first step. Implementing a strategy is what makes it possible to implement it. However, such a wide range of applications requires that actions be carried out in a coordinated manner planned across industry jurisdictions and segments to maximize their impact and exploit the available opportunities.
With this in mind, the Canadian Battery Metals Association (BMAC) has worked with the Transition Accelerator and Energy Futures Lab to explore the most effective actions to support the development of critical minerals into the battery sector within western Canada, generate local capacity and capacity, and expand development in the East.
Western Canada battery hub case
With a wide range of important minerals, Canada is caught up in the global spotlight as energy migration and defense applications are on top of the list as an important source of these highly popular resources, where many sectors rely on.
Canada has also been aggressive and has invested heavily in battery space in key minerals, but many of these investments focus on specific organizations, leaving us with a wider opportunity to build a larger, integrated industry that is untapped.
What challenges Canada further is a patchwork of specific key mineral strategies in jurisdictions and other initiatives across the country, each separated from the others and lacking a general vision or joint pathway.
Western Canada Battery Hub aims to address these gaps by finding general alignments of strategies and supporting their implementation in a coordinated and systematic way. This collaborative approach will ultimately allow us to create a more robust mineral-to-battery ecosystem. This benefits from the many local benefits that can be utilized to enable specialization, resulting in a more competitive and resilient ecosystem.
The goal is to establish Canada’s long-term position to promote economic prosperity, but this joint approach will ultimately prove to be disruptive and can create a new, unique Canadian position in sectors around the world.
Define opportunities
A thorough analysis of opportunities and gaps across the ecosystem is essential to understand the full value that Western Canada battery hubs can offer. And involving various stakeholders in this exercise is important to clarify all the relevant details. As a result, stakeholders from industry, government, academia and across various development organizations were invited to participate in this assessment and provide perspectives on the opportunities and gaps that the industry faces.
As a starting point, stakeholders were asked to help identify potential industrial clusters that could be incorporated into the wider battery hub. In this case, industrial clusters were considered to be groups of companies within defined geographical regions that mutually benefit from proximity such as shared infrastructure or mutually benefit from closely linked operations, such as value-added processing of other organizations and supply and contributions through integrated research and innovation activities. Essentially, this cluster has the added advantage of providing businesses with economic and operational benefits, and building a compelling business case to attract new developments and further investments in the region.
The cluster assessment included reviews of key mineral deposits in the West, covering areas with high concentrations of operational sites and projects. Also considered was how existing and required infrastructures could form or determine cluster survival rates. Stakeholders then assessed the criteria for cluster success and identified key strategic investments in the region.
The output of this work is the identification and analysis of several specialized battery industry clusters in western Canada, and can even be incorporated into a larger, complete battery ecosystem.
Elements of a prosperous industrial cluster
The main advantage of establishing an industry cluster within a wider hub network is that each cluster can specialize in the best possible way, eliminate duplication and eliminate the need to incorporate features that are not optimally suited to the region. By itself, these individual clusters become economic hotspots, but when connected to a wider ecosystem, economic and commercial opportunities are further amplified in intercluster trading.
We found that some key factors for the success of industrial clusters:
Supporting the availability of mineral resources and/or process materials, the presence of reagents, affordable low carbon energy, existing industries, transportation, and energy infrastructure availability support for the availability of existing industries and energy infrastructures of policy and regulatory environments, and the access to active industries from the beginning to the active industry and the active industry to existing downstream markets, embrace active industries for strong research and development.
Western Canada Battery Cluster
Given a wide range of factors, including factors identified for cluster success, an assessment of battery cluster opportunities in western Canada could have led to the integration of five key clusters in British Columbia and Alberta into a complete battery ecosystem.
Noting that more work is needed to determine how Saskatchewan and Manitoba contribute, the launch of the ecosystem includes:
Mineral Extraction – Supplied primarily from the mineral-rich North, including the territory and northern parts of British Columbia and Alberta. Potentially, some material treatments can also be incorporated into these regions. Advanced Materials Processing – Performed at the Calgary Edmonton Corridor, it features industrial processing skills and infrastructure. Cleantech Innovation and Battery Manufacturing – With existing clean technology, processing and battery manufacturing facilities, the Vancouver area is suitable for battery production, innovation and export. Second Life and Recycling of Battery – Kootenays already hosts expertise and recycling capabilities in a variety of materials. Focusing on the cyclicity of batteries in this region, remanufacturing for reuse may appear as an additional component.
Each industrial cluster relies heavily on existing industries, infrastructure and expertise. This means that regions are well suited to accommodate these new features. However, more work is required to build a comprehensive regional development plan for further investment and development.
Adjust your vision
This now offers a clear vision of opportunities in Western Canada, but it is clear that no one can achieve it on its own.
You need a centralized group. A durable coalition of like-minded stakeholders who share this vision and contribute to making it happen. It was mandated to attract businesses, communities, rights holders and governments, coordinated by independent institutions mandated to develop strategic actions to support cluster development and integration into larger hubs.
Focusing on advances in strategic development, this coalition will help to build strong partnerships, promote the benefits of Western Canada battery hubs and promote further investment and expansion capabilities. This allows Canada to maximize the value of its Western resources by creating additional economic opportunities in its value chain.
Make it happen
One of the many benefits of the collective hub approach is its ability to look at this sector widely and determine what investment and development can have the most important impact. There are also many factors to consider, such as addressing key gaps in the value chain, such as the number of supported companies, and promoting economic settlements. Essentially, the goal is to maximize your return on investment.
This requires identifying the specific needs within the hub. Whether it’s technology or processing power, even infrastructure such as roads and electricity must determine the cost of developing them. This allows project pipeline development to plan, prioritize and budget the necessary investments with a long-term vision in mind.
This also helps to build a comprehensive business case for investors, demonstrate needs and positioning companies within a wider range of industries, unlock risky projects and attract much-needed capital. Additionally, opportunities for non-cluster companies to participate and other jurisdictions to partner with mutually beneficial solutions are demonstrated.
Now is the time
Canada has a lot to offer industry of the future, even beyond batteries and energy transitions, through considerable mineral wealth. However, to take advantage of these opportunities, Canada must consider more than just the minerals themselves, and fully acquire future prospects, including material processing, which adds value to its development plan, and each step in the value chain that follows, from production and recycling.
As Canada works to assert its interest in this rapidly evolving space, it is important to recognize that different parts of the country have unique strengths and advantages. By leveraging regional strengths and moving forward in a coordinated and collaborative way, Canada can develop a complete value chain in an optimized way and increase its global competitiveness.
The ideal starting point for this initiative is to launch the development of a Western Canada battery hub to coordinate and catalyze the development of the Western Canada battery value chain. To maximize this opportunity, it is clear that this region has all the pieces needed to form a complete battery ecosystem, but the approach must be with a collective vision and a systematic approach. Supporting the development of a broader ecosystem beyond individual projects will create a more strategic and sustainable value chain that can provide long-term economic prosperity for the region and across Canada.
It’s time to take bold action and seize these opportunities, and a collaborative approach is important to fully utilize these outlooks and ensure success.
This article will also be featured in the 22nd edition of Quarterly Publication.
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