Saudi Arabia's emergence as a global battery powerhouse could act as a major support for the US to compete against China's supply chain dominance, an industry executive has said.
The kingdom's growing role in battery production could boost efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese imports, Emilie Bodoin, founder of battery maker Pure Lithium, told The National on the sidelines of the Future Initiative Investment summit in Miami.
“By leapfrogging the current lithium ion technology with lithium metal technology, we can circumvent Chinese dominance of the supply chain,” she said.
Lithium is considered a critical mineral by the US Geological Survey and is used for new energy technologies like electric vehicles and solar systems. The batteries produced by Pure Lithium, a Chicago-headquartered company backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, are used in both drones and data centres.
China is the world's dominant player in the critical minerals supply chain, accounting for 90 per cent of global processing. Export restrictions placed by China last year and oil supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz are putting a new focus on the mineral supply chains.
“If you think about other countries starting to make batteries that haven't been producing batteries before, they are completely constrained and unable to do so because all of today's battery materials – while they are actually sourced globally, with the exception of graphite – they are all refined and processed in China,” Ms Bodoin said.
Pure Lithium is placing a greater emphasis on Saudi Arabia, which has lithium and another mineral, vanadium, to create its own batteries. The company has been unaffected by disruptions in the Middle East so far, Ms Bodoin told The National.
Battery storage is seen as a component of Saudi Arabia's diversification agenda, and the kingdom is targeting 48 gigawatt hours capacity by 2030.
More widely, the country's mining strategy also aims to increase the sector's economic contribution to $64 billion by 2030.
With mineral wealth estimated at $2.5 trillion, the kingdom is working to establish itself as a global supplier of critical minerals. Lithium is also a key driver for achieving the kingdom's target of producing 300,000 electric vehicles annually by 2030.
In 2024, the kingdom extracted lithium from oilfield brine run-off, a sustainable source, with research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology also finding new ways to extract the mineral from seawater, the Saudi News Agency reported last year.
Loosening China's grip
US President Donald Trump's administration has announced a series of initiatives and partnerships in the past year to loosen China's grip on critical minerals, but experts have previously said it could take years before these begin to bear fruit.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a very long term plan. We don't have a long-term plan,” Ms Bodoin said.
Among the partnerships the administration has made was with Ma'aden, a Saudi mining company, and Nevada-based MP Materials to develop a rare earth refinery in the kingdom.
As part of this public-private push, the US Energy Department took a 5 per cent equity stake in Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada. The company in 2024 received a $2.26 billion loan from the energy department to help finance the construction to help manufacture lithium carbonate at its Thacker Pass site.
“We're very fortunate to have the US government as a big backstop,” Lithium Americas chief executive Johnathan Evans said during a panel.
“We are in a race … that we've been losing for a long time. So time is of the essence,” he said.
As part of a broader “energy dominance” push, Mr Trump has taken other initiatives to counter reliance on Chinese imports such as the introduction of Project Vault, a $12 billion public-private partnership that includes $10 billion in seed money from the Export-Import Bank.
Project Vault aims to establish a critical minerals stockpile similar to the nation's strategic oil reserve, but Ms Bodoin cautioned the shelf life of some of these chemicals.
“With certain lithium chemicals, that shelf life can be as short as two to three months. So there's only so much stockpiling of processed chemicals that you can actually do,” she said.
Mr Trump has also introduced framework initiatives such as Pax Silica, which aims to support the AI chip supply chain. Abu Dhabi's Mubadala was announced as a founding member of the Pax Silica Investor Consortium this week.
In February, the US also announced a critical minerals initiative called the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement – or FORGE – to establish price floors in an effort to push back against low-cost supplies from places like China. While it is unclear how many will join this alliance, the US signed 11 framework agreements, including with the UAE.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar were part of a Gulf delegation that attended a critical minerals ministerial in Washington in February.
The administration has not publicly said how it intends for these different initiatives to work together.
