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How to Meet the Industrial Challenge of Electric Mobility in France and in Europe

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The deployment at scale of electric mobility in France and in Europe withholds significant industrial, societal, geopolitical, and financial challenges, against the backdrop of strategic dependencies along the value chain of the electric vehicle (EV).

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Battery Gigafactory at Billy Berclau - France
Battery Gigafactory at Billy Berclau - France
(c) ACC
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A certain lack of vision of the value chain as a whole, of the needs and objectives at each stage, and of how to ensure consistency and follow-up over time adds up to the concerns of industry players, who not only need to catch up from a technology point of view, but also to innovate, to secure the value chains, the workforce, the supply in low-carbon affordable energy and to scale up production and recycling capacities. Gigafactories are a major industrial step forward but should not obscure the complex and much broader nature of the battery value chain, and more generally of EVs’ value chain. This note summarizes the key findings of Ifri’s extensive study with the same name and its ten key recommendations for overcoming the industrial challenges of electric mobility deployment in France and Europe:

  • Developing a holistic approach to the supply of critical raw materials, focusing on five key areas: domestic extraction, refining, mining diplomacy and environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and recycling.
  • Ensuring the stable and competitive supply of low-carbon electricity.
  • Building integrated partnerships with European players at all stages of the EV value chain, with a view in particular to rapidly securing a certain number of cathode and anode active material (CAM and AAM) and precursor cathode active material (PCAM) production capacities, and supporting innovation in battery chemistry, which is the only way for Europeans to distinguish themselves from China.
  • Planning in order to acquire an integrated mastery of the value chain, to develop the skills and train the workforce.
  • Moderating the demand in critical raw materials as a key to resilience, as alternative means of transport, fewer car sales and smaller batteries, contribute to reduce the future increase in raw material needs.
  • Re-imagining mobility to make it more sustainable, accessible, and fair.
  • Setting up and calibrating a support system for the deployment of the different stages of the electric mobility value chain in France, whose cost to the national budget could be in the region of €8-9 billion a year, over the next few years.
  • Protecting industries from unfair and less virtuous practices.
  • Exploiting the growth of electric mobility to strengthen the integration of variable renewable energies into power systems.
  • Ensuring that the European Union (EU) has the appropriate resources to meet the multiple industrial and technological challenges linked to EVs in the context of polycrises. Only some of these have been covered in this study, as EVs cannot be reduced to batteries alone, and involve many other key equipment and issues, hence the need to have an EV based approach, as opposed to one centered around battery-cells.

 

> The entire report is available in French through this link : Comment gagner le pari industriel de la mobilité électrique en France et en Europe ?

 

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ISBN / ISSN

979-10-373-0774-3

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How to Meet the Industrial Challenge of Electric Mobility in France and in Europe

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Author(s)
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Marc-Antoine EYL-MAZZEGA Photo

Marc-Antoine EYL-MAZZEGA

Intitulé du poste
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Diana-Paula GHERASIM

Diana-Paula GHERASIM

Intitulé du poste

Research Fellow, Head of European Energy and Climate Policies, Energy and Climate Center, Ifri

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Climate & Energy
Center for Energy & Climate
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Ifri's Energy and Climate Center carries out activities and research on the geopolitical and geoeconomic issues of energy transitions such as energy security, competitiveness, control of value chains, and acceptability. Specialized in the study of European energy/climate policies as well as energy markets in Europe and around the world, its work also focuses on the energy and climate strategies of major powers such as the United States, China or India. It offers recognized expertise, enriched by international collaborations and events, particularly in Paris and Brussels.

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Can carbon markets make a breakthrough at COP29?

Date de publication
30 October 2024
Accroche

Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) have a strong potential, notably to help bridge the climate finance gap, especially for Africa.

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Taiwan's Energy Supply: The Achilles Heel of National Security

Date de publication
22 October 2024
Accroche

Making Taiwan a “dead island” through “a blockade” and “disruption of energy supplies” leading to an “economic collapse.” This is how Colonel Zhang Chi of the People’s Liberation Army and professor at the National Defense University in Beijing described the objective of the Chinese military exercises in May 2024, following the inauguration of Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te. Similar to the exercises that took place after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August 2022, China designated exercise zones facing Taiwan’s main ports, effectively simulating a military embargo on Taiwan. These maneuvers illustrate Beijing’s growing pressure on the island, which it aims to conquer, and push Taiwan to question its resilience capacity.

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India’s Broken Power Economics : Addressing DISCOM Challenges

Date de publication
15 October 2024
Accroche

India’s electricity demand is rising at an impressive annual rate of 9%. From 2014 to 2023, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) surged from 1.95 trillion dollars ($) to $3.2 trillion (constant 2015 US$), and the nation is poised to maintain this upward trajectory, with projected growth rates exceeding 7% in 2024 and 2025.  Correspondingly, peak power demand has soared from 136 gigawatts (GW) in 2014 to 243 GW in 2024, positioning India as the world’s third-largest energy consumer. In the past decade, the country has increased its power generation capacity by a remarkable 190 GW, pushing its total installed capacity beyond 400 GW. 

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The Troubled Reorganization of Critical Raw Materials Value Chains: An Assessment of European De-risking Policies

Date de publication
30 September 2024
Accroche

With the demand for critical raw materials set to, at a minimum, double by 2030 in the context of the current energy transition policies, the concentration of critical raw materials (CRM) supplies and, even more, of refining capacities in a handful of countries has become one of the paramount issues in international, bilateral and national discussions. China’s dominant position and successive export controls on critical raw materials (lately, germanium, gallium, rare earths processing technology, graphite, antimony) point to a trend of weaponizing critical dependencies.

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Battery Gigafactory at Billy Berclau - France
(c) ACC

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How to Meet the Industrial Challenge of Electric Mobility in France and in Europe