Vulcan Energy
Represented by Francis Wedin, CEO
How does your organisation address climate change?
Vulcan Energy is the world's first Zero Carbon Lithium and renewable energy combined business. We are currently net zero across our operations, and are committed to use our business to decarbonise battery raw materials production and supply. Vulcan’s Australian business has been certified as carbon neutral by Climate Active. Climate Active is a partnership between the Australian Government and Australian businesses, to encourage voluntary climate action. Vulcan uses prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) as part of our geothermal lithium process development in order to reduce environmental impacts of our process for making lithium hydroxide monohydrate before capital expenditures are incurred. This allows us to quantify our environmental impacts, understand drivers of our impacts, and make decisions about our supply chains and energy use to minimise those impacts.
Vulcan will most likely have the lowest CO2 intensity of production of any lithium chemical in the world. This is due to three main reasons:
• Vulcan will burn zero fossil fuels while producing lithium chemicals and electricity;
• Vulcan will co-produce low-CO2 electricity for the high CO2 intensity German grid. We will produce more power than we will use, decarbonising the grid, and;
• Vulcan is making deliberate technology decisions to reduce CO2 emissions, notably the choice of electrochemical lithium hydroxide conversion instead of reagent intense processing through lithium carbonate.
Vulcan announced in March 2021 that it will use Circulor’s full traceability and dynamic CO2 measurement solution for its lithium products across the European Lithium-ion battery and Electric Vehicle (EV) supply chain, in a world-first for the lithium sector. Vulcan has been accepted as a Member of the Global Battery Alliance (GBA), an umbrella partnership made up of 70 members workings towards a globally sustainable battery value chain. Vulcan also works with business partners to bring them up to speed with best practice, having entered into two agreements with LG Energy Solution and Renault Group to provide solutions that will reduce their carbon footprint in 2021.
As Vulcan's Australia division is still young, best-practice from Europe will be brought to our operations here once they have commenced. Read more about Vulcan's sustainability committments here.