Critical minerals projects are attracting newfound interest from pension funds and automakers to help tackle a looming shortage of battery metals, say some of Canada’s top investment bankers.
The rush for metals like lithium, copper and nickel needed to power electric vehicles has “clearly brought the sector into a spotlight that it wasn’t in a few years ago,”, global mining co-head at BMO Capital Markets, said during a Monday panel discussion at a mining conference in Toronto.
Governments worldwide pushing for EVs “really, really quickly” to meet emissions targets are discovering supply constraints for key metals, Bahar said. “What everybody quickly realized is, one, that the supply is not fully available here, and two, that it’s controlled by a certain country that has a 15-year head start.
Pension funds are starting to consider investing in the battery metals industry, though some have expressed concerns tied to environmental, social and governance issues and bureaucracy, said“I’ve talked to pension funds, and they’ve been like: ‘We’ll invest in this space, we’ve heard of the OEMs investing directly, but we have to see Indigenous issues resolved and permitting issues resolved’,” Bains said.