Welcome TechMet: Building the Critical Metals Supply Chain for the Energy Transition
It is widely recognized that mitigating the worst impacts of climate change will require a shift to electrification and renewable energy-based systems. Less appreciated is the exponential increase in materials demand, particularly critical metals, needed to enable energy transition infrastructure deployment. Today, this supply chain is underinvested and highly geographically concentrated, and existing methods of production are increasingly environmentally intensive to find incremental resources to meet exponential demand growth. As metals demand continues to accelerate to meet the needs of the energy transition, it is imperative to build a sustainable, circular supply chain for these technology metals.
At S2G Ventures, we recognize how vital it is to have a secure and environmentally sustainable materials supply chain to enable the energy transition. This is a fundamental system-level challenge, which is why we are excited to announce our recent investment in TechMet, a company building a global platform of assets across the supply chain to sustainably produce, process, manufacture, and recycle critical metals that are critical to the global energy transition and the electric vehicle revolution.
Adopting a Systems Approach
Achieving net zero will require widespread electrification across a number of energy transition vectors. Technology deployment across sectors including electric vehicle batteries, energy storage, wind turbines, and solar panels, all rely on the increased use of a small set of critical technology minerals. Achieving 2050 clean energy goals will require a 5 – 10x increase in metal usage over the next 20 years. By 2040, clean energy technologies are expected to account for over 40 percent of total demand for copper and rare earth elements, 60 – 70 percent for nickel and cobalt, and almost 90 percent for lithium. Today, the metals supply chain is underinvested and highly geographically concentrated. As global demand for electrification continues to surge, a stable, secure, and circular supply of these metals will be imperative to ensure the scalability, affordability, and sustainability of renewable energy technologies.
TechMet has built a global platform of diversified assets across the metals supply chain that produce, process, manufacture, and recycle materials to gain strategic exposure to the production of the key metals that will define and power the 21st-century global economy. Through their portfolio of companies, TechMet is creating an ESG-grounded and near-shored metals supply chain to meet global electrification goals. Key metals in TechMet’s platform include lithium, nickel, cobalt, tin & tungsten, vanadium, and rare earth metals.
By investing in a portfolio of assets that fully encompass the metal lifecycle, TechMet can drive and capture value throughout the metal supply chain. This holistic approach also allows for synergies within TechMet’s portfolio, where upstream production can support downstream manufacturing and recycling activities, driving much more value creation than these assets would on a standalone basis. Moreover, through their focus on ESG values, the TechMet team works closely with portfolio companies to ensure that their business models are properly aligned with broader sustainability goals, which is paramount for the critical metals supply chain as it scales to meet global demand growth.
Founding and Future
TechMet was founded by Brian Menell in 2017 in Dublin with the support of 80 family office shareholders. Menell has an extensive background in metals and mining projects across North America, South America, Africa, and Europe. TechMet’s management team has deep sectoral expertise with decades of project development and operation in the metals, mining, and manufacturing spaces globally. In 2020, TechMet received $30 million in direct equity investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation to support “the development of critical minerals” and bolster “supply chain security for the energy transition.” Today, TechMet is the only critical metals company in which the US government has a direct equity stake, and both President Biden and Vice President Harris have cited the company’s role as a leading critical minerals company in the global effort to combat climate change.
In the last 12 months, TechMet has invested more than $180 million into critical minerals projects worldwide across ten companies. The company’s current portfolio includes hard rock lithium mining and direct lithium extraction projects in the US and Europe, nickel and cobalt extraction and processing in South America, rare earth extraction and processing in Southern Africa and the EU, tungsten and lithium mining in East Africa, next-generation cathode manufacturing and lithium-ion battery recycling technologies in the US and the largest high-purity vanadium chemical producer in North America. Their most recent investment was in UK-based Cornish Lithium to build the lithium supply for EV battery production and storage.
The recently oversubscribed $200 million fundraising round will be deployed across the company’s existing portfolio of ten assets to build and expand production, refining, and recycling projects and enables TechMet to continue to grow its operational footprint globally across a collection of metals.
Achieving climate goals over the next few decades will only be possible with a substantial increase in the availability and production of critical metals that comprise many of today’s renewable energy technologies. We are thrilled to partner with TechMet in enabling the supply chain that is integral to enable the energy transition.
Image Source: TechMet
