French Foreign Trade Minister Olivier Becht speaks to AFP in Santiago, Chile, June 9, 2023 (AFP/MARTIN BERNETTI)
France wants to partner with Chile to extract and exploit lithium, an essential mineral for the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles, French Minister for Foreign Trade Olivier Becht said on Friday during a visit to the southern country. -American.
France intends to “contribute to the Chilean adventure of the extraction and exploitation of lithium obviously in connection with European needs and in particular French”, he assured, recalling that Chile had the largest reserves in the world. world of this mineral which intoxicates the electric battery industry and should allow cars to wean themselves off CO2-emitting oil.
“It is useless to build + gigafactories + batteries if we do not have the materials used to manufacture the batteries”, he underlined from the capital Santiago. Several lithium battery manufacturing plants are planned in the north of France.
Highlighting the strong competition in the sector, Mr. Becht assured that France had a technological offer “totally different from that of other countries and companies”. “We have the possibility of extracting lithium by considerably reducing water consumption”, he argued in particular, also highlighting an “environmentally friendly approach”.
At the end of April, the Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced a national strategy for the exploitation of lithium which foresees a public-private partnership. Currently, via a system of concessions, two private companies extract the white powder from the Atacama saltworks, 1,700 km north of Santiago.
During his visit, Olivier Becht met the Chilean Ministers of Mines, Energy, Transport and Economy. He also discussed with them the cooperation between the two countries for the production of “green” hydrogen. This energy of the future is produced from renewable electricity – and not from fossil fuels like “grey” hydrogen. Its economic model remains to be found, however.
Chile is France’s third partner in Latin America.
At the beginning of the week, Mr. Becht went to Brazil where he met several ministers, including that of Mines and Energy.
© 2023 AFP
Did you like this article ? Share it with your friends with the buttons below.
