China’s export controls on antimony are set to take effect on September 15th. Furthermore, according to a report from Liberty Times Net, it is indicated that these controls could be escalated, with plans to impose additional restrictions on tungsten by the end of this year.

Addressing the matter, as per another report from CNBC, Lewis Black, CEO of Canada-based Almonty Industries, remarked that just three months ago, no one would have expected China to take such actions.

He pointed out that this move by China has unsettled many in the industry, including clients who lack backup plans—a fact that China is well aware of. Such a situation hasn’t been seen in 30 years.

Additionally, Tony Adock, executive chairman of Tungsten Metals Group, expressed that he views this as the start of broader restrictions on the export of certain rare earths and minerals. He finds it unlikely that China will stop at limiting antimony.

Per the latest annual report from the U.S. Geological Survey, in 2023, China was the world’s largest producer of antimony, with a production of 83,000 tons last year, accounting for 48% of the global supply.

On the other hand, the U.S. did not mine any commercially viable antimony. The report also noted that the U.S. has not engaged in commercial tungsten mining since 2015, with China dominating the global tungsten supply.

Tungsten, with a hardness nearly equivalent to that of diamond, is used in weapons, semiconductors, and industrial cutting tools. Both tungsten and antimony are listed as critical minerals by the U.S. government, and they are located within 10 elements of each other on the periodic table.

In response to these developments, Black’s company is said to be planning to spend at least USD 125 million later this year to reopen a tungsten mine in South Korea.

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On August 15, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced restrictions on the export of the strategic mineral antimony for national security reasons, set to take effect on September 15, 2024. According to sources cited by the Commercial Times, the market price of antimony could skyrocket to USD 30,000 per ton.

Antimony is strategically significant due to its extensive applications in solar photovoltaics, batteries, fireproof materials, military equipment, and even nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, as per data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), China is the world’s largest producer of antimony, with a production of 83,000 tons last year, accounting for 48% of the global supply. Other major producers include Myanmar, with 4,600 tons annually, Turkey with 6,000 tons, and Tajikistan with 21,000 tons.

The report from Asia Financial on August 17 indicated that around 20% of the world’s antimony is used in manufacturing solar photovoltaic glass to enhance the performance of solar cells. Most of the remaining supply is used in lead-acid batteries.

Additionally, antimony has growing strategic importance due to its role as a key material in military equipment such as nuclear weapons, infrared missiles, and night vision devices, as well as a hardening agent for bullets and tanks.

As a result, the global supply of antimony is facing a shortage. Reportedly, since the beginning of this year, the price of this rare metal has already doubled, with current trading prices exceeding USD 22,000 per ton, setting a historic high.

Chetan Soni, president of the UK-based Commodity Research Unit (CRU), stated that given the current historical high prices, China’s recent announcement could further drive up prices. He added that prices might reach USD 30,000 per ton as buyers seek to secure future production or stockpile materials.

Soni believes that if antimony prices rise again, it will increase the Western world’s dependence on China’s critical minerals, including rare earths, gallium, and germanium, which have also faced export restrictions since last year.

Part of the market supply tightness may be due to disruptions in Russian supply, caused by sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as well as a reduction in domestic production in Russia.

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Currently, the issue of low power consumption remains a key concern in the industry. According to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), given that an average Google search requires 0.3Wh and each request to OpenAI’s ChatGPT consumes 2.9Wh, the 9 billion searches conducted daily would require an additional 10 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity annually. Based on the projected sales of AI servers, AI industry might see exponential growth in 2026, with power consumption needs at least ten times that of last year.

Ahmad Bahai, CTO of Texas Instruments, per a previous report from Business Korea, stated that recently, in addition to the cloud, AI services have also shifted to mobile and PC devices, leading to a surge in power consumption, and hence, this will be a hot topic.

In response to market demands, the industry is actively developing semiconductors with lower power consumption. On memory products, the development of LPDDR and related products such as Low Power Compression Attached Memory Module (LPCAMM) is accelerating. These products are particularly suitable for achieving energy conservation in mobile devices with limited battery capacity. Additionally, the expansion of AI applications in server and automotive fields is driving the increased use of LPDDR to reduce power consumption.

In terms of major companies, Micron, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix are speeding up the development of the next generation of LPDDR. Recently, Micron announced the launch of Crucial LPCAMM2. Compared to existing modules, this product is 64% smaller and 58% more power-efficient. As a low-power dedicated packaging module that includes several latest LPDDR products (LPDDR5X), it is a type of LPCAMM. LPCAMM was first introduced by Samsung Electronics last year, and it is expected to enjoy significant market growth this year.

Currently, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) plans to complete the development of LPDDR6 specifications within this year. According to industry news cited by the Korean media BusinessKorea, LPDDR6 is expected to start commercialization next year. The industry predicts that LPDDR6’s bandwidth may more than double that of previous generation.

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Could AI Be Heading Towards an “Energy Crisis”? Speculation suggests that a Microsoft engineer involved in the GPT-6 training cluster project has warned that deploying over 100,000 H100 GPUs in a single state might trigger a collapse of the power grid. Despite signs of OpenAI’s progress in training GPT-6, the availability of electricity could emerge as a critical bottleneck.

Kyle Corbitt, co-founder and CEO of AI startup OpenPipe, revealed in a post on social platform X that he recently spoke with a Microsoft engineer responsible for the GPT-6 training cluster project. The engineer complained that deploying InfiniBand-level links between GPUs across regions has been a painful task.

Continuing the conversation, Corbitt asked, “why not just colocate the cluster in one region?” The Microsoft engineer replied, “Oh yeah, we tried that first. We can’t put more than 100K H100s in a single state without bringing down the power grid.”

At the just-concluded CERAWeek 2024, attended by top executives from the global energy industry, discussions revolved around the advancement of AI technology in the sector and the significant demand for energy driven by AI.

As per a report from Bloomberg, during his speech, Toby Rice, chief of the largest US natural gas driller, EQT Corp., cited a forecast predicting AI could gobble up more power than households by 2030.

Additionally, Sam Altman from OpenAI has expressed concerns about the energy, particularly electricity, demands of AI. Per a report from Reuters, at the Davos Forum earlier this year, he stated that AI’s development requires breakthroughs in energy, as AI is expected to bring about significantly higher electricity demands than anticipated.

According to a report by The New Yorker on March 9th citing data of Alex de Vries, a data expert at the Dutch National Bank, it has indicated that ChatGPT consumes over 500,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity daily to process around 200 million user requests, equivalent to over 17,000 times the daily electricity consumption of an average American household. As for search giant Google, if it were to use AIGC for every user search, its annual electricity consumption would increase to around 29 billion kilowatt-hours, surpassing the annual electricity consumption of countries like Kenya and Guatemala.

Looking back at 2022, when AI hadn’t yet sparked such widespread enthusiasm, data centers in China and the United States respectively accounted for 3% and 4% of their respective total societal electricity consumption.

As global computing power gradually increases, a March 24th research report from Huatai Securities predicts that by 2030, the total electricity consumption of data centers in China and the United States will reach approximately 0.95/0.65 trillion kilowatt-hours and 1.7/1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours respectively, representing over 3.5 times and 6 times that of 2022. In an optimistic scenario, by 2030, the AI electricity consumption in China/US will account for 20%/31% of the total societal electricity consumption in 2022.

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The Ministry of Energy in Bulgaria has launched 2 separate calls to build new renewable energy capacity and energy storage facilities in the country with more than BGN 535 million (roughly USD 298 million) budget.

The BG-RRP-4.032 tender will support new solar and/or wind power projects with co-located energy storage facilities. A budget of BGN 107.57 million (roughly USD 60 million) has been allocated to aid the construction of at least 200 MW wind and solar capacity along with 100 MW of storage. Projects can have an installed capacity of 200 kW to 2 MW.

The maximum grant available for a single project will cover up to 50% of the eligible costs but it cannot exceed BGN 1.08 million (roughly USD 0.60 million) for 1 MW of installed energy storage capacity.

The other procurement call BG-RRP-4.033 will also support new solar and/or wind energy projects with co-located storage facilities with an installed capacity of more than 200 kW. The total budget for this round is BGN 427.5 million (roughly USD 238 million) to aid the development of a minimum 940 MW renewable energy and 200 MW storage capacity.

Eligible applicants for both these tenders can come from all sectors of the economy, barring those from agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

The tenders have been issued under the country’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan through which it targets to install 1.425 GW new renewable energy and 350 MW energy storage capacity to the national grid.

Launched on March 14, 2024, the last date for bid submission for these tenders is June 12, 2024.

The launch of these tenders follows a consultation round opened by the ministry in October 2023 for 520 MW wind and solar energy along with 150 MW storage capacity.

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