Bottleneck record, bottleneck_assessment_v1
Battery materials
Lithium, cobalt and natural graphite for cells. Pressure from mine supply growth and producer concentration (USGS); prices and inventories have no registered source. CFTC positioning does not apply: none of the three trades on a US futures exchange the CFTC reports.
Reading
In plain words
No pressure score: 0 of 8 components have enough data (0 percent of the weight). That is below the 50 percent coverage the thresholds require, so no pressure label is given. Missing: Lithium supply growth gap, Cobalt supply growth gap, Graphite supply growth gap, Lithium producer concentration and 4 more. No response signal is registered for this record (no capacity pipeline is registered and the curated lithium producer (Albemarle) belongs to no capex pulse group). Adding capacity takes 60 to 200 months by the cited source, so today's response is read against that horizon.
rules fired: coverage 0 < 0.5 (no pressure score)
Is the problem being solved?
Pressure and response
--
0 to 100, coverage 0%, 0 of 8 components
--
no response signal registered
no capacity pipeline is registered and the curated lithium producer (Albemarle) belongs to no capex pulse group
no capacity pipeline is registered and the curated lithium producer (Albemarle) belongs to no capex pulse group
Pressure components
Percentiles, weights and what is missing
| Component | Weight | Series and transform | Percentile | Raw | Period | History | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lithium supply growth gap world lithium mine production growth (USGS), sign reversed | 0.15 | lithium-mine-production WLD yoy_growth_negated | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing 2 observation(s) of lithium-mine-production give 1 transformed period(s), fewer than the 5 the rank needs |
Cobalt supply growth gap world cobalt mine production growth (USGS), sign reversed | 0.1 | cobalt-mine-production WLD yoy_growth_negated | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing 2 observation(s) of cobalt-mine-production give 1 transformed period(s), fewer than the 5 the rank needs |
Graphite supply growth gap world natural graphite mine production growth (USGS), sign reversed | 0.1 | graphite-mine-production WLD yoy_growth_negated | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing 2 observation(s) of graphite-mine-production give 1 transformed period(s), fewer than the 5 the rank needs |
Lithium producer concentration share of world lithium production from the three largest countries (derived from USGS) | 0.15 | lithium-top3-concentration WLD level | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing 2 observation(s) of lithium-top3-concentration give 2 transformed period(s), fewer than the 5 the rank needs |
Cobalt producer concentration share of world cobalt mine production from the three largest countries, computed from the USGS country rows | 0.1 | cobalt-mine-production WLD top3_share | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing 26 observation(s) of cobalt-mine-production give 2 transformed period(s), fewer than the 5 the rank needs |
Graphite producer concentration share of world natural graphite production from the three largest countries, computed from the USGS country rows | 0.1 | graphite-mine-production WLD top3_share | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing 38 observation(s) of graphite-mine-production give 2 transformed period(s), fewer than the 5 the rank needs |
Price pressure Lithium carbonate, cobalt and graphite prices. | 0.2 | no registered series | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing no battery material price series is registered (FRED carries none; CFTC not applicable) candidates: Fastmarkets; Benchmark Mineral Intelligence; LME cobalt |
Inventory Reported inventories relative to consumption. | 0.1 | no registered series | -- | -- | -- | -- | missing no inventory series is registered candidates: company filings; SMM |
Response detail
What the response signal rests on
no capacity pipeline is registered and the curated lithium producer (Albemarle) belongs to no capex pulse group
Downstream
Systems that depend on it
the curated graph has no lithium, cobalt or graphite node yet, so substitutes and downstream systems are empty here
Substitutes
Named on the dependency edges
the curated graph has no lithium, cobalt or graphite node yet, so substitutes and downstream systems are empty here
Recycling and recovery: Cell recycling recovers lithium, cobalt and nickel; no recovery series is registered.
Expansion lead time
60 to 200 months
New lithium, cobalt or graphite mine, discovery to first production
The same IEA average applies; brine and spodumene lithium projects have often been faster than the cross-mineral average, refining plants faster still.
International Energy Agency, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions (2021)
“It has taken 16.5 years on average to move mining projects from discovery to first production.”
checked 2026-09-07
Evidence
Every number, by id
- documentInternational Energy Agency, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions (2021)lead time 60 to 200 months: It has taken 16.5 years on average to move mining projects from discovery to first production.
Bottleneck and Response monitor, model bottleneck_assessment_v1, thresholds bottleneck_thresholds_v1
A record shows two signals and never combines them.
Pressure (modeled): each available component is transformed (12-month percent change, year-over-year growth with the sign reversed for supply, level for shares and lead times), then replaced by its percentile rank (0 to 100) within its own stored history up to that period, ties counted half, after a minimum history. The score is the weighted mean of those ranks over the components present, renormalised. Coverage is the share of declared weight that has data; components without a registered source are declared with their weight, their role and candidate sources, and count against coverage. Weights are a modelling choice and are listed on every record.
Response: the capacity response ratio where a capacity pipeline exists (US electricity: the stage-weighted 24-month EIA-860M pipeline over the trailing 24 months of additions, modeled), otherwise the capital expenditure pulse of the tagged company group (matched-sample trailing-four-quarter capex growth from stored 10-K and 10-Q facts, derived), otherwise null with the reason.
Status comes only from these thresholds:
- insufficient data: coverage below 0.5, or no pressure score. No label is guessed.
- below watch: pressure below 60.
- watch: pressure at or above 60 and below 75.
- constrained: pressure at or above 75.
- constrained, response underway: constrained and the response signal clears its threshold (capacity response at or above 1.0, or capex pulse above 10 percent).
Lead time is recommended-class metadata from a small sourced table (src/data/lead-times.ts) and is stored with its citation. Substitutes and downstream systems come from the curated knowledge graph (edges where the record's entity is the dependency; entities within three hops that depend on it, with centrality_v1). Every number on a record traces to stored observation ids, pulse row ids or edge ids in the row's JSON.
History
Assessments stored
| As of | Pressure | Coverage | Response | Status | Computed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-07 | -- | 0% | -- | insufficient data | 2026-09-07 |