India, Australia looking to increasing cooperation in critical minerals sector: Goyal

India is in talks with Australia on critical minerals which can be used in batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday.

He said that India has a scarcity of critical minerals, which goes into battery making and Australia has huge reserves which they do not process and manufacture.

At present, those minerals are being imported by different countries from Australia to develop their manufacturing base.

“Going forward, we would need those minerals for our EVs…We have discussed. It was also discussed at the prime ministers level,” he told reporters when asked about areas of cooperation.

India and Australia have reached a major milestone in working towards investment in critical mineral projects to develop supply chains between the two countries.

Union minister for coal and mines Pralhad Joshi and Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King held bilateral talks on Friday and announced the partnership has identified five target projects (two lithium and three cobalt) to undertake detailed due diligence, according to a mines ministry statement.

On one electricity grid, he said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has articulated a vision of one earth one sun and one grid.

“We are already in dialogue with UAE, Saudi Arabia and Singapore and we would like to have a dialogue with Australia so that we can expand our grid connectivity and look at moving towards one grid so that when sun rises in Australia, they can share their energy with us and in different hours when we have surplus energy, we can share it with Australia meeting each others peak load,” Goyal said.

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