Systematic Risks of the Global Lithium Supply Chain Network: From Static Topological Structures to Cascading Failure Dynamics

Recent years have seen increasing concerns on supply chain risks of lithium, a critical material for achieving e-mobility transition and climate ambitions. These risks propagate both along the life cycle and across national boundaries in a multilayer network. However, most previous studies are either only based on static network measures or focused on individual layers, ignoring dynamic cascading risks and interconnected and interdependent relationships along life cycle stages and across economies. Here, we integrated trade-linked material flow and complex network analyses to investigate intricate interconnections, interdependencies, and systematic risks of the global lithium supply chain. Both static and dynamic measures of the global lithium supply chain network exhibit a “robust-yet-fragile” property: robust for random shocks yet fragile for targeted shocks and robust for small or local disruptions yet fragile for large or cascading failures. Portugal, Brazil, Singapore, Canada, Finland, Norway, South Africa, Israel, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates are most likely to be affected by supply disruptions. A hypothetical USA-China trade decoupling will increase the severity and susceptibility of network-wide failures by around 5%. Our results call for global collaborations and collective efforts to balance efficiency and security and avoid a “zero-sum game” in securing the lithium supply chain.