A hundred or more years ago, the oil business was vertically integrated and companies, often back by governmental support, scrambled to secure untapped reserves. So it is with Lithium at the dawn of the battery age. The parallels do not stop there as this episode uncovers. Access to Lithium is becoming the crucial bottleneck for battery companies, OEMs and countries alike – and a combination of prescient policy and aggressive entrepreneurs has put China way ahead. Can the West ever recover? What is the future of the Lithium market…will it evolve into a traded market? What is the role of commodity traders now and in the future and how to position for it? Our guest is Lukasz Bednarski, author of the book, Lithium: The Global Race for Battery Dominance and the New Energy Revolution. Lukasz is a former rare metals commodity trader and now a battery metals analyst.