Issue Refining ecosystems, sorbent validation and mineral regulation are missing where the new hubs would sit

Summary

The Dubai Future Foundation outlook lists the conditions that integrated lithium hubs would need and finds most of them missing in the places such hubs might go. Refining capacity would have to be built in new geographies. Because the industry is currently concentrated in China, Chile and Argentina, workforces and supplier networks elsewhere may have to be developed almost from nothing. Sorbent technology has so far proven effective only for a limited range of brine chemistries and still needs wider validation. Rules on water use, subsurface rights and waste streams would also have to mature in jurisdictions that have never regulated lithium extraction, let alone refining. The outlook warns these conditions are hard to meet quickly and new capacity may lag behind carmakers' contracting timelines.