September 23, 2024: Lithium ion batteries represented the EU’s largest trade deficit of €19 billion ($21 billion) last year amid intense global manufacturing competition, according to latest data published on September 11.

The li-on deficit was also up more than 20% compared to the previous year, the European Commission’s State of the Energy Union Report 2024 said.

The scale of the deficit appears to cancel out the benefit to the bloc of lithium batteries, which the report said had “the highest production value” in the EU, amounting to €21 billion last year.

From the net-zero technologies with a trade surplus in 2023, the most prominent was wind (€1.7 billion), where imports fell by 65% and exports increased by 50% compared to the previous year.

However, the report said geopolitical instabilities have increased the importance of resilience and security in the net-zero industry, and European manufacturers are facing intensive competition in these growing global markets.

The EU has “acted swiftly” to strengthen international partnerships and shore up critical raw material supplies for batteries and other sectors, but “new and emerging challenges” such as increased energy poverty, the energy price differential compared to other global competitors and the risk of new strategic critical dependencies now need a decisive response, the report said.

The report comes just weeks after China formally called on the World Trade Organization to intervene in an EV subsidies row with the European Commission, after the EU imposed provisional import tariffs on Chinese battery electric vehicles that the EU said benefited from unfair state subsidization.

Last July, the EU hailed a ‘historic’ pact with Serbia that paved the way for the disputed excavation of lithium, a mega project that could reduce Europe’s dependency on China.