Green Lithium says it plans to reduce the carbon footprint of lithium refining by using low-energy processes, renewable electricity, hydrogen gas, and carbon capture technology to achieve an 80 per cent lower carbon footprint than traditional refineries.

"So the small price you pay for shipping the material to the UK is completely outweighed by the benefits of the decarbonised process we use in the UK," said Sargent.

Unless these low-energy, low-carbon footprint batteries are regulated, I don't see any of these promises actually coming to fruition. They still need to compete with every other country, and all of this sounds quite expensive.

I'm all for regulating the carbon coat of batteries, but I don't think that will happen. So I guess its more likely that these are promises made to be broken. Though even then importing raw rock from Australia is never gonna be able to beat Chinese companies mining their own lithium and processing it without shipping the rocks to the other side of the planet.