The heaviest material in a cell
A kilowatt hour is the unit that measures how much energy a battery can store. Graphite is a form of carbon used inside a battery anode, the electrode that holds the charge while a battery is full. The United States Department of Energy states that a lithium ion battery holds between 0.86 and 0.96 kilograms of graphite for every kilowatt hour it can store, more than any other tracked material, ahead of aluminum at 0.54 to 0.71 kilograms and nickel at 0.24 to 0.65 kilograms. Vianode, a company that makes synthetic graphite, states plainly that graphite is the single largest component by weight in most of the batteries it goes into.
These 5 rows are the department own modeled range across 7 battery chemistries. Total graphite, natural and synthetic combined, runs far higher, 0.86 to 0.96 kilograms per kilowatt hour, and is not the quantity shown on this chart.
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| Lithium | 0.09 to 0.10 kilograms per kilowatt hour |
| Nickel | 0.24 to 0.59 kilograms per kilowatt hour |
| Cobalt | 0.05 to 0.14 kilograms per kilowatt hour |
| Manganese | 0.03 to 0.08 kilograms per kilowatt hour |
| Natural graphite | 0.13 to 0.49 kilograms per kilowatt hour |
Most of it is baked, not mined
Graphite used in a battery comes in 2 forms. Natural graphite is dug out of the ground and processed. Synthetic graphite is made by heating petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining, to about 3,000 degrees Celsius inside a furnace, according to Vianode. The Department of Energy states that natural graphite is only 29% to 53% of the total graphite used in a battery, citing 2 separate research reviews. That means synthetic graphite already supplies 47% to 71% of the total, a MAOWCE calculation from those same 2 figures, holding the larger share in the low case for natural graphite and a large minority even in the high case.
The United States Geological Survey counted the shift already happening. United States companies used 52,000 tons of natural graphite in 2024, a fall of 21% from the year before, and the agency states the fall came from both weaker battery demand and more synthetic graphite becoming available from China.
Apparent consumption is the government own measure of natural graphite used inside the country each year. The government attributes the 2024 fall partly to more synthetic graphite becoming available from China.
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| 2020 | 30,000 |
| 2021 | 44,300 |
| 2022 | 79,700 |
| 2023 | 65,700 |
| 2024 | 52,000 |
A mining problem becomes an energy problem
The Department of Energy states, in its own words, that synthetic graphite is more expensive to make and more energy intensive to produce than natural graphite. Vianode reports its own Norway plant makes graphite with a carbon footprint of 1.9 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram, which the company calls a 90% cut from what it describes as a market average of 20 kilograms. That market average figure comes from the company itself and could not be independently checked in this file.
The one country making almost all of it
Mining is not where the concentration is worst. The United States Geological Survey counts China as producing 78% of the world natural graphite mined in 2024. The International Energy Agency, working independently of any graphite producer, counts China as holding more than 97% of the world capacity to turn that material, natural or synthetic, into finished anode material for batteries, and nearly 90% of the capacity to make cathode material. For lithium iron phosphate cathodes specifically, the agency states China holds almost 100% of global capacity.
The source states the cathode active material figure as nearly 90%, the anode active material figure as more than 97%, and the lithium iron phosphate cathode figure as almost 100%, not an exact 100. None of the 3 is stated as a flat number, and this chart plots the stated share for each stage without rounding any of them upward beyond what the source itself says.
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| Cathode active material | 90 |
| Anode active material | 97 |
| LFP cathode | 100 |