“Vanadium is one of the hottest metals out there. You have what appears to be a large vanadium deposit.” — starts Peter Clausi of InvestorIntel in an interview with John Lee, Chairman and CEO Prophecy Development Corp. (TSX: PCY).

John Lee: Yes Peter. Vanadium prices bottomed in 2016. This year they have really taken off. We believe it is in the third inning. This metal has attracted investments from the likes of Robert Friedland and other billion-dollar individuals and institutions.

Peter Clausi: What is driving the demand for vanadium?

John Lee: Vanadium has always been around. It has traditional use in the steel rebar industry. Recently it has really caught on in vanadium batteries. It is akin to lithium batteries except it is used and primarily designed and engineered for large-scale utilities, storage, batteries for utility grid power.

Peter Clausi: John I understand that utility grade vanadium batteries of are interest also. Why is that?

John Lee: The vanadium redox battery flow batteries recently gathered a lot of momentum. The key to do with explosive growth is the renewable energy generating capacity namely, specifically solar and wind. Today solar and wind generating capacity amount to over 700 gigawatts. That is equivalent to 70 boost power, nuclear power plants or 70 Hoover Dam hydro plants. The numbers come from less than 100 gigawatts 7 years ago. You are looking at a 700% in growth, but unfortunately up to 50% of the time, in parts of China, the wind and solar energy has gone unused because they are unpredictable in nature. The interesting point here today is that the utility scale grid batteries only amount to 2 gigawatts. That is less than 3% of this renewable generator capacity. There is a lot of room to catch up and authorities in this space, such as the green tech, have predicted more than double-digit growth on a yearly basis. You could have 500% to 700% growth in the next few years in the grid-scale batteries. Very exciting space; there is not a dominant leader right now. We are positioning and we are seeing vanadium as having a very bright future in capturing the market share of that space because of the unique nature of the scalability and the low life cycle of vanadium batteries to compliment the life cycles of renewables of wind and solar.

Disclaimer: Prophecy Development Corp. is an advertorial member of InvestorIntel.

• [Editor:Wang Linyan]