A rare substance that is the closest thing on Earth to kryptonite, the fictional mineral that weakens Superman, could power 90 per cent of Europe’s electric vehicles, the Natural History Museum has said.

Found in only one place on the planet —a region of Serbia called the Jadar basin — a chalky white mineral known as jadarite could provide enough lithium to make batteries for most of the Continent’s electric cars.

About 100,000 tonnes of lithium is produced annually but this is only a fifth of what is needed to meet the forecast demand for batteries for electric vehicles as countries move from petrol and diesel cars.

Most of the world’s lithium comes from a mineral called spodumene, but it takes much more energy to extract the lithium from spodumene than it does from jadarite, which also contains boron as a useful by-product.

In the Superman comics a mineral known as kryptonite, named after the superhero’s home planet of Krypton, appears most commonly as a green crystalline substance that can sap the Man of Steel’s powers, leaving him vulnerable.

When scientists uncovered the lithium-rich jadarite mineral in Serbia, they noted that its composition could be described as “sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide with fluorine”. Chris Stanley, of the Natural History Museum, said he searched for this composition and — apart from fluorine — he “was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor from a museum in the [2006] movie Superman Returns”.

Rather than sapping power, scientists hope that jadarite will provide it. The museum said: “The mineral ... has been found in a quantity so large that, if mined, could produce lithium to power up to 90 per cent of Europe’s quota of electric vehicles.”

Since its discovery in 2004, no other sources of jadarite have been found.

“If the mineral ingredients are not just right, if the conditions are too acidic or too cold, jadarite will not form,” said Francesco Putzolu, an author of the study published in Nature Geoscience.

“The criteria seem to be so precise that we’ve not yet seen them replicated.”