US vs China: another step against the lithium monopoly
Governments, institutions and organizations around the world have been promoting the use of electric cars to reduce transport pollution for years. However, one aspect that is increasingly being talked about is the problem of lithium mining, which generates pollution and must be transported to China for refining and processing.
At present, the Asian giant accounts for 90% of the battery industry for electric cars, which has led to problems such as the falling demand for electric vehicles in Europe. The most important lithium deposits are located in Argentina, Chile and Australia, but transporting it to Asian countries involves high costs and large amounts of CO2.
The University of California Riverside has carried out a study in the Salton Sea area on the US-Mexico border. It has revealed that this site could contain reserves of between 1 and 5 million tonnes of lithium, which could be processed into 5 to 32 million tonnes of lithium carbonate, a key resource for battery production.
US needs EUR 4.4 billion to produce lithium without polluting the environment
The Salton Sea area used to be a large lake that attracted thousands of tourists every year. It has now dried up to an increasingly uninhabited salt desert. However, there are geothermal resources here that are exploited by 11 power plants that extract saltpetre from the ground to produce energy and inject it back into the ground in a continuous cycle.
Companies BHE Renewables, EnergySource and Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) have seen a potential solution here to extract the lithium from the brine before it is injected back into the substrate, providing a pollution-free method of controlling the battery supply chain without the need to use large amounts of water in open-pit mines.
To achieve this, they would have to invest about $1 billion for the facility, which would cost about $50 billion (about 40 billion euros) for each tonne of lithium mined initially. It would be more expensive in the short term, but, on the other hand, it would generate many jobs and its costs would be reduced in the long term, decarbonizing the extraction process.
Experts advise caution: problems remain to be solved, but we have a huge opportunity
Lithium extraction by means of geothermal energy is a completely new method that has not been tested on an industrial scale. The companies involved are developing plans to set up a pilot plant to see the process in operation, but the infrastructure for refining and manufacturing batteries only exists in Asia, so they will still have to get it there.
While the companies have said the plan going forward is to refine the lithium on site once mining is underway, they have not presented plans to make this possible, so the upfront costs are compounded by transport and dependence on the Chinese market in the short term.
China stays one step ahead in renewable energy
The lithium battery monopoly will remain in China’s possession for a few more decades. Meanwhile they are making inroads into the US market with cheaper and more efficient solar panels, causing international factories to close.