This story was originally published by the Nevada current.
A federal analysis released Tuesday confirmed that Southern California’s Salton Sea contains enough lithium to supply the nation’s needs for decades.
Salton Sea has the potential to produce an estimated 375 million lithium batteries for electric vehicles — more than the total number of vehicles currently on American roads, according to the analysis commissioned by the Department of Energy.
These numbers dwarf the estimated lithium deposits available in Nevada’s Thacker Pass, long touted as the largest known source of lithium in the country.
The long-awaited analysis was conducted by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This is the most comprehensive analysis to date quantifying the domestic lithium resources in California’s Salton Sea region.
If the Salton Sea lithium can be mined, it could give the US the ability to produce lithium domestically, ending the country’s dependence on competing countries for a supply of the metal.
“Lithium is essential to decarbonizing the economy and reaching President Biden’s goals of 50 percent electric vehicle adoption by 2030,” said Jeff Marootian, DOE Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “This report confirms the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a domestic lithium industry at home, while also expanding clean, flexible electricity generation.”
But that opportunity depends on whether emerging technologies can make the extraction of lithium from brines cost-effective on a commercial scale. Over the past 12 months, the price of lithium dropped from around $85,000 per metric ton to less than $19,000, a dip attributed to increased global production and unexpectedly soft demand.
Generating electricity from the Salton Sea, a geothermal hot spot, requires extracting hot brine from underground aquifers to produce steam that drives turbines. Brine used for geothermal energy also happens to be rich in lithium which could theoretically be extracted in a more environmentally friendly closed system.
The Salton Sea is believed to contain the highest concentration of lithium in the world, found in geothermal brine.
Some researchers say integrating lithium mining into geothermal operations could reduce the environmental impact of conventional lithium mining practices, such as open pit mining or evaporation ponds.
Three companies – Berkshire Hathaway Energy, EnergySource and Controlled Thermal Resources – have been working for years on plans to mine lithium by taking advantage of the Salton Sea’s rich geothermal resources.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy, the sprawling holding company with several subsidiaries, including NV Energy, already operates 10 geothermal power plants on the southern shore of the Salton Sea, and recently commissioned a pilot facility to test the feasibility of lithium from brine.
Estimates for lithium in the Salton Sea were modeled using the average annual brine production from existing geothermal plants in the region and the concentration of lithium in the brine, according to the report.
However, the DOE cautions that these findings are based on existing companies’ ability to access the entire Salton Sea geothermal reservoir for electricity production, and their ability to fully extract lithium resources from geothermal brine.
In recent years, the federal government has invested in brine lithium extraction, supply $11 million in DOE funding to develop and accelerate technologies for the extraction and conversion of battery-grade lithium from geothermal brine.
The state of California is also leaning toward developing lithium mining in the Salton Sea.
In 2020, the California State Legislature established a commission to investigate and analyze lithium mining in California, including recommendations to expand lithium mining from geothermal brines in the region.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has refer to the Salton Sea as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium production,” and the state last year introduced a lithium extraction tax from up to $800 per ton.
Residents of Niland, California — the closest community to a geothermal plant — said they believed a combined lithium extraction and geothermal energy production facility would have a positive impact on the local community, with slightly higher scores for geothermal compared to lithium mining, according to ‘ a survey conducted by the DOE. However, surrounding communities expressed concerns about environmental impacts and air quality in additional surveys.
Lithium mining in the Salton Sea may represent a rare consensus among conservationists, local populations and industry, as mining projects face significant community concern and pushback in Nevada and other parts of the country.
In Nevada, several Native American tribes filed lawsuits against the proposed Thacker Pass mine, arguing that the mine would desecrate and desecrate a holy place federal conservation law and land policy.
Conservation groups have also fiercely opposed a planned lithium mine at Rhyolite Ridge in Esmeralda County, which overlaps the only known population of the Tiehm’s buckwheat plant, a rare wildflower. listed as endangered last year by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
