NY Times, May 6, 2021
The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles
A race is on to produce lithium in the United States, but competing
projects are taking very different approaches to extracting the vital
raw material. Some might not be very green.
By Ivan Penn and Eric LiptonPhotographs by Gabriella Angotti-Jones
Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to
start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first
new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade
— a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car
batteries and renewable energy.
The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the
near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium.
But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from
members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups
because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious ground
water, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving
behind a giant mound of waste.
“Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin
people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on
the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project
wend their way through federal courts.
The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension
surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not
be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium,
cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often
ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.
That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there
is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other
major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil,
governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help
countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come.
Developers and lawmakers see this Nevada project, given final approval
in the last days of the Trump administration, as part of the opportunity
for the United States to become a leader in producing some of these raw
materials as President Biden moves aggressively to fight climate change.
In addition to Nevada, businesses have proposed lithium production sites
in California, Oregon, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina.
But traditional mining is one of the dirtiest businesses out there. That
reality is not lost on automakers and renewable-energy businesses.
“Our new clean-energy demands could be creating greater harm, even
though its intention is to do good,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive
director for the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, a group
that vets mines for companies like BMW and Ford Motor. “We can’t allow
that to happen.”
This friction helps explain why a contest of sorts has emerged in recent
months across the United States about how best to extract and produce
the large amounts of lithium in ways that are much less destructive than
how mining has been done for decades.
Just in the first three months of 2021, U.S. lithium miners like those
in Nevada raised nearly $3.5 billion from Wall Street — seven times the
amount raised in the prior 36 months, according to data assembled by
Bloomberg, and a hint of the frenzy underway.
Some of those investors are backing alternatives including a plan to
extract lithium from briny water beneath California’s largest lake, the
Salton Sea, about 600 miles south of the Lithium Americas site.
At the Salton Sea, investors plan to use specially coated beads to
extract lithium salt from the hot liquid pumped up from an aquifer more
than 4,000 feet below the surface. The self-contained systems will be
connected to geothermal power plants generating emission-free
electricity. And in the process, they hope to generate the revenue
needed to restore the lake, which has been fouled by toxic runoff from
area farms for decades.
Businesses are also hoping to extract lithium from brine in Arkansas,
Nevada, North Dakota and at least one more location in the United States.
The United States needs to quickly find new supplies of lithium as
automakers ramp up manufacturing of electric vehicles. Lithium is used
in electric car batteries because it is lightweight, can store lots of
energy and can be repeatedly recharged. Analysts estimate that lithium
demand is going to increase tenfold before the end of this decade as
Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors and other automakers introduce dozens
of electric models. Other ingredients like cobalt are needed to keep the
battery stable.
Even though the United States has some of the world’s largest reserves,
the country today has only one large-scale lithium mine, Silver Peak in
Nevada, which first opened in the 1960s and is producing just 5,000 tons
a year — less than 2 percent of the world’s annual supply. Most of the
raw lithium used domestically comes from Latin America or Australia, and
most of it is processed and turned into battery cells in China and other
Asian countries.
“China just put out its next five-year plan,” Mr. Biden’s energy
secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said in a recent interview. “They want to
be the go-to place for the guts of the batteries, yet we have these
minerals in the United States. We have not taken advantage of them, to
mine them.”
In March, she announced grants to increase production of crucial
minerals. “This is a race to the future that America is going to win,”
she said.
So far, the Biden administration has not moved to help push more
environmentally friendly options — like lithium brine extraction,
instead of open pit mines. The Interior Department declined to say
whether it would shift its stand on the Lithium Americas permit, which
it is defending in court.
Mining companies and related businesses want to accelerate domestic
production of lithium and are pressing the administration and key
lawmakers to insert a $10 billion grant program into Mr. Biden’s
infrastructure bill, arguing that it is a matter of national security.
“Right now, if China decided to cut off the U.S. for a variety of
reasons we’re in trouble,” said Ben Steinberg, an Obama administration
official turned lobbyist. He was hired in January by Piedmont Lithium,
which is working to build an open-pit mine in North Carolina and is one
of several companies that have created a trade association for the industry.
Investors are rushing to get permits for new mines and begin production
to secure contracts with battery companies and automakers.
Ultimately, federal and state officials will decide which of the two
methods — traditional mining or brine extraction — is approved. Both
could take hold. Much will depend on how successful environmentalists,
tribes and local groups are in blocking projects.
On a hillside, Edward Bartell or his ranch employees are out early every
morning making sure that the nearly 500 cows and calves that roam his
50,000 acres in Nevada’s high desert have enough feed. It has been a
routine for generations, but the family has never before faced a threat
quite like this.
A few miles from his ranch, work could soon start on Lithium Americas’
open pit mine that will represent one of the largest lithium production
sites in U.S. history, complete with a helicopter landing pad, a
chemical processing plant and waste dumps. The mine will reach a depth
of about 370 feet.
Mr. Bartell’s biggest fear is that the mine will consume the water that
keeps his cattle alive. The company has said the mine will consume 3,224
gallons per minute. That could cause the water table to drop on land Mr.
Bartell owns by an estimated 12 feet, according to a Lithium Americas
consultant.
While producing 66,000 tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate,
the mine may cause groundwater contamination with metals including
antimony and arsenic, according to federal documents.
The lithium will be extracted by mixing clay dug out from the
mountainside with as much as 5,800 tons a day of sulfuric acid. This
whole process will also create 354 million cubic yards of mining waste
that will be loaded with discharge from the sulfuric acid treatment, and
may contain modestly radioactive uranium, permit documents disclose.
A December assessment by the Interior Department found that over its
41-year life, the mine would degrade nearly 5,000 acres of winter range
used by pronghorn antelope and hurt the habitat of the sage grouse. It
would probably also destroy a nesting area for a pair of golden eagles
whose feathers are vital to the local tribe’s religious ceremonies.
“It is real frustrating that it is being pitched as an environmentally
friendly project, when it is really a huge industrial site,” said Mr.
Bartell, who filed a lawsuit to try to block the mine.
At the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, anger over the project has
boiled over, even causing some fights between members as Lithium
Americas has offered to hire tribal members in jobs that will pay an
average annual wage of $62,675 — twice the county’s per capita income —
but that will come with a big trade-off.
“Tell me, what water am I going to drink for 300 years?” Deland Hinkey,
a member of the tribe, yelled as a federal official arrived at the
reservation in March to brief tribal leaders on the mining plan.
“Anybody, answer my question. After you contaminate my water, what I am
going to drink for 300 years? You are lying!”
The reservation is nearly 50 miles from the mine site — and far beyond
the area where groundwater may be contaminated — but tribe members fear
the pollution could spread.
A member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, left,
confronted Tildon Smart, a member of the tribe’s council, about meeting
privately with the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management.
A Bureau of Indian Affairs officer escorted tribal members away from the
community center after they tried to deliver a petition protesting the
meeting.
Tribe members protested outside of the land management offices before
beginning a prayer run to Thacker Pass, the site where the lithium mine
would operate.
The tribe organized the 273-mile prayer run to raise awareness about the
mine.
The prayer run traversed much of the state, culminating near the
proposed mine site, which sits in an area historically controlled by the
tribe before it was taken by the United States in 1863.
“It is really a David versus Goliath kind of a situation,” said Maxine
Redstar, the leader of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes,
noting that there was limited consultation with the tribe before the
Interior Department approved the project. “The mining companies are just
major corporations.”
Tim Crowley, a vice president at Lithium Americas, said the company
would operate responsibly — planning, for example, to use the steam from
burning molten sulfur to generate the electricity it needs.
“We’re answering President Biden’s call to secure America’s supply
chains and tackle the climate crisis,” Mr. Crowley said.
A spokesman noted that area ranchers also used a lot of water and that
the company had purchased its allocation from another farmer to limit
the increase in water use.
The company has moved aggressively to secure permits, hiring a lobbying
team that includes a former Trump White House aide, Jonathan Slemrod.
Lithium Americas, which estimates there is $3.9 billion worth of
recoverable lithium at the site, hopes to start mining operations next
year. Its largest shareholder is the Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium.
“This is the most sustainable lithium in the world, made in America,”
Rod Colwell, the chief executive of Controlled Thermal Resources, said.
“Who would have thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.”
The desert sands surrounding the Salton Sea have drawn worldwide notice
before. They have served as a location for Hollywood productions like
the “Star Wars” franchise.
Created by flooding from the Colorado River more than a century ago, the
lake once thrived. Frank Sinatra performed at its resorts. Over the
years, drought and poor management turned it into a source of pollutants.
But a new wave of investors is promoting the lake as one of the most
promising and environmentally friendly lithium prospects in the United
States.
Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and
Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate
water from sprawling ponds. It is relatively inexpensive, but it uses
lots of water in arid areas.
The approach planned at the Salton Sea is radically different from the
one traditionally used in South America.
The lake sits atop the Salton Buttes, which, as in Nevada, are
underground volcanoes.
For years, a company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, CalEnergy, and another
business, Energy Source, have tapped the Buttes’ geothermal heat to
produce electricity. The systems use naturally occurring underground
steam. This same water is loaded with lithium.
Now, Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies — Controlled Thermal
Resources and Materials Research — want to install equipment that will
extract lithium after the water passes through the geothermal plants, in
a process that will take only about two hours.
Rod Colwell, a burly Australian, has spent much of the last decade
pitching investors and lawmakers on putting the brine to use. In
February, a backhoe plowed dirt on a 7,000-acre site being developed by
his company, Controlled Thermal Resources.
“This is the sweet spot,” Mr. Colwell said. “This is the most
sustainable lithium in the world, made in America. Who would have
thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.”
Companies are hoping to extract lithium from the briny water deep
beneath the Salton Sea’s surface.
It is being promoted as one of the most promising and environmentally
friendly lithium prospects in the United States.
Several companies are confident that they have the technology worked out
and are ready to transform the way lithium is produced.
A Berkshire Hathaway executive told state officials recently that the
company expected to complete its demonstration plant for lithium
extraction by April 2022.
The backers of the Salton Sea lithium projects are also working with
local groups and hope to offer good jobs in an area that has an
unemployment rate of nearly 16 percent.
“Our region is very rich in natural resources and mineral resources,”
said Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, which
represents area farm workers. “However, they’re very poorly distributed.
The population has not been afforded a seat at the table.”
The state has given millions in grants to lithium extraction companies,
and the Legislature is considering requiring carmakers by 2035 to use
California sources for some of the lithium in vehicles they sell in the
state, the country’s largest electric-car market.
But even these projects have raised some questions.
Geothermal plants produce energy without emissions, but they can require
tens of billions of gallons of water annually for cooling. And lithium
extraction from brine dredges up minerals like iron and salt that need
to be removed before the brine is injected back into the ground.
Similar extraction efforts at the Salton Sea have previously failed. In
2000, CalEnergy proposed spending $200 million to extract zinc and to
help restore the Salton Sea. The company gave up on the effort in 2004.
But several companies working on the direct lithium extraction technique
— including Lilac Solutions, based in California, and Standard Lithium
of Vancouver, British Columbia — are confident they have mastered the
technology.
Both companies have opened demonstration projects using the brine
extraction technology, with Standard Lithium tapping into a brine source
already being extracted from the ground by an Arkansas chemical plant,
meaning it did not need to take additional water from the ground.
“This green aspect is incredibly important,” said Robert Mintak, chief
executive of Standard Lithium, who hopes the company will produce 21,000
tons a year of lithium in Arkansas within five years if it can raise
$440 million in financing. “The Fred Flintstone approach is not the
solution to the lithium challenge.”
Lilac Solutions, whose clients include Controlled Thermal Resources, is
also working on direct lithium extraction in Nevada, North Dakota and at
least one other U.S. location that it would not disclose. The company
predicts that within five years, these projects could produce about
100,000 tons of lithium annually, or 20 times current domestic production.
Executives from companies like Lithium Americas question if these more
innovative approaches can deliver all the lithium the world needs.
But automakers are keen to pursue approaches that have a much smaller
impact on the environment.
“Indigenous tribes being pushed out or their water being poisoned or any
of those types of issues, we just don’t want to be party to that,” said
Sue Slaughter, Ford’s purchasing director for supply chain
sustainability. “We really want to force the industries that we’re
buying materials from to make sure that they’re doing it in a
responsible way. As an industry, we are going to be buying so much of
these materials that we do have significant power to leverage that
situation very strongly. And we intend to do that.”
Gabriella Angotti-Jones contributed reporting.
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