Lithium – the new white gold.

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<p>Basically, it is its ability to both store and then release electricity. Although chemists have known about using this unique metal in batteries since the days of Edison in the 19th Century, modern lithium-ion batteries have gradually found their true calling with the advent of the smartphone. These phones, which in many respects are almost minicomputers, with all their semiconductors, their modem chips and their bright displays, are incredibly high consumers of power. However, to be portable, they cannot weigh too much or else the phone aspect becomes impractical. Therefore, they need a lot of electric power in a very small package.<br />
Cometh the hour, cometh the power-source. It is the lithium-ion battery which has made all this possible. Just for an interesting exercise, we can all take a close look at our smartphone’s battery. Imagine how that slender little lithium-ion battery, measuring just a few centimetres and weighing next to nothing, can power your email account, allow you to play Candy Crush and stream movies for hours on end. Today almost all smartphones run on lithium-ion batteries. Although these batteries do contain other chemicals, the IT industry has decided that for now, there is no beating lithium for its lightness and ability to store energy.<br />
But the potential usage does not stop with smartphones. The world in the 21st Century has decided to eliminate carbon emissions and phase out most fossil fuels, if not all of them. To achieve this, it will need to electrify a large part of all economic activity. This will require the building of many more wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric dams to produce the needed electricity. But even all this won’t achieve the required results unless there is an efficient way of storing all that energy. And it will need to be stored for short periods of time to deal with the inherent intermittency of renewable sources of energy, such as the sun and the wind. And it will also need to be stored on board road vehicles so that they can get from A to B without the need to burn fossil fuels anymore.<br />
And the answer to all these demands is the battery. But not the small smartphone battery this time. Rather we are talking about large industrial size batteries. They contain similar chemistry, but they have to provide much more power, and so they are much larger. But the end result is that lithium-ion batteries are now used in everything from laptops to phones to electric cars, and the demand for lithium has begun to go through the roof. Therefore, one of the big questions these days is, “Where is all the new white gold to come from?”<br />
The likely answer to this will be a combination of existing sources, along with whatever new sources can be found and developed. Currently the largest lithium mine in the world is to be found at Salar de Atacama in Northern Chile. The Salar is a giant underground reservoir of concentrated saltwater brine. This brine is a deep, rich solution of different salts including sodium, magnesium, potassium, boron as well as that much desired lithium.<br />
Parts of the lake are over three miles deep, and geologists estimate that these vast wells of ancient salts have been sitting there for more than three million years. The batteries in mobile phones, laptops and electric cars are made in part from all this ancient liquid. Of course, for this to happen, the salty brine must be taken and refined in a special facility in the area. Nevertheless, it would be true to say that in the world of the battery, the very old is giving birth to the very new.<br />
As a result, the lithium market is currently experiencing a significant rebound after having been in a bit of a slump. This upward trajectory is expected to continue in the coming months. In particular, the Chinese lithium carbonate price has nearly doubled since the beginning of April 2023 and several factors could send prices even higher. These include the escalating demand from the electric vehicle sector, and an increasingly evident shortage in supply, at least in the short term.<br />
Chinese electric vehicles sales are the highest in the world, and just recently they have been beating monthly records. For example, Chinese auto giant BYD sold a record 240,220 electric vehicles in May 2023. This is probably signalling the end of the market cooldown and an upcoming recovery in the lithium price in China.<br />
At the same time, government incentives and policies to boost lithium production and support the transition to cleaner and greener energy solutions are creating a growing need for new domestic supplies. In principle, all these factors should create a positive and encouraging environment for companies engaged in lithium exploration and extraction.<br />
Except that paradoxically, there are increasing environmental problems on the horizon. The idea behind the big switch to electric vehicles is to protect the environment from climate change. There are certain people who counter this by saying that this is not going to work if the electricity being used in these batteries is produced by nuclear power stations, or even worse, by coal fired power stations. But even if we ignore that argument, it is by no means clear that a wholesale move to electric vehicles is going to lead to a cleaner environment.<br />
The inescapable fact surrounding the boom in the new white gold is that any sort of mining is a messy and polluting business. Land gets ripped up, groundwater supplies are at potential risk, air quality is affected, and the environment comes out second best to the interests of the mining companies. This is precisely the case about 45 miles from the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation in Northern Nevada near to the state line with Oregon. Daranda Hinkey and her family corral horses and cows on a ranch in the area, which is on ancient Indian lands, and meanwhile, construction of one of the largest lithium mines in the world is taking place with full United States government support.<br />
As heavy trucks dig up the earth in this remote, windswept region of Nevada to extract lithium, the $2.2 billion project is fuelling a huge backlash. The Biden administration says the project will help mitigate climate change by speeding the shift away from fossil fuels. But Hinkey and other opponents say it is not worth the huge costs to the local environment. And frankly, it would be a rather strange analysis which would say that we must destroy a local environment to save the climate. According to Daranda Hinkey, “It is not possible to mine your way out of a climate crisis.”<br />
In a different part of Nevada, namely in Railroad Valley, which is in the centre of the state, opposition is growing to another potential lithium mine. And this time, the protesters appear to be much more influential and better placed than the Native Americans of Fort McDermitt. We are referring to none other than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).<br />
According to the company which wants to dig it up, the ancient Nevada lakebed of Railroad Valley promises to be a vast source of lovely lithium. But NASA says the same site, which is as flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the entire Western Hemisphere, is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead. In fact, they claim that they have been using it for nearly three decades to get measurements just right to keep satellites and their applications functioning properly.<br />
Therefore, at the space agency’s request, the United States Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (92 square kilometres) of the eastern Nevada terrain from its inventory of federal lands open to potential mineral exploration and mining. “No other location in the United States is suitable for this purpose,” they concluded recently, after receiving NASA’s input on the tract of land which is located 250 miles (400 kilometres) northeast of Las Vegas.<br />
In Railroad Valley, satellite calculations are critical to gathering information beamed from space with widespread applications which run from weather forecasting to national security, agricultural outlooks, and natural disasters. Therefore, according to NASA, these satellites “provide vital and often time-critical information touching every aspect of life on Earth.” And this increasingly includes certifying measurements related to climate change.<br />
Thus, we have a Nevada desert paradox. While lithium is the main ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles, which are said to be key to reducing greenhouse gases, in this case the metal is buried beneath land NASA says must remain undisturbed to continue certifying the accuracy of satellites monitoring the Earth’s warming atmosphere.<br />
“As our nation becomes ever more impacted by an evolving and changing environment, it is critical to have reliable and accurate data and imagery of our planet,” said Mark Moneza of Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based satellite imaging company that has relied on NASA’s site to calibrate more than 250 of its satellites since 2016.<br />
The protests in Nevada are not the only ones taking place around the world as governments and companies advancing renewable energy find themselves battling communities opposed to projects that threaten wildlife, groundwater, and air quality. However, some governments have decided to get much more involved on the ground level. For example, this April President Gabriel Boric of Chile announced plans to create a state-owned company to produce lithium. The goal here is to address the environmental concerns caused by the mining process and help bring more financial benefit to the local communities. If the legislation is passed later this year, private companies will have to form joint ventures in which the state firm has a majority stake. In fact, the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile are even discussing creating an OPEC-style cartel to control global lithium prices.<br />
Much of this is because a wave of recently elected left-wing governments are now in power in the region. They are ramping up resource nationalism because they hope to create more jobs and opportunities for business in the local area. Until now the region has failed to produce higher-value goods because of a poorly skilled labour force, low investment in research and development, and an unpredictable regulatory environment. Many politicians think natural resources should be used as inputs into local manufacturing rather than be simply exported as raw materials.<br />
On the same day he announced his lithium plans, Mr Boric proclaimed: “This is the best chance we possess to transition to a sustainable and developed economy. We don’t have the luxury to waste it.” For now, Western governments appear to be going along with this desire. In January Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, said while in Buenos Aires that German companies would be “real partners” to South America.<br />
One aspect of Mr. Boric’s proposal also promises to be better for the environment on the spot. He says that the Chilean government would insist that companies use extraction techniques which require less water than at present, thus minimising drought through overuse, which has been a source of anger among both locals and indigenous groups.<br />
Yet the big question which surrounds this government intervention is whether the overall benefit ends up being smaller than it might otherwise have been. Chile might well offer a cautionary tale in this regard. The government already plays a large role in the production of lithium, which is deemed a strategic resource. Royalties already go up to 40% (compared with only 3% in neighbouring Argentina), and companies are already required to sell up to 25% of output locally at below-market prices to producers who promise to develop the domestic lithium value chain. As a result, however, Chile has found that it is losing overall market share to other countries which do not have so much economic interference.<br />
The market for lithium is still a young one, and consumers are still piling in. Despite various ups and downs, the “white-gold rush” is still on. With the future of electric vehicles riding on obtaining enough battery power, there is a huge amount at stake. Therefore, new methods are being employed in the quest.<br />
One very interesting development is that of KoBold Metals, based in Silicon Valley. This company is now using artificial intelligence (AI) to explore for various metals such as lithium, according to co-founder and Chief Executive Kurt House. He says it uses data science and machine learning to identify vital deposits of cobalt, copper, nickel, and lithium.<br />
In order to increase productivity, the company is trying to disrupt traditional methods of mining exploration, which have remained much the same for decades. They do this by attempting to collect more sophisticated and nuanced data about deposits, which conventional methods wouldn’t traditionally collect. “The success rates of finding new deposits have been declining,” House said. “It’s hard to see how in the current setup we’ll get sufficient new discoveries in time without breakthroughs in technology.”<br />
The hunt for battery metals is intensifying as the world moves away from fossil fuels and as most of the more-easily detectable deposits have already been snapped up. All over the world, large miners are trying to tap into new areas which are farther and farther underground. But the process which was once done in the hills of California with a pick, a shovel, and a pan, is now being done in the Valley in California with a computer and an AI algorithm. To unlock the capacity that’s needed these days, it appears that we need an entirely different approach.<br />
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<h2>Lithium – the new white gold.</h2>
<p>“There’s gold in them thar hills.” So went one of the rallying cries of the miners pursuing the 1849 Californian Gold Rush. These “Forty-Niners,” as they were called, were chasing abundant and almost unimaginable wealth as they sought the latest “strike” in the hills of California. Sometimes the gold had to be dug out of seams which lay beneath the surface, but sometimes the precious yellow metal could be found simply lying right on the ground in front of them.<br />
A mere 174 years later, gold is certainly still valuable, but there are other elements which are much more sought after these days. And one of these is the extremely useful, and therefore much in demand, element called Lithium. Lithium (from the Ancient Greek λιθος (líthos) meaning ‘stone’) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and the atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal which is most often found in salty water, and its popularity these days means that some people have referred to it as the “new white gold”.<br />
<span>But what is it that really makes Lithium so important and therefore so valuable?</span></p>

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