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.
اضافة اعلان
The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help
address the nearly 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 groundwater,
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 Joe 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, US 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 322km 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 1,219m
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.
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 Biden’s infrastructure
bill, arguing that it is a matter of national security.
“Right now, if China decided to cut off the US 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 has 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.
Nevada Spoils
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 202sq.km 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 US history, complete with a helicopter landing pad, a
chemical processing plant and waste dumps. The mine will reach a depth of about
113m.
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 Bartell
owns by an estimated 4m, 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 20sq.km 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 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 80km from the mine site — and far beyond
the area where groundwater may be contaminated — but tribe members fear the
pollution could spread.
“It is really a David versus Goliath kind of a situation,” said
Maxine Redstar, 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.
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.
A Second Act
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.
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.
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 farmworkers. “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.
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.”
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