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The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles Source: By Ivan Penn and Eric Lipton, photographs by Gabriella Angotti-Jones, New York Times • Posted: Sunday, May 9, 2021
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.
The Salton Sea is one of numerous new mining proposals in a global gold rush to find new sources of metals and minerals needed for electric cars and renewable energy.
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.
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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 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.
Synopsis
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.
Reuters
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.
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.
California s White Gold Rush: Lithium In Demand Amid Surge In Electric Vehicles By Benjamin Purper | KVCR-FM
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Rod Colwell, CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources, is among many hoping to transform the area around California s Salton Sea into a domestic source of lithium for electric car batteries.
Benjamin Purper / KVCR
As demand for electric vehicles heats up, there s concern about a shortage of the key minerals needed to make them. The Biden administration has called for boosting domestic production of such minerals, including lithium for the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. And that has many hoping for big business in a desolate spot of California s Imperial Valley.
California’s ‘White Gold’ Rush: Lithium In Demand Amid Surge In Electric Vehicles
By Benjamin Purper
April 28, 2021
As demand for electric vehicles heats up, there’s concern about a shortage of the key minerals needed to make them. The Biden administration has called for boosting domestic production of such minerals, including lithium for the lithium-ion batteries used in electric-vehicles. And that has many hoping for big business in a desolate spot of California’s Imperial Valley.
A few miles from the shores of California’s Salton Sea, a construction crew is at work on the future site of Hell’s Kitchen Lithium and Power. It’s a geothermal facility, meaning it uses the Earth’s natural heat to create electricity.