Posted on 01/29/2024 4:45:09 AM PST by Red Badger
This development is a goldmine opportunity to reduce America’s economic and energy dependence on foreign states and to create thousands of clean, good-paying middle-class jobs.
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n November 28, 2023, the Department of Energy confirmed its discovery of a 3,400-kiloton reserve of lithium in California’s Salton Sea, making it one of the largest exploitable lithium deposits in the world.
In August, American volcanologists and geologists found a large lithium deposit in Nevada’s ancient McDermitt Caldera volcano, which could produce between 20,000 and 40,000 kilotons. If fully exploited, both deposits would be sufficient to fulfill the world’s lithium needs many times over.
Besides minor grants provided to the researchers and companies who discovered these two immense lithium deposits, no efforts have been made to develop the technology, capacity, and infrastructure necessary to exploit these two deposits. These incredible discoveries should be a wake-up call for American investors and lawmakers to stop investing in foreign, unreliable partners and begin an ambitious project to exploit the lithium reserves here at home.
Currently, the United States is almost entirely dependent on foreign countries for all lithium extraction, manufacturing, and production. The largest exploitable lithium reserves are in South America’s Lithium Triangle, which comprises Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. While Chile has been a productive ally of the United States, Bolivia and Argentina have faced enormous economic, political, and geopolitical barriers to production.
Argentina’s lithium sector is typically marred in scandal and bureaucratic dysfunction. At the same time, Bolivia’s limited technological capacity, complex history and geography, and disruptive politics have made the nation unable to extract its lithium, instead relying on Chinese and Russian state-owned companies.
Heather Exner-Pirot, the director of the Energy, Natural Resources, and Environment Program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, remarked on the insecurity of Latin American production, saying, “For Latin American producers, the booms and busts of the mining sector will continue to challenge economies and budgets, even as we enter a commodity upswing.” The United States has the opportunity to cut out the middleman and so ensure its own supply within a volatile market.
For now, the United States continues to rely on the rest of the world for its lithium. After extraction, most of the world’s raw lithium is then transported to China, which has over half of the world’s lithium refining capacity. While the United States has talked a big game about boosting domestic critical mineral production, it has increased its imports of lithium products from China, including lithium batteries used in electric vehicles and specialized electronics.
There is essential political momentum for the United States to nearshore its critical mineral supply and decrease its reliance on China, Russia, and other competitors. Prominent politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, including presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have explicitly described the need for the United States to become less dependent on China while building America’s critical mineral and manufacturing capacity.
In November last year, the chairs of both the Senate Intelligence and Energy committees called upon the Department of Energy to “take steps to boost U.S. battery manufacturing and next-generation battery research, citing China’s dominance and export controls,” as reported by Reuters. The proposal’s political capital should not go to waste.
Exner-Pirot, an expert on critical mineral policy, argued that the discoveries are “good news for the United States’ energy transition and security goals.” She added that the United States must ensure that it can compete with other cheaper, more established producers if it wants to use these discoveries for export. However, the discoveries will provide battery manufacturers with new options in the global market.
More than momentum, the United States can also build extraction, production, and manufacturing infrastructure in and near these deposits. Through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed in August 2022, the United States can invest in domestic energy and critical mineral production while promoting its environmental goals.
Promoting American-made lithium and lithium products would achieve both. The IRA’s Section 45c(6) explicitly provides the U.S. with the ability to invest public funds into lithium projects. It should be used to back up the exploitation of these two lithium deposits and develop the technology and infrastructure necessary to do so.
With an American lithium base, the United States can control its lithium and battery supply, ensuring that no foreign country like China or Russia can ever turn off the tap. America’s adversaries have shown time and again their willingness to use economic and energy dependence as a weapon to leverage their interests, even going so far as turning off critical energy supply during a period of war as a show of force to its adversaries. This should be an unacceptable bargain for the United States, and exploiting lithium reserves at home would solve this problem.
The American lithium project would also help revive dying American manufacturing, most of which has left the United States for economies offering cheaper costs, lower taxes, and fewer regulations for manufacturers. Doing so would be a massive political win for those ambitious enough to pursue it while boosting domestic economic activity ahead of a predicted recession. Local communities and towns scattered across the southwestern desert could benefit directly from the boundless economic opportunity created.
This development is a goldmine opportunity to reduce America’s economic and energy dependence on foreign states and to create thousands of clean, good-paying middle-class jobs. The U.S. government should seize it.
Failing to do so would be a critical mistake, further increasing America’s economic and energy dependence on foreign states. Instead, it should be seen as a momentous opportunity to promote clean American mining, create unprecedented economic growth, reduce CO2 emissions, stimulate American jobs and innovation, bring supply chains back to the United States, and project American power, all without exhausting blood or treasure abroad.
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Joseph Bouchard is a freelance journalist covering geopolitics in the Americas, with reporting experience in Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador. His articles have appeared in The Diplomat, Mongabay, Le Devoir, Responsible Statecraft, The National Interest, and Reason Magazine. He is a contributor with Young Voices.
They will get rid of it.
Just like our helium.
Sooner or later some greenie will come along and tell the EPA that mining this lithium will hurt Mother Erf. And that will be the end of that.
Or maybe the EPA will shut things down on its own. No greenie complaint needed.
It might be possible in Nevada.
Why would our energy dependence on foreign nations be treated any different with Lithium than it is with oil and gas.
We have the largest reserves of oil and gas too.
President Trump had us wholly independent.
The Obama/Biden regime immediately shut that down, day one of their administration.
Mining Lithium:
The cost of green energy: lithium mining’s impact on nature and people
Head of the environmental unit of Chile’s Atacama Indigenous Council, Francis Mandoca, states that lithium mines ruin one zone to satisfy another.
Thematic Intelligence
Oct 30, 2023
“The environmental fallout from lithium mining is clear and far-reaching. Massive quantities of fresh water, classified as a precious resource in these arid regions, are diverted for lithium mining operations, fueling the salt flats brine. This leaves local communities and wildlife parched.”
That is, unless Biden and Hunter don’t sell it to China.
Oh, they won’t have to.
With all of the Environmental Impact Studies and NIMBY law suits they couldn’t possibly break ground on any mining operation for decades or two.
That would be such a conundrum to the greenies. What will power their iPhones?
Until, of course, it gets sold to China.
How long before Biden turns these areas into a permanent national no mining area using federal regulations, such as NEPA, Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act, or something else?
As we all know, greenies are big-time hypocrites. “Out of sight, out of mind.” They don’t care about pollution as long as the dirty work is done somewhere else.
Lithium mining in the US? A travesty! A disgrace!
Lithium mining in Africa? Eh, who cares. Wanna see my new iPhone?
There is no way in hell that the Salton Sea will be drained to mine lithium, at least not until California SELLS it to the Chicoms.
The House should pass a bill requiring all mining of lithium to be done without any vehicle, tool, or other equipment that uses, or was produced using hydrocarbons. Net zero, you know.
EC
Yes like Hillary’s uranium deal.
The plan is to import African slaves to mine it—the slave trade worked so well last time....
Lol.
Further, Foote mineral has closed lithium mines in lots of places.
America has never suffered from lack of lithium.
Foreign lithium was purchased and American mines closed because the foreign sourced material was less expensive
When will the environuts begin their protests against the mining?
As if the democrats would allow a single shovel full of ore to be mined. And since the Chomo Biden regime is owned by China, no way will Biden allow domestic lithium to be mined.
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