Free Republic

Above, a map of Thacker Pass, where a Chinese-dominated firm is set to mine U.S. lithium. It could ship it to China for processing -- but there are doubts whether it will all return. July 20, 2022 A Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden's envisioned green economy. Critics say the scenario would increase U.S. energy...

A plan to tax lithium, which is widely used in the production of electric vehicle batteries, has been approved in California as part of the state’s efforts to generate revenue for environmental remediation projects. The decision was pushed despite reservations from players in the battery industry, some of whom argued that a lithium tax would harm the sector. Two of California’s most notable lithium companies such as Controlled Thermal Resources Ltd and EnergySource Minerals LLC have suggested that the tax could scare off potential clients. The California lithium tax was approved by Governor Gavin Newsom as part of a must-pass...

Clash comes as global demand surges to power batteries for electric cars.. A northern Nevada mine that is the largest-known source of lithium in the United States for electric car batteries is facing resistance from a radical environmental group and some of its American Indian supporters. The mine at Thacker Pass is on Bureau of Land Management property in rural Nevada between two mountain ranges about 25 miles south of the border with Oregon. The fight reflects other political battles between liberals and far-left factions within the Democratic Party, with larger ramifications for the party’s agenda. Lithium is the key...

Top lithium producer Albemarle Corp (ALB.N) may have to shut its Langelsheim plant in Germany if the metal used in electric vehicle batteries is declared a hazardous material by the European Union, its finance chief told Reuters. Lithium's pivotal role in electric vehicles makes it an important commodity in meeting global targets to cut carbon emissions, and it was added to the EU's list of critical raw materials in 2020.

NEWRY — The richest known hard rock lithium deposit in the world lies a few miles northeast of the ski slopes of Sunday River and not far from Step Falls, where swimmers can wade in shallow pools formed by hundreds of feet of cascading granite ledge. Smaller deposits have been known in Maine for decades, but this recent discovery, just north of Plumbago Mountain in Newry, is the first to have a major resource potential. And that potential is staggering: At current market prices, the deposit, thought to contain 11 million tons of ore, is valued at roughly $1.5 billion....

NEWRY, Maine (AP) — The race is on to produce more lithium in the United States. The U.S. will need far more lithium to achieve its clean energy goals — and the industry that mines, extracts and processes the chemical element is poised to grow. But it also faces a host of challenges from environmentalists, Indigenous groups and government regulators. Although lithium reserves are distributed widely across the globe, the U.S. is home to just one active lithium mine, in Nevada. The element is critical to development of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that are seen as key to reducing climate-changing carbon...

The Liberal government allowed a Chinese state-owned company to bid on a Canadian lithium mining operation without launching a formal national security review into the purchase. As reported by the Globe and Mail, Chinese firm Zijin Mining and Canadian Neo Lithium Corp. have agreed to an acquisition and are close to completing their business deal. The deal has been in the making since October when Zijin Mining first announced that it was looking at buying the Toronto company for a price tag of $960 million. In 2021, Canada categorized lithium as a critical mineral. Lithium is predominantly used to manufacture...

RENO, Nev. (AP) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed designating critical habitat for a Nevada wildflower it plans to list as endangered amid a conflict over a mine to produce lithium batteries for electric vehicles critical to the Biden administration’s plans to combat climate change. The agency on Wednesday proposed designating critical habitat for Tiehm’s buckwheat on a high-desert ridge near the California line halfway between Reno and Las Vegas. It’s the only place in the world the delicate, 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter) wildflower with yellow blooms is known to exist. It’s also the site where Ioneer USA Corp....

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Wednesday he will create a state-owned company to mine lithium and appeared to suggest he will seek to cancel one of the few existing permits held by a Chinese company. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had said in October that he wants to declare lithium a “strategic mineral” and reserve future exploration and mining to the government. Lithium is a key component of batteries. It hadn’t been clear if he would rely on private companies to do the work, which Mexico has no experience in. But López Obrador said Wednesday that a newly...

Researchers have developed a lithium-air battery with an energy density of over 500Wh/kg -- significantly higher than currently lithium-ion batteries. The research team then confirmed that this battery can be charged and discharged at room temperature. In addition, the team found that the battery developed by the team shows the highest energy densities and best cycle life performances ever achieved. These results signify a major step toward the practical use of lithium-air batteries.

In order to power all of these EVs, we will need batteries — lots of them. This vital mineral in rechargeable batteries has earned the name “white gold” and the rush is on. But until the 1990s, the U.S. was the leader in lithium production. But there is only one operating lithium mine in the U.S., Albemarle’s Silver Peak in Nevada.

The Nez Perce Indians of northern Idaho received the state’s first large-scale battery from Tesla in November.About the size of a standard shipping container, the Tesla Megapack will store power from solar panels, enabling the tribe to reduce its dependence on local dams. For decades, the Nez Perce have demanded the destruction of four hydropower plants along the Lower Snake River with claims the concrete barriers hamper a near-extinct salmon population.The Tesla Megapack, installation company RevoluSun CEO Josh Powell told Public News Service, “allows people like the Nez Perce to control their energy where it’s being produced where they have...

NEWRY — The richest known hard rock lithium deposit in the world lies a few miles northeast of the ski slopes of Sunday River and not far from Step Falls, where swimmers can wade in shallow pools formed by hundreds of feet of cascading granite ledge. Smaller deposits have been known in Maine for decades, but this recent discovery, just north of Plumbago Mountain in Newry, is the first to have a major resource potential.

This is hilarious! Environmentalists are against drilling for the lithium that’s necessary for electric cars.Lithium is a necessary component of the batteries for electric cars that environmentalists are always claiming to be in favor of.However, after lithium mining was proposed in California, environmentalists objected to the proposal.The Los Angeles Times reported:The drilling request has generated strong opposition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife, who say the drilling project would be an initial step toward the creation of a full-scale lithium mining operation. They say lithium extraction would bring industrial sprawl, large and...

SALTA, Argentina, Sept 14 (Reuters) - In Argentina's remote northern Salta province, the silence of the desert landscape is broken only by the hum of machinery pumping salt-water brine to extract lithium, a sign of accelerating efforts to ride the global electric vehicle boom. Beneath the South American country's highland salt flats, reached by winding mountain roads, is buried the world's third largest reserve of the ultra-light battery metal, which has seen a price spike over the past year on the back of a global push towards greener modes of transport. Already the fourth top producer of lithium worldwide, Argentina's...

Taliban Secures World’s Largest Lithium Deposits After US Withdrawal From Afghanistan It’s been more than a decade since we penned “The US “Discovers” Nearly $1 Trillion In Mineral Deposits In Afghanistan” in which we highlighted the colossal untapped mineral deposits that reside in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden’s decision to rapidly and completely withdraw from Afghanistan makes even less strategic sense if readers go back to our 2010 post where we quoted “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: Part 2, the 21st Century paradigm”? Which said, “Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a...

Unlike the Bay Area, which has seen two major earthquakes in under 120 years, Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California are in a 300-year “seismic drought” that’s baffled scientists for years. Research published this week has revealed that a toxic 300-square-mile lake, and its effect on the pent-up tectonic plates below, may be a big reason why. In short, the drying of the Salton Sea in modern times has, for now, reduced pressure on the San Andreas Fault and delayed the “Big One,” which may one day wreak devastation on the Los Angeles basin and its 13 million...

Zimbabwe has banned all lithium exports after the government said it was losing 1.7 billion euros from exporting it as a raw mineral and not processing it into batteries in-country. Lithium is so valuable as a component of electronic batteries - mostly for cars mobile phones and computers - that it’s known as “white gold.” The price has gone up by 1,100 percent in the past two years alone. Zimbabwe has the largest amount of the mineral in Africa and has enough of it to supply a fifth of the world’s needs, the government says. Whilst it’s on track to...

Top China hawks aren't sold on Canadian company Lithium Americas' move to distance itself from top Chinese investor.. A Canadian company hopes to use Biden administration loans to open the largest lithium mine in North America. But first, it must convince government officials and prospective partners that it's adequately decoupled from its top shareholder: a Chinese enterprise led by known Chinese Communist Party members. Lithium Americas—whose largest shareholder is Chinese mineral giant Ganfeng Lithium—earlier this month announced its intention to split the company into two separate entities, a move that comes as it works to obtain a Biden administration loan...

HUMBOLDT COUNTY, Nevada—Deep below the tangled roots of the old-growth sagebrush of Thacker Pass, in an extinct super-volcano, lies one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium—a key element for the transition to clean energy. But above ground, a cluster of tents has risen in the Northern Nevada desert where, for eight months, environmental and tribal activists are protesting plans to mine it for “green” technologies. “We are not leaving until this project is canceled,” said Max Wilbert, of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign. “If need be, this will come down to direct action. We mean to put ourselves in...