Speaker1: The U.S. government has a lithium supply problem, just about every major automaker has announced a transition to electric
vehicles. Tesla delivered nearly one million cars in 2021, and a handful of new EV companies are finally rolling
new models off the line in order to power all of these EVs.
We will need lithium-ion batteries, lots of them.
Electric vehicle growth will be responsible for more than 90 percent of demand for lithium by 2030.
But lithium is also in our phones, computers, ceramics, lubricants,
Speaker2: pharmaceuticals and are essential
Speaker1: for solar and wind energy storage.
Speaker3: Lithium actually is not a major component of the cost of batteries, but it's like the blood in your body.
The chemistry behind how lithium-ion batteries work, it remains the common denominator in all the battery
technologies, even that we're looking at now for next generation batteries.
Speaker1: The price of lithium is soaring, and establishing domestic supply of lithium has become the modern day version of oil
security. But today, the United States is
Speaker2: far behind, with only one
Speaker1: percent of global lithium being mined and processed in the U.S..
Speaker4: We do have a lot. The challenge is can we produce what we need at a at an economical and competitive price?
That's going to be hard, I think, from that standpoint.
We are going to be a net importer of lithium for our needs.
Speaker1: This vital mineral in rechargeable batteries has earned the name white gold, and the rush is on.
Several domestic lithium projects are in the works.
Speaker5: We have what some have described as the Saudi Arabia
Speaker3: of lithium here in the state of
Speaker2: California, but they often face
Speaker1: steep up costs and opposition from environmentalists and
Speaker2: locals.
Speaker6: This is supposedly the largest lithium mine in the world, and we have to do this right.
Getting to the battery and electric cars does not seem to be green to me.
When you're destroying a beautiful
Speaker2: mountain, this mine wants to
Speaker6: run for 40 years and destroy this area.
Speaker1: CNBC explores how the U.S.
fell behind in lithium production and if it will ever be able to catch up.
More than 80 percent of the world's raw lithium is mined in Australia, Chile and China.
China controls more than half of the world's lithium processing and refining and has three fourths of the
lithium-ion battery mega factories in the world.
But until the 90s, the U.S.
was the leader in lithium production.
Speaker4: The lithium industry started in the U.S.
and and had a had a good run for 50 years.
Speaker1: So what happened? Lithium is not a scarce element.
The United States holds almost eight million metric tons
Speaker2: of lithium, ranking it among
Speaker1: the top five countries in the world.
Speaker4: Bessemer City, North Carolina.
That was the original production location in the U.S.
You had some of the early companies, which were Foot Mineral Company and Lithium Corporation of America,
and those those two companies had had built their business on producing lithium from spodumene.
Speaker1: Spodumene is a hard mineral that contains lithium, but mining spodumene is not always the most cost effective way
to extract lithium.
Speaker4: The challenge that we have in the U.S.
is that we don't have the high, high quality lithium resource, and so the concentration of
lithium is going to be lower than than the traditional sources.
And then it's more than likely you're going to have more contaminants.
It's all those contaminants have to be be removed.
Speaker1: The other main way of extracting lithium uses a salty brine that is pumped out of the ground compared to rock
extraction. Evaporation brine extraction is fairly cheap since a lot of the work of separating out the lithium is
done by Mother Nature.
Speaker4: The challenge that the U.S.
production had was that production costs from the brine resource in Chile.
It was just much lower than the cost of producing it from spodumene in the U.S.
Speaker3: Lithium-ion batteries.
They were invented here.
A lot of the technology that is being applied is licensed to companies overseas because the
infrastructure here we don't have anymore.
We lost
Speaker1: around the same time a massive lithium refining industry was
Speaker2: growing in China. China was really
Speaker7: the first place where the where the EV revolution started taking off in a way that it hasn't
in the U.S. but it is now happening in Europe.
So the fact that a lot of lithium conversion capacity is in China is just an artifact of the fact that they had to start
making batteries five to 10 years sooner than the rest of us did.
Speaker5: On a per capita basis.
I suspect we're going to be one of the biggest users of lithium in the world and frankly, sending lithium to lithium
carbonate we may make in the U.S.
and sending it to China for further processing makes absolutely no sense.
We need to have that independent production.
China is able to do things in a very impressive manner, but they aren't always our friends.
And if we were suddenly cut off from lithium batteries, that would change our ability to respond to climate change
in a substantial way.
Speaker1: The Biden administration agrees and believes securing domestic sources of lithium is vital to national security.
Last June, the administration released a blueprint for jumpstarting domestic lithium production and refining, as
well as battery manufacturing, and set a national EV sales goal of 50 percent by 2030.
But there is only one operating lithium mine in the U.S.
at the moment in Silver Peak, Nevada.
Speaker7: Eighty five percent of 2030s lithium industry doesn't exist yet, so
the next decade is going to see tremendous growth in the lithium industry and battery
material supply chains in general.
Speaker1: U.s. lithium exploration efforts are underway in Nevada, North Carolina, California and Arkansas, to name a few.
Piedmont Lithium is working on reopening an old hard rock lithium mine in
Speaker2: the U.S., about
Speaker1: 25 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Piedmont signed a deal in September 2020 to supply Tesla with lithium sourced from its deposits.
They're sending Piedmont stock soaring at the time.
Speaker2: The initial agreement
Speaker1: says that Piedmont will supply about a third of its planned one hundred and sixty thousand metric tons per year
spodumene concentrate from its deposits in North
Speaker2: Carolina, but the plan
Speaker1: continues to get delayed due to permitting and concerns from its neighbors.
In its heyday from 1955 through the 1980s, that mine supplied most of the lithium in the U.S.
before overseas supplies became cheaper.
Operation shut down in the
Speaker2: 1990s Two companies
Speaker1: in Arkansas, Galvanic Energy and Standard Lithium are working on extracting lithium from underground brine
Speaker2: reservoirs.
Speaker1: A similar brine project is underway in California's Salton Sea.
Speaker8: Lithium in California is in an unusual form.
It's in this superheated geothermal brine, which is below the surface of the Salton Sea, and
today there's about a dozen geothermal power plants that generate electricity by cycling that superheated brine,
bringing it up to the surface and generating steam to create electricity and then pumping it down back in the
ground. And so this process basically takes the lithium out of that brine recovers it and
then the brine is pumped back in the ground.
That's different than how lithium is produced elsewhere in the world.
Today you have places like Chile and Argentina, where they have massive evaporation ponds, which have a pretty big
footprint. So this is really the greenest way to produce lithium that exists.
Speaker1: The Salton Sea was once a hot tourist
Speaker2: destination, but
Speaker1: experts say it has become the worst environmental and public health crisis in modern history.
The lake has been fouled by toxic runoff from area farms for decades, and it is rapidly shrinking.
Its receding shoreline is exposing nearby communities to toxic fumes and killing wildlife.
The state of California is trying to transform
Speaker2: the area, calling it
Speaker1: Lithium Valley, and it hopes to generate the revenue needed to restore the lake.
Speaker8: The Salton Sea resource for lithium is really radically different than the other formations that we've been
reading about in places like Nevada or Australia.
This is not mining.
This is lithium that exists in a fluid in the superheated, very mineral rich brine,
which today is being cycled through these geothermal power plants.
So it's a closed loop process and very, very low impact.
Speaker1: Imperial Valley, California and Brisbane, Australia based Controlled Thermal Resources is one of the companies getting
close to being able to produce lithium in the area.
Speaker9: Our first stage 50 megawatt power plant will be online in 2023 following with a 20,000 tonne
per year lithium hydroxide facility to be delivered shortly thereafter.
Speaker1: Last summer, GM announced a multimillion dollar investment in Controlled Thermal Resources development at the Salton
Sea and has secured first rights to purchase the domestically produced lithium for its EVs.
Controlled Thermal Resources expects delivery of lithium from the site in 2024.
Speaker9: This product can be produced here in real time as lithium hydroxide, a battery grade product that doesn't need to go
offshore. We don't have to put it on a train, put it on a ship, send it over, send it back.
So I think General Motors are a testament of their experience to the supply chain kings, right?
They've been doing it forever. This product is produced by 100 percent green energy.
It's an interesting, great long term relationship.
Speaker1: About 700 miles north of the Salton Sea project, a massive open pit lithium mine is in the works.
The Thacker Pass lithium deposit is located within an extinct supervolcano and is one of the largest lithium
reserves in the U.S.
Canada-based Lithium Americas is behind the project and its stock is up 740 percent since the beginning of 2020.
Speaker3: It's a different kind of lithium resource.
Mother Nature deposited this very thick layer of sediment at the bottom of this ancient lake, which was once
there and drained.
We can reverse Mother Nature by putting that war back into a slurry.
It naturally disassociated under very low energy, and we can separate the lithium out by particle size.
Speaker1: The project is in the final permitting phase.
Speaker5: It will produce on the order of 60,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent per year compared to what
Australia produces, which is about somewhat over 400,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent.
So it's, you know, 10,15 percent as much as the entire country of Australia.
So it's a big deal.
Speaker1: The site will handle both the mining and the refinement of the lithium, removing the need for a complex supply chain.
Speaker2: You take what
Speaker3: happens in Australia and China.
Put it all on one site is exactly what we're aiming and what the plan is actually designed to do.
So and what we'll have at the end of the day is high quality lithium chemicals that can go directly on to either
a battery or a cathode manufacturer that can be put right into the supply chain.
Our goal is to get into production sometime in 2024.
Speaker1: CNBC got an inside look at Lithium Americas R&D lab in Reno, Nevada.
Speaker3: Thacker Pass project in particular.
While it's a large asset today based on U.S.
lithium demand, it would be by 2025.
We could do a little bit more than half of the U.S.
is need just for batteries.
Speaker1: But no one wants a mine in their backyard, and like other proposed mines in the U.S., the project has been plagued
with lawsuits and opposition from some local Native American tribes and environmentalists.
The initial lawsuits have been dismissed, but some are not giving up and even camped out on the property in protest.
Speaker3: I found out that the Bureau of Land Management wanted to destroy a beautiful mountain
pass Thacker Pass for the world's largest open pit lithium mine.
And along with my best friend Max Wilbert, I set up camp in the exact location of where that
open pit mine would be.
My original goal was to raise awareness about how these lithium mines would be destroying some of the last beautiful
places left in the United States.
Speaker6: We're hoping that they understand that this Thacker pass in many areas is like a
cemetery to us.
We didn't have cemeteries back in the day, but what our people are resting in their eternal life should just not be
disturbed. Think about if somebody went and excavated your ancestors and decided to move them and
reburied them someplace else.
Speaker8: That was our main reason for involved in the litigation was the lack of
consultation. As you know, there were twenty seven tribes in the state of Nevada, and there's there are
only three tribes, I believe, that were really had consultation.
If you want to call it that by receiving letters, I guess, from the BLM on this project.
And so we just felt it was inadequate.
Speaker1: Lithium America said it has been working with the local tribes to participate in the cultural assessment of the land
and that there has been overwhelming support from the locals.
Speaker3: We've got members of the Lithium Americas lithium Nevada team out in the communities explaining what all this means.
So people really understand that we've been we're trying to be as respectful and careful as possible, but also as I
said before wanting to learn what they're interested in, what things are needed for the community so we can be good
neighbors. The initial life of the mine is more than 40 years in the processing plant, so these can be
multigenerational jobs in an area that doesn't have these opportunities today and really never has.
So I think it's a multi-pronged effort to try to address and you have questions from all sides.
Speaker7: Every resource development project will face resistance from the people who live near it.
The land footprint impacts of an extraction project are always disproportionately inflicted
on local people, and that is how it always has been for thousands of years, and that's how it always will be.
Speaker5: Well, that's the same kind of thing is,the old not in my backyard issue.
And there are times when that's entirely appropriate in times when it's
for the greater good, I think, has to be assessed, and I think the greater good of Thacker Pass is producing lithium.
This is a big mine. Don't make any mistake about it.
There is land disturbance going to be in.
It's but this mine, all aspects of it I've seen compared to a gold mine of the same size.
This impact is going to be much lower.
Speaker1: Like fossil fuels, mining for lithium is an extractive industry that inevitably has impacts on the environment,
from carbon emissions to local wildlife populations.
Speaker5: If there is a threat to a species because of a lithium mine, it will pale in comparison to what kind of species
extinction we're going to see in the years ahead.
If we don't control climate change.
Speaker7: It's possible for the CO2 emissions of lithium chemical manufacturing to kind of get away from us in a number of
different respects.
If we don't pay close attention to how we build these new mines because we are going to have to build a lot of new
mines to satisfy demand for lithium chemicals from the battery industry.
Speaker1: One Oakland, California, based startup Lilac Solutions aims to make the extraction of lithium less water intensive and
more sustainable. Then there are companies like Redwood Materials and Li-cycle that are recycling depleted batteries
and recovering lithium and other metals for reuse.
Speaker7: It is possible to decarbonize power that runs an electric vehicle.
It is even possible to decarbonize the extraction and processing of battery materials, which are used to make the
batteries that stole that store that energy in the electric vehicle battery.
It is never possible to decarbonize the fossil fuels that are used to run internal combustion engines.
Speaker3: It's important as we grow this industry to be in the U.S.
or be in the countries that are have share similar values because the danger with rapid growth like this is that
things are done improperly.
Whether it's environmental standards, labor standards, respect for local communities, we have laws and processes
here in the U.S. and in like minded countries to avoid things like that from happening.
I think that's going to be an important aspect as this industry grows.