A Californian lake in Imperial Valley sits atop one of the world’s largest “white gold” mines, but one of the main beneficiaries will be an Australian energy company.
Founded in 2013, Controlled Thermal Resources has developed and managed energy projects in the valley south of Palm Springs for two decades.
Many of those projects generated geothermal energy, an energy source that uses molten, magma-hot temperatures deep beneath the Earth’s crust to power steam turbines for an environmentally sustainable way to make electricity.
But in recent years the company has turned its attention to Southern California’s lithium metal reserves, sometimes called white gold because of the soft, silvery-white appearance of these “lithium salts.”
CTR’s big promise to the California officials who approved the project is an opportunity to harvest vast quantities of lithium to increase American energy independence without damaging local communities and ecosystems, or contributing to global warming , say experts.
According to reports, this salty Californian lake sits on top of the largest ‘white gold mine’ in the world
The Department of Energy (DOE) shared results from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which showed the underground pool could hold 18 million tons – enough to meet US demand for the valuable metal for decades.
But the US government hopes the project will boost US energy independence, compared to the large volume of lithium-ion batteries being imported from China.
Lithium is a crucial component of batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles to solar panels. China has dominated the market for decades because 90 percent of the metal extracted is refined in their country.
According to a trading volume of $9.3 billion in 2022 alone the United Nations Comtrade DatabaseToday, Chinese lithium-ion batteries account for the vast majority of U.S. battery imports.
California regulators, environmentalists, scientists and many of the companies themselves vying for a piece of the Imperial Valley’s burgeoning lithium empire hope to be part of that shift without devastating the land and locals of SoCal .
“Nothing will be completely clean,” local geochemist Michael McKibben, who teaches at UC Riverside, told the Desert sun.
‘But this is the cleanest way we can do that: with geothermal energy.’
McKibben is currently working with a research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to map lithium deposits and identify the potential environmental and human costs of their extraction.
“The traditional ways of extracting lithium are really destructive and very environmentally damaging to local communities,” McKibben said, “and so the appeal of geothermal lithium is that the footprint is small.”
“You don’t dig holes, you don’t put huge evaporation ponds on the surface, because the brine is already being brought up for the steam,” McKibben said of the Salton Sea’s unique lithium-salted water.
‘So it’s a matter of sticking a lithium filter on that brine before you inject it back into the ground.’
CTR, which first announced their Salton Sea lithium project in 2016, “moved” their business to the US in 2022, according to their websiteannouncing that their new headquarters will be in Imperial County, California.
But the energy company still has an office there Brisbane, Australia.
Three companies will use power plants to extract the lithium to extract superheated brine from the ground
Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) announced in January that it had recovered lithium from its geothermal brine well and is now about to build a massive factory on the site (pictured)
However, this Australian expat company isn’t the only player looking to reap eco-friendly profits from the landlocked saltwater lake.
TThe Salton Sea is being flooded by companies large and small looking for cost-effective ways to extract the lithium dissolved in the scalding brine that flows beneath the lake’s southern tip.
Last December, a new study funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) found that the basin contains even more lithium than previously estimated, fueling the race for development contracts with state and local agencies.
The DOE study found there could be 18 million tons of extractable metal – enough to meet American demand for the valuable metal for decades.
The findings would make the reservoir the largest in the world, overtaking Chile (which holds nine million tons).
California Governor Gavin Newsom once described the Salton Sea as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium mining,” and the nickname is a testament to the substance’s enormous economic value.
One ton of lithium currently costs $29,000, making the Salton Sea reserve worth more than $540 billion.
The DOE said it could be done support more than 375 million electric vehicle batteries.
Jeff Marootian, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said: ‘Lithium is critical to decarbonizing the economy and achieving President Biden’s goals of 50 percent electric vehicle adoption by 2030.
“This report confirms the unique opportunity to build a domestic lithium industry at home while expanding clean, flexible electricity generation.
“With American innovation, we can lead the future of clean energy, create jobs and a strong domestic supply chain, and advance our national energy security.”
Earlier this year, after about twelve years of engineering, haggling for permits and raising financing, CTR finally broke ground on construction from its lithium mining and geothermal power plant.
“The work will be done by union workers. These will be good jobs,” President Biden’s clean energy adviser John Podesta, who attended the groundbreaking, told the Los Angeles Times.
But despite these big promises, many uncertainties remain given the ambitious scope of the project, according to industry insiders.
“Extracting lithium from geothermal brine has never been done on a large scale before,” said Erik Desormeaux, president of energy efficiency company Energy Recovery, Inc.
‘So it remains to be seen whether the electric car industry, the local community and/or the environment will actually benefit,” Desormeaux told The everyday beast.
In any case, General Motors is one of the big bets on the success of the project. The automaker has signed commitments to source lithium from CTR, according to CTR Forbesa sign of the palpable desire of U.S. electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers to source the lithium for their lithium-ion batteries domestically.
“I think people are very optimistic about the project,” Desormeaux said, “but there’s a lot of waiting to be done.”