ASIATODAY.ID, CALIFORNIA – The lake in California known as the Salton Sea holds the largest Lithium reserves in the world.
Recent research funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) found white gold reserves of 18 million tons in the lake. This amount is estimated to be equivalent to making 375 million electric vehicle batteries.
It is known that the current price of one ton of Lithium is around $29,000, so the white gold reserves in the Salton Sea are worth more than $540 billion.
Lithium is a critical component in the batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles and solar panels.
China has dominated the Lithium market for decades as 90% of the metal mined is refined in the country.
“This report highlights the huge opportunity in a generation to build a domestic lithium industry while expanding environmentally friendly and flexible electricity generation,” said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, quoted in the Daily Mail, Friday, December 22 2023 .
California Governor Gavin Newsom previously described Lithium reserves in the Salton Sea as being like oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. The white gold content in the Salton Sea makes the lake the largest in the world, surpassing Chile at 9 million tons.
Salton is located in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern tip of California and is 35 miles (56 km) long, 15 miles (24 km) wide and 51 feet (15.5 meters) deep. The Salton Sea in southern California is already dotted with companies large and small extracting lithium. Three companies are competing to be the first to exploit the white gold mine.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), one of the companies working to extract Lithium, was given a $14.9 million grant in 2021 by the DOE to study Lithium in the Salton Sea.
The team’s analysis, funded by the DOE, determined there was at least 4 million tons of Lithium based on the portion of the geothermal reservoir that had been drilled. It is estimated that there would be 18 million tons of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE) if the entire reservoir were drilled to produce more geothermal power.
Unlike other Lithium mines in the US, the Salton Sea is an area of geothermal activity that contains large amounts of the precious metal. This allows a number of companies to use steam power plants to conduct exploration there.
“We use steam from the salt water to produce clean energy. So, we’re halfway through this and already have Lithium here,” BHE Renewables President and CEO Alicia Knapp told CNBC. (ATN)
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