The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles

Excerpt from The New York Times - May 6, 2021

Story by Ivan Penn and Eric Lipton

Images: Gabriella Angotti-Jones contributed reporting

The Second Act

The desert sands surrounding the Salton Sea have drawn worldwide notice before. They have served as a location for Hollywood productions like the “Star Wars” franchise.

Created by flooding from the Colorado River more than a century ago, the lake once thrived. Frank Sinatra performed at its resorts. Over the years, drought and poor management turned it into a source of pollutants.

But a new wave of investors is promoting the lake as one of the most promising and environmentally friendly lithium prospects in the United States.

Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate water from sprawling ponds. It is relatively inexpensive, but it uses lots of water in arid areas.

The approach planned at the Salton Sea is radically different from the one traditionally used in South America.

The lake sits atop the Salton Buttes, which, as in Nevada, are underground volcanoes.

For years, a company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, CalEnergy, and another business, Energy Source, have tapped the Buttes’ geothermal heat to produce electricity. The systems use naturally occurring underground steam. This same water is loaded with lithium.

Now, Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies — Controlled Thermal Resources and Materials Research — want to install equipment that will extract lithium after the water passes through the geothermal plants, in a process that will take only about two hours.

Rod Colwell, a burly Australian, has spent much of the last decade pitching investors and lawmakers on putting the brine to use. In February, a backhoe plowed dirt on a 7,000-acre site being developed by his company, Controlled Thermal Resources.

“This is the sweet spot,” Mr. Colwell said. “This is the most sustainable lithium in the world, made in America. Who would have thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.”

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