Welcome to Lithium Valley
Excerpt from Coachella Valley Independent. June 14, 2021
Reporter: Kevin Fitzgerald
The story of Lithium Valley begins in earnest on Sept. 29, 2020.
That’s the day when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 1657, sponsored by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, creating a “Blue Ribbon Commission on Lithium Extraction in California.” That commission is now called the Lithium Valley Commission.
What is this all about? Oh, just the fact that up to 40% of the world’s potential future lithium supply is located under and near the Salton Sea.
In the months since the establishment of the Lithium Valley Commission, the area has become the focus of intense and optimistic attention by the media, government officials and leaders in industries ranging from clean energy to electric transportation.
What does this all mean? Let’s start with the basics. Lithium is a soft, alkali metal—its atomic number is 3, making it the lightest of all metals. It doesn’t occur freely in nature; it’s only found in compounds. It’s highly flammable—and is primarily used today in ubiquitous lithium ion batteries. It’s often found in areas where there is also a lot of geothermal energy.
This brings us to the area now known as Lithium Valley.
“The term Lithium Valley refers to the entire region of the Salton Sea, and more specifically, the southern end of the Salton Sea,” said Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia during a recent interview with the Independent. “Similarly, a couple of decades ago, the term ‘Silicon Valley’ was coined, and we know what that did for California’s economy and technology across the world. So we’re talking about Lithium Valley in that same context.”
Yes, Garcia just compared the potential of Lithium Valley to Silicon Valley. The huge deposit of lithium located under the Salton Sea area—a deposit that may be recoverable in a cost-effective fashion, at a large scale and with limited negative environmental impacts—is a potential game-changer for the Coachella Valley, the state and even the United States.
There is no shortage of potential stakeholders who think Lithium Valley may one day soon become a promised land which will spawn considerable economic wealth; massive synergistic business opportunities in the clean-energy and electric-transportation spheres; and the environmental salvation of the Salton Sea. That vision is already being financed by some of our country’s wealthiest investors, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg, among others. They see a future of geothermal energy production, lithium recovery and electric transportation companies coming to the area.
David Hochschild is the chair of the California Energy Commission. At an informational hearing held on May 26 by the California State Assembly’s Select Committee on California’s Lithium Economy, he spoke enthusiastically and at length about the promise offered by the state’s commitment to lithium production—particularly in the Lithium Valley. Referring to the high-value element as “the oil of the clean-energy future,” Hochschild rattled off a number of facts that, when digested together, point to the economic boom that could result from Lithium Valley:
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