New Lithium Discoveries Can Secure America’s Clean Energy Future ( nationalinterest.org )

This development is a goldmine opportunity to reduce America’s economic and energy dependence on foreign states and to create thousands of clean, good-paying middle-class jobs.

On November 28, 2023, the Department of Energy confirmed its discovery of a 3,400-kiloton reserve of lithium in California’s Salton Sea, making it one of the largest exploitable lithium deposits in the world.

In August, American volcanologists and geologists found a large lithium deposit in Nevada’s ancient McDermitt Caldera volcano, which could produce between 20,000 and 40,000 kilotons. If fully exploited, both deposits would be sufficient to fulfill the world’s lithium needs many times over.

Besides minor grants provided to the researchers and companies who discovered these two immense lithium deposits, no efforts have been made to develop the technology, capacity, and infrastructure necessary to exploit these two deposits. These incredible discoveries should be a wake-up call for American investors and lawmakers to stop investing in foreign, unreliable partners and begin an ambitious project to exploit the lithium reserves here at home.

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For now, the United States continues to rely on the rest of the world for its lithium. After extraction, most of the world’s raw lithium is then transported to China, which has over half of the world’s lithium refining capacity. While the United States has talked a big game about boosting domestic critical mineral production, it has increased its imports of lithium products from China, including lithium batteries used in electric vehicles and specialized electronics.