lithium is just cheap because it wrecks some 3rd world countries natural resources. If they'd slap the price of recovery times it will need to regrow nature in that place, it wouldn't be as cheap.
The majority of lithium in battery comes from West Australia. Its fairly conventional hard rock mining.
There are some environmental concerns in the production of lithium carbonate from evaporation ponds in deserts of South America. However to say that it 'wrecks' 3rd world countries natural resources is a bit of an odd statement.
The only real issue is that evaporation ponds use water from underground aquifer. This is very salty mineral rich water and the water use is not as high as farming would be and there is a lot of these aquifers.
In the future, as lithium consumption growth much of the growth will come from more hard rock mining in mostly first world countries, clay mining (unlimited amounts all over the world) and direct lithium extraction (gigantic amounts of extraditable lithium in aquifers all over the world) from aquifers where the water is pumped right back, just with half as much lithium in it.
Evaporation ponds are basically a legacy technology and the boom in lithium will likely mean that they are gone be phased out over the next couple decades in favor of DLE.
Bolivia. The US-backed coup against Evo Morales may very well have been in part because of his intention to implement state control of lithium extraction, preventing foreign companies from ransacking the country's natural resource. https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/bolivian-...
You shouldn't believe every conspiracy theory you read.
Basically one guy claimed lithium is the reason for a US backed coup. This is not proven and most expert don't believe this is true. Its neither proven that it was a US backed coup, and even if that was proven, lithium is very, very unlikely to be the reason.
Lithium is not gold or oil, lithium is everywhere, the reason you produced in this region of South America is because it is cheap to let the sun do a lot of the work. But the reality is, its still more like a complex chemical, more then a metal. The technology to refine it and get it to the grade needed to be valuable, is very difficult, and the outlandish claims made by the president about the government doing all of this extremely advanced processing (and even build cars) were simply political BSing.
It seems what is going on her is that a president made a lot of claims about the value of this resources, over-hyped its value and potential, and when opposed claimed lithium is the reason and its all the evil US fault. This is what I would call narrative building.
Lithium projects are happening literally all over the world, the waste majority of expansion of supply is not happening in South America anymore. If Bolivia ever wants to make real money from this resources they need foreign company that have DLE technology do it and tax them. With DLE much less manual work is required so it will not be an industry that creates massive amounts of jobs.
> salt flats that stretch across Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia and hold over 75%
This is flat out false.
> Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni salt flat alone holds an estimated 17% of lithium globally.
I live in Chile so I know a thing or two about mining. 20% of fiscal income stems from copper exports and the majority of that from the state owned mining company Codelco.
There are many mining operations of foreign companies which don't generate nearly as much fiscal income so putting mining under state control is completely understandable. This is exactly how we and oil countries got rich. We destroy the environment so at least we should be compensated instead of exporting profits as well.
A US-backed coup against Bolivia makes no sense, Chile is a muppet and does whatever the US needs done. There is no need to intervene in Bolivia if you can just ask Chile to expand lithium mining and we will happily do it.
I have seen the lithium mining sites in Chile, compared to copper it is clean. The mining operations are still small in comparison to copper and investment is slow.
