A plan for 'Lithium Valley' begins to take shape

Source: Katie Fehrenbacher · GREEN BIZ · | October 14, 2020

Source: Green Biz

While California is accelerating toward an electric vehicle future — in part thanks to the new gas car sales ban — it's also got a potentially massive, and still totally untapped, EV resource in its backyard. Is that opportunity finally starting to get some attention?

That would be the valuable lithium that lies beneath the ground in the geothermal brines of the Salton Sea. If you haven't heard of it, the Salton Sea is a 350-square-mile, shrinking lake that's a looming ecological disaster located a couple dozen miles south of Joshua Tree National Park.

Lithium is one of a couple of critical ingredients that make up today's lithium-ion batteries, which power electric cars, as well as our laptops and cell phones. A group of investors, policymakers, startups and energy providers are hoping to build a domestic battery manufacturing, mining and innovation hub around the Salton Sea's lithium, coined "Lithium Valley."

According to a new report out last week from the nonprofit accelerator group New Energy Nexus, a domestic battery supply chain anchored at the Salton Sea could generate billions of dollars and thousands of jobs for the disadvantaged Imperial Valley. These types of local jobs and resources are even more important in the wake of one of the state's most severe COVID-19 outbreaks this summer. 

Such a hub also could help the U.S. remain globally competitive with EV battery manufacturing. Many of the world's batteries are made in Asia, and most of the world's lithium is mined from Chile, Australia, Argentina and China.