Here's something you may not know: many EV batteries begin their life thousands of miles away in South American mines, but that may not be the case for much longer. According to a U.S. Department of Energy fact sheet, the ground under California's Salton Sea is hiding a huge amount of lithium. We’re talking enough to build more than 375 million EV batteries, more than all the cars on U.S. roads today.
Why this desert lake matters so much
The Salton Sea isn't exactly known for clean energy. Most people know it for the heat and the smell. But something is happening deep underground that most Californians probably know nothing about. Deep below the surface is hot, salty water known as geothermal brine. Power plants have been pumping it up for decades to make electricity. Scientists now know that this same water is rich in dissolved lithium, the metal that your phone, laptop, and EV battery depend on.
That DOE estimate isn’t a guess. It comes from years of research conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. The team that mapped the amount of lithium sitting underground here was led by scientist Patrick Dobson. The figure of 3.4 million tons is the high-end projection from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study, which is based on an assumption of future gains in extraction technology. Even the safer, already-proven figure is 2.6 million metric tons.
Since 2004, the Salton Sea geothermal field has been producing about 120 million metric tons of brine per year, which contains about 198 parts per million of lithium. This means that approximately 127,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) are extracted each year. The known reservoir is believed to hold 4.1 million metric tons of LCE, but under more optimistic assumptions, this could be up to 18 million metric tons.
