By Ione Wells, BBC.  Excerpt: Raquel Celina Rodriguez watches her step as she walks across the Vega de Tilopozo in Chile's Atacama salt flats. It's a wetland, known for its groundwater springs, but the plain is now dry and cracked with holes she explains were once pools. "Before, the Vega was all green," she says. "You couldn't see the animals through the grass. Now everything is dry." She gestures to some grazing llamas. For generations, her family raised sheep here. As the climate changed, and rain stopped falling, less grass made that much harder. But it worsened when "they" started taking the water, she explains. "They" are lithium companies. Beneath the salt flats of the Atacama Desert lie the world's largest reserves of lithium, a soft, silvery-white metal that is an essential component of the batteries that power electric cars, laptops and solar energy storage. As the world transitions to more renewable energy sources, the ...

By Meg Bernhard , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...the expansion of renewable-energy infrastructure is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of the West, often at the expense of ecosystems. Lithium mining in particular alarms conservationists. Depending on the type of process used, mining can pollute groundwater, emit carbon dioxide, create toxic waste and destroy habitats. As companies scramble to acquire mineral rights, in many cases under an antiquated mining law, some conservationists are criticizing the fact that there isn’t a federal plan to protect the landscape, without which they fear a ruinous mining free-for-all. This rush to mine has put them in tension with proponents of the federal government’s green-energy projects, who warn against slowing an urgent process. Conservationists, in turn, worry that those supporters are being shortsighted in their disregard for the value of biodiversity....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/magazine/nevada-lithium...

By Jijo Malayil , Interesting Engineering.  Excerpt: Researchers have developed a sustainable method to efficiently extract lithium from seawater, addressing the growing demand for renewable energy. The Solar Transpiration-Powered Lithium Extraction and Storage (STLES) device harnesses sunlight to extract and store lithium from brine. ...According to researchers from Nanjing University and the University of California, Berkeley, the approach offers a cleaner alternative to traditional lithium mining, which often involves harmful chemical processes and significant land disruption. The work is similar to research  done  by a University of Chicago team using iron phosphate particles to efficiently extract lithium from seawater, groundwater, and flowback water. ...Long-term tests have shown the device’s stability, compatibility, and scalability. Operating passively without extra energy input, the system is both cost-effective and eco-friendly. It can also integrate with exist...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/business/energy-environment/exxon-mobil-lithium-arkansas.html By Clifford Krauss , The New York Times. Excerpt: Exxon Mobil said on Monday that it planned to set up a facility in Arkansas to produce lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicles, which pose one of the biggest challenges to the company’s oil business. ...the announcement signals that the large oil company intends to hedge its big bets on conventional fossil fuels with at least some investments in cleaner forms of energy that are needed to combat climate change. ...The announcement does not represent a fundamental shift in corporate strategy, but it is an acknowledgment that battery-powered vehicles will increasingly compete with cars and trucks fueled by gasoline and diesel. It could also open the door for southern Arkansas to emerge as a major source of lithium. Most of the metal today comes from Australia and South America, and much of it is processed in China....

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh8183 By THOMAS R. BENSON ,  MATTHEW A. COBLE , and  JOHN H. DILLES , Science. Excerpt: Developing a sustainable supply chain for the global proliferation of lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles and grid storage necessitates the extraction of lithium resources that minimize local environmental impacts. Volcano sedimentary lithium resources have the potential to meet this requirement, as they tend to be shallow, high-tonnage deposits with low waste.... Illite-bearing Miocene lacustrine sediments within the southern portion of McDermitt caldera (USA) at Thacker Pass [Nevada] contain extremely high lithium grades (up to ~1 weight % of Li), more than double the whole-rock concentration of lithium in smectite-rich claystones in the caldera and other known claystone lithium resources globally (<0.4 weight % of Li). Illite concentrations measured in situ range from ~1.3 to 2.4 weight % of Li within fluorine-rich ill...