Millions of tons of lithium, the raw material used to power the vast majority of electric vehicles (EVs), have been discovered beneath the ground in Arkansas in a government-led study, researchers announced Monday.
An estimated five million to 19 million tons of the valuable alkali metal was found in the southwestern portion of the state in a collaboration between U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers and the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment’s Office of the State Geologist, USGS said in a press release.
The amount of lithium reserves was estimated using a combination of water testing and machine learning — and now researchers want to find out if its “commercially recoverable.”
If the raw material is able to be extracted, it would meet the projected 2030 world demand for lithium in car batteries nine times over, the announcement stated.
The demand for lithium has shot up in recent years with the rise of EVs — and it is projected to continue increasing.
The CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra, has committed to taking the automaker fully electric by 2035, even as third-quarter earnings show that EVs are still not profitable, Breitbart News reported Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Ford is giving away free at-home charging stations in order to boost EV sales, CEO Jim Farley announced in late September:
“Lithium is a critical mineral for the energy transition, and the potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply-chain resilience. This study illustrates the value of science in addressing economically important issues,” said USGS Director David Applegate.
The researchers noted that the U.S. currently relies on imports for more than 25 percent of its lithium needs, making the trove discovered in Arkansas all the more important.
“The USGS estimates there is enough lithium brought to the surface in the oil and brine waste streams in southern Arkansas to cover current estimated U.S. lithium consumption,” the press release said. “The low-end estimate of 5 million tons of lithium present in Smackover brines is also equivalent to more than nine times the International Energy Agency’s projection of global lithium demand for electric vehicles in 2030.”
“Our research was able to estimate total lithium present in the southwestern portion of the Smackover in Arkansas for the first time,” said Katherine Knierim, the study’s principal researcher.
“We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace U.S. imports of lithium and more. It is important to caution that these estimates are an in-place assessment. We have not estimated what is technically recoverable based on newer methods to extract lithium from brines.”