A Greener Battery

Assuming that battery technology is a panacea for our current energy woes is ignoring one side affect:  the toxicity, energy and expense racked up from extracting the materials that allow the battery to work.

Newer generations of batteries generally use lithium ion technology, and as companies manufacture more and more batteries, these same companies are demanding tremendous amounts of lithium.  Not only is the price of lithium rising dramatically, there are other costs as well.

Most of the world’s lithium comes from salt ponds in Chile, Argentina, China—and soon, perhaps, Bolivia.

Engineers dig deep wells into these salt ponds, pump brine from which that lucrative lithium is extracted, and therein lie those festering issues:  these salt ponds require large expanses of land, massive quantities of water are required in areas that lack it (think the Atacama Desert in Chile!), and we’re stuck with a lot of waste in ecologically sensitive areas.  These salt ponds are also in remote areas, from which we need a lot of fuel to haul all that lithium.

One company that’s developing a cleaner workaround for extracting lithium is Simbol Mining, a start-up in Northern California.  In the salt ponds near the Salton Sea in southeastern California, Simbol Mining estimates that there is approximately 10 million tons of lithium carbonate, crucial for keeping your future Prius hybrids humming!    Geothermal technology would not only extract the lithium, but this process could also produce steam that will run turbines, generating electricity that would sustainably keep Simbol’s operations humming.

Right now Simbol’s processes are in the laboratory phase, but stay tuned:  if your future hybrid car or battery storage unit attached to your house don’t exhaust your bank account, companies like Simbol may very well earn your gratitude—while perhaps taking up part of your stock portfolio.