Quantifying California’s Lithium Valley: Can It Power Our EV Revolution?

Berkeley Lab leading investigation to better understand the Salton Sea's geothermal lithium resources. Mud volcanoes and mudpots next to the EnergySource Minerals power plant at the edge of the Salton Sea. (Credit: Michael McKibben/UC Riverside) The Salton Sea geothermal field in California potentially holds enough lithium to meet all of America's domestic battery needs, with even enough left over to export some of it. But how much of that lithium can be extracted in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way? And how long will the resource last? These are just a few of the questions that researchers hope to answer in a new project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). There are currently 11 commercial plants at the Salton Sea field producing geothermal energy, a clean, renewable form of energy in which hot fluids are pumped up from deep underground and the heat is then converted to electricity. Normally the cooled fluid would simply be reinjected underground, but the idea is to first extract the lithium from the brine before injecting it back. With the push by California and many other states and countries to expand adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), the demand for batteries - and the lithium needed to make those batteries - will skyrocket.