In high-tech Utah, is lithium mining the industry of the future? Lithium mining could be the next big thing.

• Author: Penrod, Emma

BETWEEN CATASTROPHIC drought in the West, seemingly endless wildfires, and New York City under water, the last two years have illuminated the stark realities of Earth's rapidly changing climate. But earlier this year, a stunning report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) awakened world leaders to yet another difficult truth: the world simply does not have enough lithium to meet the emissions targets scientists believe are necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

"Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world's strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realizing those ambitions," IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement marking the report's release. "Left unaddressed, these potential vulnerabilities could make global progress toward a clean energy future slower and more costly--and therefore hamper international efforts to tackle climate change. This is what energy security looks like in the 21st century."

According to the report, demand for lithium will grow more than any other mineral, increasing 40 times by 2040 if the world achieves the goals of the Paris Agreement. However, existing mines and projects currently in development will meet just half of that demand.

Utah, thanks to its unique geography, may be able to help meet that demand--and at least four companies have already announced their intent to begin lithium extraction here. Once too costly to extract, new technology has made Utah's lithium accessible for the first time, potentially unlocking an essentially inexhaustible supply of lithium in the Great Salt Lake. The state's fraught history with mining may be the resource's only remaining barrier.

UTAH'S NATURAL LITHIUM MINE

Sometimes lumped in with so-called "rare-earth" minerals, lithium is actually relatively abundant. The trouble, experts say, is accessing and concentrating it. Minute quantities of lithium are scattered throughout soils across the globe, but in most cases, the lithium is so diffuse that attempting to mine it would never be sufficiently efficient.

Utah is a natural exception to this rule. Before it dried up 12,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville swept lithium from the surrounding rocks and concentrated the mineral in its sediment. That concentrated source of lithium remains present in Bonneville remnants around the state, including the Great Salt Lake, the Bonneville Salt Flats, and Sevier Lake. Underground reservoirs of saltwater brines that contain lithium are also scattered across southeastern Utah, according to Andrew Rupke, a senior minerals geologist for the Utah Geological Survey.

"In order to get these brines, you have an evaporative process working," Rupke says. "That concentrates ions in the brine, and that increases in concentration as you evaporate more and more water. Lithium tends to stay in...