September 23, 2021 - Many grow quinoa, raise camelid livestock, and sell salt and flamingo eggs, traditional forms of income generation which, after hundreds of years, are now being compromised. Rolando Humire, an Aymaran leader, warns that how lithium is currently being mined is “certainly not sustainable”.

December 31, 2021 - Overall, large amounts of water pollution might create a severe imbalance in the local ecosystems and adversely affect the environment. The entire lithium extraction process contributes to an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Lithium miners cut down trees ...

November 12, 2020 - During the Obama-Biden administration, hydraulic fracturing was accused of causing a number of environmental problems—faucets on fire, contamination of drinking…

June 5, 2021 - A race is on to produce lithium in the United States, but competing projects are taking very different approaches to extracting the vital raw material. Some might not be very green.

August 7, 2018 - As the world scrambles to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, the environmental impact of finding all the lithium required could become a major issue in its own right

July 25, 2024 - There are ways to extract lithium without damaging the environment. We just need to start doing it.

September 6, 2024 - After extracting these minerals ... like acidification. This chemical process can result in harmful gasses and chemicals being produced as byproducts which can easily result in pollution if not handled properly....

May 13, 2022 - This can have a serious impact ... per cent of the region’s water. This has consequences for the environment and people locally. Removing brine from below the ground lowers the water table, thereby threatening drinking and irrigation water supplies. The chemical treatments used can leak into irrigation and drinking water supplies (as happened in Tibet and China). For example, in 2016 a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine was believed ...

September 21, 2022 - The demand for lithium for EV batteries is driving a mining boom in an arid Andes region of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia, home to half the world’s reserves. Hydrologists are warning the mines could drain vital ecosystems and deprive Indigenous communities of precious water.

February 17, 2022 - While electric cars reduce fossil fuel emissions once they are on the road, the production of the lithium-ion batteries that power them causes more displacement and CO2 emissions than the production of regular gas-powered cars.

February 12, 2024 - Lithium is found in rock ores, which are mined and crushed, or in briny water, where it can be extracted using evaporation.

March 4, 2024 - Relative to fossil fuels, Cobalt ... to be in a similar range at around 1.3+ million tonnes of carbon annually, with every tonne of mined lithium equating to 15 tonnes of CO2 into the air....

November 21, 2022 - This region rich with natural deposits can be found where the borders of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia meet. And roughly a quarter is stored in the Salar de Atacama salt flats in northern Chile. ... Nevada enters the race for lithium with new mines.

January 18, 2023 - The clean energy transition depends heavily on lithium, but mining this element is not “clean.” We must not fall into the same traps from which we are trying to free ourselves.

July 19, 2024 - The energy transition is driving demand for batteries; funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal programs is helping to fill it.

October 31, 2023 - The head of the environmental unit of the Atacama Indigenous Council, Francis Mandoca, describes lithium mining as unsustainable

February 22, 2024 - Despite a possible slowing of demand for EVs, and despite the environmental consequences of opening up more lithium mines, supply chain issues and the price commanded by lithium in the global market – which climbed from around $12,000 per metric ton in 2019 to $46,000 per metric ton in 2023 ...

The green-energy agenda coming out of Washington, D.C., is being touted as the panacea to climate change. But at what cost to some Native American communities? People of Red Mountain, a group from the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, has launched an awareness campaign to save its sacred ...

1 month ago - Lithium prices have bottomed. When will demand recover, especially for EVs?

July 24, 2024 - In this article we’ll explore why lithium batteries come with their own heavy environmental cost, and why they’re not necessarily the environmentally friendly alternative we’ve been led to believe.