A California lake has enough lithium to power 375 million EVs
California’s infamous Salton Sea has been a known hotbed of lithium for years, but no one had a sense of how much “white gold” was found there. Now a new study quantifies that, and it’s impressive: The huge underground reserve of scorching hot brine located underneath the lakebed contains enough lithium to build batteries for 375 million electric vehicle batteries, making it one of the largest lithium brine deposits in the world.
A new study from the US Department of Energy released this week is the first to quantify how much valuable metal is down there, and it’s a lot more than previously thought. Researchers from the Lawrence Berkey National Laboratory say the reserve can support the production of 3,400 kilotons of lithium, enough to build batteries for 375 electric vehicle batteries. The US currently has fewer than 300 million registered EVs, but that is set to explode by 2030. Some say we could face a shortage as soon as 2025.
The Salton Sea is best known for being the state’s worst ecological disaster, as droughts, heat waves, and agriculture have caused the water to recede, forming a dry barren-looking lake bed alongside mass die-offs of fish from the high salinity of the water. But the Salton Sea has had a green energy reinvention of sorts, with companies of all sizes trying to assess how to extract lithium from the geothermal brine deep underneath the lake’s southern end, and for a decade it’s been a source of geothermal electricity production. Governor Gavin Newsom has called the lake the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
Of the new findings, the DOE says that all of that lithium found there can “enable the United States to meet or exceed global lithium demand for decades,” according to a press release. “This is pretty significant, it makes this among the largest lithium brine deposits in the world,” Michael McKibben, a geochemistry professor and one of the study authors. “This could make the US completely self-sufficient in lithium so we’re no longer importing it via China.”
Of course finding a way to harness and exact the lithium from a geothermal brine at a commercial scale is a daunting task, but a few companies are already working on it and have secured large investments to develop technology. The California Energy Commission also gave a $6 million grant to William Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, as well as a $1.46 million grant to Controlled Thermal Resources a few years back to develop extraction techniques.
But rather than destructive drilling and creating huge evaporation pools, all which can take months and years and leave destruction in their wake, the plan is to do it in a more environmentally friendly way. Companies are working toward a direct lithium extraction technology that can extract the brine and separate lithium from other metals. As an added bonus, the lithium extraction will be paired with producing geothermal electricity.
Electrek’s Take
This is certainly a compelling development in the very long saga of the Salton Sea. And it’s one of those buzzy topics that I’m sure we’ll hear about a lot over the next year. But still, it’s a long bet to seeing this project bear any fruit. The Los Angeles Times makes an interesting case, saying that no company has yet been able to exact lithium from the underground brine, and it’s a costly, complicated endeavor, with the salt alone quickly corroding equipment.
Not to mention the potential political hurdles in making this happen, as well as permitting and costs of getting work crews out to a region with very little infrastructure in place, and surmounting any opposition from mining – although the Salton Sea is likely to be more in the clear in terms of that.
Still, for clean technology to move forward, these types of critical minerals are vital, and currently, China holds all the cards. Most of the lithium currently found in EV batteries in the US comes from South America, which is then transported to China to make batteries. So, the idea is certainly appealing: environmentally friendly extraction, a free-flowing domestic lithium source, and loads of skilled jobs in the US. We’re all in on the dream.
Image: Creative Commons/Dicklyon
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Paris’ bike-share system, Vélib has long been considered one of the shining success stories of urban micromobility. With a massive fleet of over 20,000 pedal and electric-assist bicycles around Paris, the service has helped millions of residents and tourists get around the City of Light without needing a car or scooter. But lately, a growing problem is threatening to knock the wheels off this urban mobility marvel: theft and joyriding.
According to city officials and the service operator, more than 600 Vélib bikes are now going missing every single week. That’s over 30 bikes a day simply vanishing from the system – some stolen outright, others taken on “joy rides” and never returned.
“At the moment we’re missing 3,000 bikes,” explained Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system. That’s nearly 15% of over 20,000 Vélib bikes across Paris.
The sticky-fingered culprits aren’t necessarily professional thieves or organized crime rings. Instead, they’re often regular users who treat the shared bikes like disposable toys.
The city estimates that many people have figured out how to pry the bikes out of the system’s parking docks, unlocking one for a casual cruise and then ditching it somewhere far from a docking station.
Once pried free, the bikes are technically usable for the next 24 hours until their automatic locking feature kicks in. At that point, the bikes are often simply abandoned. Some end up in alleyways. Others get tossed in rivers. A few just disappear completely.
And since the bikes are intended to be parked at their many docking stations around the city, they don’t have GPS chips, further complicating recovery of “liberated” bikes.
The issue started small but has grown into more than an inconvenience – it’s beginning to undermine the entire purpose of the service. With bikes going missing at such a high rate, many Vélib docking stations are left empty, especially during rush hours.
Riders looking for a quick commute or a convenient hop across town are increasingly finding themselves without available bikes, or having to walk long distances to find a functioning one.
That kind of unreliability chips away at user confidence and threatens to drive potential riders back into cars, cabs, or other less sustainable forms of transport at a time when Paris has already made great strides to dramatically reduce car usage in the city.
The losses are financially painful, too. Replacing stolen or vandalized bikes isn’t cheap, and the resources spent on tracking down missing equipment or reinforcing anti-theft measures are stretching thin. Vélib has faced theft and vandalism issues before, especially during its early years, but this latest surge has officials sounding the alarm with renewed urgency.
Officials acknowledge that there’s no easy fix. Paris, like many cities with bike-share systems, walks a fine line between accessibility and accountability. Part of what makes Vélib so successful is its ease of use and widespread availability. But those same features make it vulnerable to misuse – especially when enforcement is limited and the consequences for abuse are minimal.
The timing of the problem is especially unfortunate. In recent years, Paris has seen impressive results in reducing car traffic, expanding bike lanes, and promoting cycling as a key part of its sustainable transport strategy. Vélib is a cornerstone of that plan. But if the system becomes too unreliable, it risks losing the very people it was designed to serve.
Meanwhile, as Parisians increasingly find themselves staring at empty docks, the challenge for the city and Vélib will be to restore confidence in the system without making it harder to use. That means striking the right balance between freedom and responsibility, between open access and protection against abuse.
In a city where cycling is supposed to be the future of mobility, losing thousands of bikes to joyriders and sticky fingers isn’t just frustrating; it’s unsustainable.
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