President Joe Biden’s clean energy goals will get a massive boost from a lithium mine sitting above a prehistoric volcano on the northern edge of Nevada that received final federal permitting approval at the end of the Trump administration.
Lithium is a key ingredient in batteries, including ones used for powering electric cars and storing renewable energy, but almost none of it is produced in the United States.
“We are the most advanced, shovel-ready, largest lithium asset in the U.S., probably in North America,” Jon Evans, president and CEO of Lithium Americas, a Canada-based company developing the project, told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Thacker Pass, located on 5,500 acres of federal land near the border with Oregon, was one of several mining and energy projects the Trump administration expedited for review during the pandemic. New Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has not weighed in on the project publicly, but the mine would be compatible with the clean energy agenda of the Biden administration, which includes a prioritization of boosting U.S. development of critical minerals.
“We are really in a position to address several challenges — climate change, jobs, and the competitiveness of our country — that align with the administration,” said Evans, who lives in Atlanta.
State review ongoing
As Thacker Pass awaits final state permits before moving forward, environmental activists have protested at the proposed site to keep it from opening. Evans is dismissive of the opposition, which is led by an activist group called Protect Thacker Pass that strives to “live in harmony with the natural world, rather than relying on extraction.”
He said the company is mitigating potential harms flagged in public comments to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, including that it could reduce available local water supply and disrupt the habitat of a threatened bird species known as sage grouse.
“I am a little confused as to what the opposition is about,” Evans said, accusing opponents of “cherry-picking” from an “encyclopedia” of environmental analyses conducted by the federal government as part of the project. Thacker Pass has been in the permitting process for a decade, he said, despite being ticketed for fast-tracked approval by the Trump administration.
“We weren’t given a free pass,” Evans said.
The mine is expected to move forward anyway. It has bipartisan support from Nevada’s political leaders, who are eager to diversify the state’s tourism-dependent economy, including Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, and his Republican predecessor Brian Sandoval, along with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat who has visited a pilot version of the project.
The mine is projected to create 1,000 construction jobs and 300 during operation, generating roughly $75 million in state and local tax revenue over a decade.
Construction would last two years, and the site could be operational by late 2022 or early 2023.
Lithium Americas is partnering with North American Coal to do the mining, meaning some of the jobs could be filled by miners who’ve lost work due to the decline of coal-fired power.
“It’s the same skill set, just applied to a different mineral,” Evans said.
Nevada already hosts the nation’s only operating lithium mine, Silver Peak, a relatively small brine deposit in the center of the state that plans to double its production to meet increasing demand for clean energy.
Helping Biden ‘secure a supply chain’
The Biden administration has repeatedly said it is necessary to increase domestic extraction, refining, and processing of critical minerals, including lithium.
Of the 35 minerals the Interior Department listed as critical in 2018, the U.S. is reliant fully on foreign imports for 14. Most lithium comes from Australia and South America, but China does the majority of the separation and refinement required to make it usable for batteries.
“By producing rare earth elements and critical minerals here at home, we’ll create good-paying jobs and secure the supply chain we need to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a Twitter post Friday after her agency issued $19 million in new funding for 13 projects.
Evans said the Thacker Pass is situated to service the nation’s supply chain challenges because of the sheer size of its operation.
Over a lifetime of 45 years, the mine would produce 60,000 tons of lithium carbon equivalent a year, or about 1 million electric vehicles worth of lithium, the company said.
“We are a great enabler, given the size of deposit to not only bring more elements of the supply chain here but moving on that quicker,” Evans said.
The Thacker Pass lithium deposit was first discovered in the 1970s by U.S. oil giant Chevron. Chevron was looking for uranium but found lithium, a mineral that had limited applications at the time before booms in laptops, cellphones, and, later, clean energy.
Thacker Pass is unique because it is concentrated in soft clay near the earth’s surface, so it will not require the regular blasting that occurs in hard rock mining.
Lithium Americas, which specializes in chemical manufacturing, aims to do the processing at a site nearby and is claiming no part of the supply chain would rely on China.
Its operations would be near a massive battery factory of Tesla, the leading electric vehicle company, near Reno that opened in 2016.
Just the right time
Evans, who became involved with lithium in 2008 working for FMC Corporation, said he did not envision the huge increase in demand for the mineral from clean energy and electric vehicles.
“I knew back then I was 10 years too early in history,” he said.
Lithium Americas is still in the process of securing financing for Thacker Pass, but it has already raised $500 million from private investors. The company could partner with a major automaker developing electric vehicles for the rest of the funding. Evans said he doesn’t expect problems in raising the money.
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“I don’t know how you address climate change without batteries and the materials that go into them,” Evans said.
