Issued on: 07/18/2021 – 05:38 AMChanged: 07/18/2021 – 05:36
London (AFP)
As the global auto sector accelerates the production of electric cars, a UK company is hoping to make money from mining lithium, which is needed to make rechargeable batteries to power vehicles.
It’s been five years since former investment banker Jeremy Wrathall started Cornish Lithium, a Cornwall, south-west England company that recently hosted the G7 summit.
And while it may be four more years before commercial production of the metal begins, Wrathall is optimistic that his punt will pay off.
“In 2016 I started thinking about the electric vehicle revolution and what that would mean for metal demand, and I started thinking about lithium,” he told AFP in an interview.
“A friend of mine mentioned lithium had been identified in Cornwall and I just wondered if this was an unknown thing in the UK.”
In fact, lithium was discovered in Cornwall in 1864, while the area is known for its historic copper and tin mining, which dates back 4,000 years and ended around the turn of the century.
“Of course I would like to revive the mining industry in Cornwall, but this is a commercial project,” Wrathall said.
“It’s not a mission that makes me be emotional or romantic.”
– ‘Encouraging results’ –
Cornish Lithium is in a testing phase to see if the metal can be made commercially.
“The initial results are encouraging. I’m delighted,” said Wrathall, whose company revitalized a former mine away from the area’s quaint villages and beaches.
The mining company plans to extract enough lithium from hot water underground to meet at least a “significant part” of UK needs while respecting the environment.
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It’s about extracting heat from the subsurface to generate clean electricity or geothermal energy that can be used to extract the lithium.
Wrathall stated that Cornwall benefited from very clean water.
“It contains a lot of lithium and very little of anything,” he said.
“When you look for needles in a haystack, you want as little hay as possible and more needles and we have that.”
– Long travel –
The project was far from easy, from securing the drilling rights of landowners to finding the technology to bring the lithium-containing water to the surface.
And the company faces competition from British Lithium, who want to extract the metal from Cornwall’s granite.
UK demand for lithium is expected to reach 75,000 tonnes by 2035, five years before the UK ban on the sale of diesel and gasoline vehicles with high emissions.
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Lithium is mainly mined in Australia and South America, while China controls the supply chain.
And while automakers insist on the environmental benefits of electric vehicles, most of today’s lithium production relies on electricity from polluting fossil fuels.
In Europe, projects for cleaner extraction of the metal are ongoing in France and Germany.
“It is vital that we get this technology, otherwise Europe will have no lithium supply,” Wrathall stressed.
It comes as auto giants Nissan and Renault recently announced plans for huge plants in England and France to manufacture electric batteries.
The European Commission, meanwhile, plans to end sales of new gasoline and diesel cars by 2035, as part of a massive plan to combat climate change unveiled last week.
“From a strategic point of view, Europe should strive to secure its own lithium supply,” said Alex Keynes from the Brussels lobby group Transport & Environment.
“Our view is that in the medium to long term the majority of materials, including lithium, should come from efficient and clean recycling,” he told AFP.
© 2021 AFP