Bolivia Gets a Lithium Rush
By Josh Skolnick | August 6th, 2009
Why we like this: Because it’s always fun to find out that you’re sitting on billions of dollars of an obscure mineral.
Source: ABC News
Gist: First off, what’s lithium?
Long answer, courtesy of Wikipedia: the chemical element with atomic number 3…represented by the symbol Li. It is a soft alkali metal with a silver-white color. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element.
Short answer: the key element in the new, green economy.
Why’s that? Because in a few years, oil won’t be powering our cars—electricity will. Batteries will become our new gas tanks. And batteries, right now, are made with lithium. Lots of it. The new Chevy Volt, for instance, will need 25 to 30 pounds of lithium for each car battery. Just yesterday, the Obama administration announced winners of $1.2 billion federal grants for battery cell and pack manufacturing facilities. As Matthew Nordan, president of Lux Research in New York told ABC News, that battery-powered future is going to make Bolivia’s lithium the world’s next great natural resource.
“There’s no way [large amounts of lithium are] going to be supplied without accessing Bolivia’s reserves…So in many ways an electric vehicle future — what’s envisioned by venture capitalists, by the Obama administration, by startup companies — and batteries depends on Bolivia. Bolivia has the potential to be the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
Good for Bolivia. When your country isn’t that large, its got hundreds of square miles of dead, sandy, bleak terrain, and your economy is the poorest in South America, you need hope. And while there are going to be plenty of Bolivians that don’t want their country to be the next developing nation exploited by multinational energy companies, others will be glad that their nation can help the world get greener. And if they can get a lot richer in the process, it might be a risk they are willing to take.
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