Lithium Critical to the Energy Transition Is Coming at the Expense of Water

Lithium needed for batteries that power electric vehicles and store electricity from renewable energy projects is likely to deplete—and in some cases, contaminate—local water supplies, according to a new paper published this week. 

From mining the mineral to processing it for battery use, water is essential for producing the soft, silvery metal with superior ability to hold a charge. With lithium demand rising as the world pivots away from the fossil fuels warming the climate, researchers are increasingly scrutinizing the environmental impacts of extracting and using the mineral critical to the energy transition. 

The new paper, titled “Lithium and water: Hydrosocial impacts across the life cycle of energy storage,” is designed as a primer for community members, activists and other researchers about lithium’s impact on water supplies. It makes the situation clear—lithium products, across their entire life cycle, will have “impacts on both the quantity and quality of water resources” that will primarily affect communities already on the front lines of climate change.

“Climate change mitigation sometimes can make it even more difficult for societies and environments that are already under extreme stress to be able to adapt to climate change,” said James J.A. Blair, an associate professor in geography and anthropology at California State Polytechnic University who led the study. “In places that have, you know, drought or extreme heat that are significant climate stressors, we need to be really cognizant about the water supply issues that are involved with some of the industries that are meant to support an energy transition.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is worried about maladaptation—efforts to deal with global warming that have unintended, environmentally detrimental consequences. The mining of critical minerals for the energy transition is front and center for local communities, Blair said.

By far, the biggest impact of renewable energy development on water will come from mining.

Hard rock mining, which provides 63 percent of the world’s lithium supply, requires huge amounts of water and intensive mitigation efforts to avoid contaminating local water supplies. At Thacker Pass in Nevada, for example, a new open-pit lithium mine currently under construction will use 1.6 billion gallons of water each year of its 41-year lifespan, the paper notes. That’s enough water for 53,000 Americans.

“Despite efforts to present lithium mining as a novel, climate-smart form of mining, at its most basic, open-pit lithium mining involves creating massive holes in the Earth that produce huge quantities of tailings and lasting impacts to waterscapes,” the researchers wrote. 

Other mining methods include lithium brine evaporation used in South America, where lithium-laced brine water located deep in the earth is pumped to the surface and allowed to evaporate and leave behind the mineral. That process can deplete those deep aquifers, which are often interconnected with other supplies of water that are safe for drinking and other consumptive uses.

There’s also direct lithium extraction (DLE), where lithium and other minerals are removed from brine water that is then sent back underground. Some companies have touted that emerging method as more sustainable and less water intensive, but it actually requires vast sums of freshwater. 

In Argentina, one of the few places where DLE has been used at a commercial scale, the process has led to the depletion of a local river, the paper found. And in Green River, Utah, locals and environmentalists have protested one of the DLE projects closest to operating in the U.S., over its potential impacts on their water supply. The project will pull water from the largest tributary of the already overdrafted Colorado River, and residents fear the toxic brine from underground could contaminate freshwater supplies. 

Water is at the heart of community pushback elsewhere in the country.

In rural Nevada where local wells are already running dry, a proposed open-pit lithium mine has united a community to oppose it over fears of what it will do to their water supply and a local wildlife refuge that is home to the world’s most endangered fish. 

And at the Salton Sea in California, often referred to as Lithium Valley due to its potential to provide enough of the mineral by itself to support the nation’s energy transition, local community groups and environmentalists have sued to try to stop a DLE site on the verge of beginning operation. They claim county officials conducted an inadequate study of the project’s impacts on the area’s freshwater supply. Much of what is needed for the project will come from the declining Colorado River. 

“With lithium development at Thacker Pass, what’s the issue? Water. What’s the issue at the Salton Sea? Water.”

“[The paper] confirms what we’ve been advocating: There is no silver bullet” to solving climate change or sustainable mining, said Jared Naimark, a mining organizer in California for Earthworks who has worked with Imperial Valley communities regarding lithium projects and led reports on DLE’s local impacts.

In the arid American West, home to the country’s only existing lithium mine and where many more are on the way, water has long been the limiting factor for development, said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor in environmental studies at San Jose State University and co-author of the study. 

“With lithium development at Thacker Pass, what’s the issue? Water. What’s the issue at the Salton Sea? Water,” he said. “Extractive industries require water, and when you’re developing these projects in areas that have either resource constraints or competing uses for those resources, inevitably you’ll surface some conflict there.”

Lithium mines don’t have to be in dry lands, as the mineral is found around the world in a variety of environments. But its quantity varies, and lithium production’s ability to contaminate water supplies is always an issue, the researchers said. 

There are also ways to minimize lithium mining’s impact, mostly by reducing the amount of the mineral needed by prioritizing public transportation and producing smaller EVs, research has found.

“Sometimes we let some of these renewables off the hook for impacts,” Mulvaney said, but the only way to mitigate them is to pay attention.