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Electric vehicle boom could turn Salton Sea into America’s Lithium Valley

April 28, 2023

Crews are getting ready to dismantle a small geothermal plant that’s been operating for months a couple miles from the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea, at a site aptly known as Hell’s Kitchen.

A hardy, 30-person team from Australian-based Controlled Thermal Resources has been manning the plant in this corner of the Imperial Valley since December. Their task: to fine-tune plans for extracting lithium and other valuable minerals, along with geothermal power, from the boiling brine that flows 8,000 feet beneath one of the most seismically active areas in the country.

While exposure to harsh desert conditions and that 550-degree brine makes the equipment look as though it’s been operating for years rather than five months, the team isn’t dismantling the optimization plant’s tower and turbine and tanks because something went wrong. On the contrary, during one of the final tours of the plant, company CEO Rod Colwell explained they’ve worked out the kinks and boosted efficiency to the point that they’re ready to pivot to construction of what will likely be one of the first commercial-scale geothermal lithium extraction plants in the world.

The timing for such a project couldn’t be much better.

Lithium’s ability to quickly charge, recharge and transfer lots of energy has, over the past 30 years, made it the primary component in batteries that run everything from laptops to pacemakers to cell phones. Now, lithium is the material of choice for batteries to store solar and wind energy — and to power electric vehicles.

With California and other places moving to ban new gas-powered vehicles as soon as 2035 demand for lithium is expected to hit double current supplies by the end of this decade. That’s sparked a so-called “white gold rush,” as a nod to lithium’s silvery-white color. And, domestically, no place is getting more attention than a pocket of land near the Salton Sea, which sits above a deep reservoir of geothermal brine that’s believed to have the world’s highest concentration of lithium.

Controlled Thermal Sources’ Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Most of the world’s raw lithium now comes from Australia and South America, where it’s extracted via hard-rock mining or massive evaporation pools — both of which pose environmental problems. Typically, that material is then shipped to China or other far-away places to be made into lithium ion batteries, which are then sent to automaker factories.

With just 1% of lithium used in the U.S. currently sourced domestically from a single site in Nevada the U.S. government in 2021 declared lithium a “critical mineral,” meaning its extraction is important to national security. Funds in both the infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act were dedicated to boosting both domestic lithium production and battery manufacturing. And the federal government also is using tax incentives, aimed at bringing down the effective cost of EVs, to drive U.S. production of major vehicle components.

Rules that kicked in April 18 limited a $7,500 tax credit to vehicles assembled domestically with minerals from the U.S. or its trade allies — in other words, not China. While vehicles such as Chevy Blazers and some Tesla Model 3s fit the bill, per an updated list of qualifying EVs from the Department of Energy, vehicles from Nissan, BMW and other major automakers do not. That has those manufacturers scrambling to source local lithium so their vehicles can be priced competitively for American buyers.

To stay ahead of the demand curve, Colwell said Controlled Thermal Resources aims to start producing 25,000 tons of battery-grade lithium products a year by 2025. They then plan to ramp up capacity through 2027, eventually producing up to 300,000 tons of lithium annually, or enough to power tens of millions of EV batteries.

Supply chain delays have slowed some of that work, Colwell said, with lithium production originally slated to start next year. There also have been issues with alignment between local, state and federal regulators, though he said those are getting better. And he acknowledged no one has all the details worked out yet around, say, how their product will get to battery plants or how much it will eventually cost.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Colwell said. “We’re not pretending we’ve figured it all out because there’s no precedent for this anywhere globally.”

What he does know is that demand for lithium is so strong that, while Berkshire Hathaway and EnergySource also are pursuing extraction operations near the Salton Sea, Colwell said the dynamic has started to feel less competitive and more cooperative in recent months.

He believes businesses, regulators and community members are all starting to grasp the urgency of what needs to happen in this area over the next few years. As evidence, he cites Gov. Gavin Newsom visiting the site in March, while Department of Energy officials spent Monday and Tuesday with Colwell and other stakeholders during a closed-door meeting to discuss ways to keep projects like his on track.

“If we don’t, we’ll all miss the window,” he said, forcing automakers to keep turning to China to keep EV production lines rolling and carbon emissions coming down.

What lies beneath

Visitors to this other-wordly place near the tiny town of Niland can get a glimpse at what’s happening beneath the surface by visiting a series of mud pots just south of Controlled Thermal Resorce’s site. The cone-shaped mounds reach up to eight feet tall. Lean in and you can hear steam hissing and the occasional popping bubble. Climb to the top and you can see muddy water that smells of sulfur boiling up from deep underground.

Mud pots sit in front of EnergySource’s geothermal plant near the Salton Sea in Calipatria, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Geothermal energy plants have operated in those conditions, near the Salton Sea, for 40 years. There are 11 such plants — 10 run by Berkshire Hathaway and one by EnergySource — that now use wells to bring the boiling brine to the surface, where it generates enough steam to turn clean-energy turbines that power millions of homes. And so far, Colwell said there are no signs those operations have reduced minerals, heat or pressure in the reservoir.

Until recently, geothermal plants have then sent all of the brine, including the liquified lithium, back down into the earth to help keep the geothermal reservoir stable and to avoid dumping anything above ground, as happens with such operations in some places. But now, teams from those two companies along with Controlled Thermal Resources, or CTR, are developing systems to first send the hot brine through a series of closed pipes and tanks that extract lithium and other minerals (more on that soon) before sending everything else back underground.

Just how much lithium is down there? For that answer, everyone is waiting on results of a study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Riverside, which attempts to quantify and characterize the supply. A report is due out in June, according to Michael McKibben, a geology research professor from UCR who’s studied the Salton Sea for more than 50 years and worked on the report. But, broadly speaking, McKibben said results are in line with earlier predictions of a massive, lithium-rich geothermal reservoir.

“The problem in assessing everything is they’re still developing the extraction technology,” said McKibben, who’s himself a finalist on one of five grant-funded teams competing to nail down a process that gets the most lithium at the best price with little to no environmental harm.

From a chemical standpoint, Colwell said, the process to extract minerals from the reservoir’s stew really isn’t that complicated. He jokes that you could “just about go to Lowe’s” to get the needed equipment, with the whole process to extract brine, capture the steam, extract the minerals and send what’s left back to the reservoir complete in roughly 40 minutes.

“It’s how it’s assembled and arranged,” he said. “That is the art.”

Tapping the lithium stream

CTR got its first major vote of confidence in 2021, when General Motors announced a “multi-million dollar” investment into the company’s Salton Sea facility. That gave the auto giant first rights to any lithium produced at the site, as GM looks to expand and stabilize its place with five Chevy models and one Cadillac already on the federal tax credit list.

The well drilled for CTR’s optimization plant will become part of GM’s dedicated lithium production plant. Rather than use a test well, Colwell said they opted to develop a $12 million production-scale well that took 38 days to drill and is capable of extracting up to 12,000 tons of lithium a year. That way they can simply replace above-ground equipment from the optimization plant with a commercial-scale plant that will be under production soon.

And rather than try to re-engineer things to scale up, Colwell said they plan to simply replicate this first proven setup, allowing different automakers and battery manufacturers to plant their flags near their dedicated wells and plants.

Rod Colwell, CEO of Controlled Thermal Sources, at their Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Temperature gauge at Controlled Thermal Sources’ Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Controlled Thermal Sources’ Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Brine pipes at Controlled Thermal Sources’ Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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The company’s second announced partner is Stellantis, which makes Jeeps, Chryslers, Fiats and more. Stellantis committed to buy up to 25,000 tones of battery-grade lithium hydroxide per year, over a 10-year term, for use in its North American electrified vehicle production.

Statevolt, a startup that recently bought 135 acres in the area to build a massive battery manufacturing plant, also signed an agreement with CTR to source lithium. And Colwell said they’re in talks with two other major battery manufacturers he hopes to announce soon.

Eventually, he said CTR plans to drill about 60 wells. Half will be used to extract boiling brine, while the other half will be located as much as a mile away, to inject any unwanted minerals and remaining water back underground far enough out that the altered brine won’t interact with the material they’re extracting for years.

Ideally, Colwell said they’ll be able to send lithium still suspended in water via a pipeline straight to nearby battery manufacturers. Otherwise, he said they’d need to dehydrate the liquid-suspended lithium and build an $85 million packaging plant to put bags of processed lithium on trucks going down Interstate 10 or on nearby rail lines. It would then likely travel via ship to a refinery or battery plant, where it would have to be rehydrated before getting put to use.

So far, Colwell said the price for geothermal lithium sits solidly in between lithium from hard-rock mining, which is the priciest at $9,000 to $11,000 a ton, and lithium from evaporated ponds, which now goes for around $4,000 a ton.

“We’re $5,000 to $6,000 a ton,” he said. “But we’re working on that.”

Not just lithium

Demand for lithium is driving this work today. But roughly a fifth of the elements on a periodic table tacked to the wall of a portable lab at CTR’s site are circled in red, indicating those elements also are present in varying concentrations in the area’s geothermal brine, which is roughly 23% solids.

Emir Salas, lead chemist at Controlled Thermal Sources, shows off brine with metals extracted at their Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Brine in various stages of the extract process at Controlled Thermal Sources’ Hell’s Kitchen test facility near the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Some are obvious in jars of refined brine sitting on a lab counter, with a layer of rich blue manganese — present at five times the concentration of lithium and needed in steelmaking and other industries — settled near the bottom. There’s also zinc, which EnergySource’s plant already extracts from its nearby geothermal plant. Gold and silver are there, too. But, after lithium, the element Colwell said they’re most interested in is potassium.

Potassium also is a key ingredient in fertilizer, which is used in far greater quantities than batteries. Right now, Colwell explained most potassium comes from Canada, with Russian sources cut off since Putin invaded Ukraine. So Colwell said selling potassium is “low-hanging fruit” that isn’t even factored into their financials to date, though he estimates they’ll be able to produce 1 million tons of potassium for every 25,000 tons of lithium.

They also haven’t factored in silica, which is a created as a pesky byproduct of most mineral recovery efforts. The geothermal plants in the area today pay to have silica landfilled, Colwell said. But CTR already is making money by selling their silica waste to a nearby defense contractor, which is using it to make carbon-free cement.

“It’s when you get into some of this other stuff that it really starts to make economic sense,” Colwell said.

The only product aside from lithium that’s factored into CTR’s financial plans is geothermal energy, which is what brought his company here more than a decade ago.

Even after using clean geothermal energy to power their own plants and other operations expected to spring up nearby, CTR expects to have plenty of power leftover to sell to the market. They aim to start producing nearly 50 megawatts of renewable power by late 204. At full capacity, the Hell’s Kitchen site could hit 1,100 megawatts, or enough clean energy to power around 1 million homes.

The bigger picture

While CTR’s plans are big, the company is just one piece of a massive puzzle that local, state and federal leaders hope to put together over the next few years to transform the Imperial Valley.

Concept drawing of Controlled Thermal Resources’ lithium extraction/battery campus in the Hell’s Kitchen area of the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The intersection of Pound and Davis Roads is slated to be the new location for Controlled Thermal Resources’ lithium extraction/battery campus in the Hell’s Kitchen area of the Salton Sea in Niland, CA, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Federal leaders are anxious to see facilities that manufacture and recycle lithium-ion batteries also come to this area. That could reduce our dependence on places like China, bolster national security and ensure we can follow through on plans to clean up our transportation sectors.

But supporters say plans to build out Lithium Valley also could create up to 12,000 new jobs (with 1,400 at CTR alone), spark affordable housing construction and breathe new life into what’s long been the most impoverished county in California.

“If done correctly, this effort will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity with tremendous potential for transformative economic growth that could bring family-sustaining jobs and real economic opportunities to California’s most underserved residents.”

That’s how the final report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Lithium Extraction in California, which was published in December, spells out the stakes. The report includes 15 recommendations for responsible development. Some, such as calls to streamline permitting and add tax incentives, center on bolstering these projects. Others, such as requiring health impact and water studies, are aimed at ensuring these projects don’t harm the area’s people and environment.

Issues with elevated rates of asthma, triggered by toxic dust from the polluted and drying sea, are a major concern for residents and for future employees of these companies, Colwell said. So they’re working on a plan to help mitigate dust at their site and to develop wetlands nearby, in an area once rich with migrating birds.

Standing on top of a nearby dormant volcano, with the drying sea on one side and steam pouring from rows of geothermal plants on the other, it’s easy to see how important it is to get this one right.

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