Innovation Blog

Lithium: Our Future is In The Hands of Bolivia

By Shlomo Maital

    Meet Stan Whittingham.  He is one of the world’s greatest innovators.   Educated at Oxford University, he did a post-doc at Stanford, then stayed in America and worked for Exxon. While working there, in the 1970’s, he invented the lithium-ion battery.   Today he is a professor at State University of New York in Binghamton, NY. 

    Lithium-ion batteries are found in your laptop, cellphone, iPhone, and many other devices.  They have a number of major advantages over other types of batteries — to store 150 watt-hours of electricity, you need only 1 kg. of lithium-ion battery, while a 1  kg. NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) battery can store only 60-70 watt-hours, and a 1 kg. lead-acid battery (the kind you have in your car) stores only 25 watt-hours.  Lithium is the lightest metal of all.  Its current price is about $5.3 – $5.7 /  kg.

    Lithium-ion batteries are light;  hold their charge (losing only 5 per cent per month); they have no ‘memory effect’ (you do not have to completely discharge them before recharging); and they can handle hundreds of charge-recharge cycles.

          Lithium-ion batteries will play a key role in future electric cars, because of their light weight.  Demand for lithium will expand rapidly in the future as a result.   TRU Group projects demand for lithium will double by 2020, when 40 per cent of all batteries will be lithium-ion (mostly, in electric cars).  TRU predicts that production of electric cars will rise from 1 m. cars in 2010 to 4.5 million in 2020 !

      However,    half of the world’s lithium is found in Bolivia, in its Uniyuni salt flates.  There is an estimated 5.4 m. tons of lithium in the ground there.  Annual world consumption is about 105,000 tons — so Bolivia has more than a 50-year supply (at present consumption rates), or 25 years at rates predicted for 2020. At current prices Bolivia’s lithium treasure is worth over $25 b.  This is 50 per cent more than Bolivia’s annual GDP of $16.7 b. !  Bolivia’s President, Eva Morales, is determined that Bolivia will develop its own lithium treasure and keep the resulting wealth for Bolivia’s people, rather than ship the ore out elsewhere.  This is reasonable — except, Bolivia lacks the capital and know-how to do so — to develop the complex mining and refining facilities that are needed, costing many billions of dollars.

   According to Reuters:   “Some far-sighted companies are already attempting to secure the rights to mine lithium in Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats,” said Carl Firman, an analyst at Virtual Metals, adding that the metal is mined as a by-product in clays, brines, salts or hard rock.

“This will be fraught by political complexities, as Bolivia will not simply allow its lithium to be mined and exported elsewhere for downstream processing and fabrication,” he added.

       Economists predict that scarcity of lithium would generate rising prices that lead to desperate research to find an alternative.   Will Bolivia plays its cards smartly, cooperating with global companies with core competency in mining lithium?  Or will it stubbornly insist on going it alone,  creating an R&D race to find a different battery technology?

    Andy Keates, who heads mobile battery technology for Intel,  says lithium-ion technology is getting old.  He notes that new directions, involving new chemistries, are: rechargeable zinc-alkaline ,  silver-zinc, and fuel cells (when batteries cannot be recharged).    He thinks lithium-ion batteries will continue to improve by 7 per cent annually.