Huge US lithium mine gets govt approval: company

An enormous lithium mine in the Nevada desert has been granted final government approval, the company that has the concession said Thursday, in a project it predicts will quadruple US production of a mineral critical to the renewable energy revolution.

Operations at Rhyolite Ridge will produce enough lithium to supply the batteries for more than 370,000 electric vehicles every year, Australian operator Ioneer said.

The plant will create 500 construction jobs over the next few years and 350 jobs during its decades of extraction, the company said.

"There are few deposits in the world as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge," said Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway, heralding the permit issued Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management.

The company's managing director, Bernard Rowe said construction would begin next year.

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"This permit gives us a license to commence construction in 2025 and begin our work in creating hundreds of good-paying rural jobs, generating millions in tax revenue for Esmeralda County, and bolstering the domestic production of critical minerals," he said.

The news comes just weeks before Americans go to the polls to elect a new president, and will be welcomed in Nevada, where unemployment is well above the national average.

The administration of President Joe Biden has made the green transition a key plank of its economic policy, investing heavily in technologies aimed at slashing the pollution that is causing the climate to change.

Scientists say electric vehicles are a vital link in that chain, and their widespread adoption in the car-dependent US will be vital if the country is to meet its carbon reduction targets.

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Biden has tried to nudge the US auto industry to re-tool and shift production away from gas-guzzlers and into electric cars, in a move he says will help create jobs at home.

Subsidies for consumers have rewarded automakers who produce EVs in the US, even while they struggle to source lithium batteries -- a sector dominated by strategic rival China.

The site at Rhyolite Ridge is not without controversy; it is the unique home to a rare flower called Thiem's Buckwheat.

Campaigners say a large lithium mine here will destroy the plant's habitat and could lead to its extinction.

Ioneer's plans show that over the years the mine is in operation around a fifth of the flower's habitat will be directly affected.

But the company, which has spent $2.5 million researching the plant, says mining will not affect its survival; they say their research shows it is already growing well in greenhouses.

Source: AFP