In search of Lithium: The battle for the 3rd element



The good news: A wonder metal that fires your phone, iPod and shiny new electric car is so clean it may save the planet. The bad news: More than half of the world's lithium is beneath this Bolivian desert...and getting it is so dirty it inspired the latest Bond plot

By DAN McDOUGALL



Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia is a little-known but expansive desert of Cactus, rainwater lagoons and ten billion tons of salt covering nearly 5,000 square miles

Darkness falls across the Andes, turning the distant snow caps from blinding white to nothingness in the blink of an eye. From the east, the night races across the bleak Altiplano towards us, as the temperature plummets to below zero, leaving the windswept emptiness of the planet's largest salt plain in a vast cold shadow.

Above our heads, the sky changes to a hazy and then a deep blue hue, revealing the clearest view of the Milky Way to be found anywhere on Earth.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon, on July 20, 1969, one of the first sights they encountered from space was the wilderness where we stand. As the Earth turned they were captivated by a vast patch of white across the lower South American continent, which they instantly took to be glacial but was in fact southern Bolivia's Salar De Uyuni, a little-known but expansive desert of cactus, rainwater lagoons and ten billion tons of salt covering nearly 5,000 square miles.

Since then the salt plain has remained a largely forgotten corner of one of the most remote and inaccessible plateaus in the world; a destination for bewildered travellers heading to the Chilean border the long way from the Bolivian capital, La Paz.

It is a unique, surreal landscape - an empty white plain that stretches as far as you can see. During the rainy season a dramatic optical illusion occurs, when water lying on the surface of the salt table acutely mirrors the blue sky.



A Bolivian family at work at a salt mine

But this landscape is under threat. Energy economists in London, New York and the Middle East predict that this unlikely windblown patch of salt could, over the next two decades, become the next Saudi Arabia.



Like the Persian Gulf before it in the Twenties, Salar De Uyuni, or more specifically the vast quantities of lithium beneath its Northern Ireland-sized salt table, could be the answer to the transport problems of the 21st century.

Abandoning the cranking handle at the front of a vintage Mercedes flatbed truck, a local Aymara Indianwoman urges her family out of the warm comfort of the cab. She hunches up her ankle-length lace skirt and digs her heavy boots into the salty ground beneath her feet. The engine is dead.

She is joined by other indigenous women, salt miners, from a second broken-down vehicle. In their delicately balanced bowler hats, their babies nestled against their backs in colourful woven shawls, the women look like an overdressed scrum as they position themselves behind the truck.



While they take the strain, the drunken patriarch of the family sits in the driver's seat. He is happily chewing on charque de llama, dried llama meat, and laughing as the vehicle splutters into life. Everyone cheers. They won't have to sleep out in the cold tonight.



Inkahuasa island, an oasis on the salt plain

As the truck leaves us alone in the centre of the salt-pan there is only silence and the stellar night sky. Nobody lives here in the heart of the flats. There is no vegetation, for a start. The salt poisons any water on the surface. Along the plateau there is no sign of industry or development - only rows of brown mud huts, their musty rooms filled with reclusive Indian families with sun-blackened skin, who have lived here for generations.

But on the fringes of the salt plain, a Bolivian government plant is slowly taking shape. It is a mine with small-scale ambitions to extract the precious brine that bubbles below the salt crust on which we are perched. When first pumped from the ground, the brine looks like dirty slush.



But when left beneath the desert sun, the water will slowly evaporate, leaving a yellowy mineral bath that could easily be mistaken for thick olive oil: lithium, the lightest of all metals found on Earth and the hidden power behind our modern technological life.

Lithium may sound unfamiliar, but international demand for the mineral has gone through the roof. Today, the third element on the periodic table is the power in most mobile phones, all iPods, BlackBerrys and handheld computers.

The Mobira Senator, launched in 1982 by Nokia, consisted of a small handset connected to a brick-like nickel-based battery pack with a hefty handle on top - a crucial feature, since the whole thing weighed 22lb. Today, a typical mobile phone weighs a hundredth of this.

Polluted water, blue with chlorine, at a lithium mine in the Atacama desert, Chile

This reduction has been achieved largely through the advent of the lithium-ion rechargeable battery - it is lighter and able to hold a higher charge for longer than other batteries.

Between 2003 and 2007, the battery industry doubled its consumption of lithium carbonate, the most common ingredient in lithium-based products. Today's electric vehicles are powered by nickel-metal hydride batteries, but the cars' performance is limited. Lithium, however, will allow the next generation of electric cars to go a lot further.

With bated breath the American automobile industry awaits the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid car expected to debut in 2010. The car will use a lithium-ion battery alongside a 1.4-litre petrol engine. Mercedes plans to roll out a hybrid version of its S-Class sedan later this year, and will similarly rely on lithium-ion technology for superior mileage.

The green revolution could make lithium one of the planet's most strategic commodities



Tesla Motors of San Carlos, California, has already delivered the Roadster, an all-electric two-seater sports car. The same rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which helped to make the super-slim mobile-phone revolution possible in the past decade, are now set to power the electrification of the car.

'Since a vehicle battery requires 100 times as much lithium carbonate as its laptop equivalent, the green-car revolution could make lithium one of the planet's most strategic commodities,' says Mary Ann Wright of Johnson Controls-Saft, a lithium-ion battery producer.

But there is simply nowhere near enough currently mined to fuel the world's 900 million cars. According to William Tahil, research director with technology consultancy Meridian International Research, 'to make just 60 million plug-in hybrid vehicles a year containing a small lithium-ion battery would require 420,000 tons of lithium carbonate - or six times the current global production annually.



'But in reality, you want a decent-sized battery, so it's more likely you'd have to increase global production tenfold. And this excludes the demand for lithium in portable electronics.'

Lithium may be the new darling of the Western green lobby but its extraction comes at a high environmental cost (above Inkahuasa Island in Salar De Uyuni, Bolivia)

The sudden insatiable demand is spurring a race to find new sources of the third element. Mining companies are now scouring the globe's remotest corners, including the wilds of northern Tibet, where the Chinese have uncovered new reserves, as well as these remote salt plains of South America. Chile, currently the world's largest supplier of the element, has estimated reserves of three million tons.



This is dwarfed, however, by the potential lithium in Bolivia. The US Geological Survey claims at least 5.4 million tons of lithium could be extracted in Salar De Uyuni, while another report puts it as high as nine million tons.

If the electric car is ever to become a mass-market product, the lithium beneath my feet is going to have to be mined. But the Western companies desperate to get at these reserves face significant hurdles.

To get at the lithium below the white crust will cause irreparable damage to this landscape. In Salar De Uyuni, in particular, the lithium is highly diluted across the plains, so very extensive extraction operations would have to be deployed across huge swathes of the region.



The process would also put incredible pressure on water supplies. For local populations, life could easily start to mirror the scene from last year's James Bond film, Quantum Of Solace, in which wells dry up after water is stolen by the film's baddie, and villagers are forced to join collectives to buy their share. Far from being outlandish, the film may prove particularly pertinent as local South American populations find themselves having to buy water after big mining companies suck the land dry.

The US Geological Survey claims at least 4.5 million tones of lithium could be extracted in Salar De Uyuni, while another report puts it as high as nine million tons

However, the more immediate problem facing potential lithium prospectors is Bolivia's stridently anti-Western president, Evo Morales.



The blue grey smoke of tear gas rises above the twin domes of La Paz cathedral as an army of protesters shelter behind a statue of Bolivian hero Pedro Domingo Murillo. The police are trying to stop the gathering getting out of hand. The crowd is made up of mainly coca farmers and shepherds. 'Bolivia libre, si! Colonia Yanqui, no!' they chant as they wave rainbow-coloured flags of the Indian nation.



Below our feet I notice the charred remains of an American flag. This is Bolivia's Indian revolution. They hate America and the West more than ever it seems. It is a sentiment that rises all the way to the top of Bolivia's government.

Like any mining, it is invasive. It isn't a green solution - it's not a solution at all...



At the La Paz headquarters of Comibol, the state agency that oversees mining projects, posters of Che Guevara dominate the drab entrance.



'Let me make this very clear for everyone to hear. The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia,' says Saul Villegas, head of a division in Comibol that oversees lithium extraction.



'Maybe further down the line there could be the possibility of foreigners accepted as minority partners, or better yet, as our clients. This is our ideal. We will supply them with lithium with no middlemen.'



Villegas, a close confidante of President Morales, confirmed that Comibol is investing only $6 million in a small plant near the village of Rio Grande on the edge of Salar De Uyuni, where it hopes to begin Bolivia's first industrial-scale effort to mine lithium.



'But it will be done according to our own timescale,' stressed Villegas.

Currently freelance miners work to break up the surface salt selling it to passing trucks for just a few dollars

To date, billions of dollars' worth of foreign investment to develop Salar De Uyuni into a lithium lifeline has been offered to the Bolivian government by international car manufacturers and mining firms; all recent approaches have been rebuffed.



The salt plain, Morales has said more than once, belongs not to the world but to the Bolivian people. The new constitution that Morales passed in December bolstered such claims. One provision could give ethnic groups control over the natural resources in their territory, strengthening their ability to win concessions from the authorities and private companies, or even block mining projects.



The prize is too great, however, for any of this to stop international efforts. In recent months high-profile representatives from companies including the Japanese conglomerates Mitsubishi and Sumitomo and a group led by a French industrialist, Vincent Bollore, have been sent to La Paz.



'The prize is clearly in Bolivia,' says Oji Baba, an executive in Mitsubishi's Base Metals Unit. 'If we want to be a force in the next wave of automobiles and the batteries that power them, we must be here.'



But Mitsubishi has its work cut out. In 2006 Evo Morales, in his 100th day in office, personally led troops into his country's biggest natural-gas field, operated by Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras. Wearing an oil worker's hard hat, he read out a nine-point decree under which the Bolivian state proclaimed its control of the country's entire oil and gas industry.

'The plunder has ended,' said Morales live on national television as he stormed the mine.



While Morales is in power it looks like lithium will be just as tightly controlled. Ironically, as the world looks for a solution to help it move away from its reliance on oil controlled by the Middle East, it finds itself facing yet another political minefield.



Politics is not the only stumbling block. Lithium may be the new darling of the Western green lobby but its extraction comes at a high environmental cost.

Others, however, believe that we should accept that the destruction of this piece of land is a small price for much good. Not only will the atmosphere benefit from the electric car, but Bolivia too.

To date, billions of dollars' worth of foreign investment to develop Salar De Uyuni into a lithium lifeline has been offered to the Bolivian government by international car manufacturers and mining firms; all recent approaches have been rebuffed

Juan Carlos Zuleta, an economist in La Paz, says: 'We are one of the poorest countries on Earth with appalling life-expectancy rates. This is no time to be hard-headed. Without development our people will suffer. Getting bogged down in principles and politics doesn't put food in people's mouths.'



To understand what is at stake, I travelled across Chile to the Atacama desert, the single biggest source of lithium outside Bolivia.



In the parched hills of Chile's northern region the damage caused by lithium mining is immediately clear. As you approach one of the country's largest lithium mines the white landscape gives way to what appears to be an endless ploughed field. Huge mountains of discarded bright white salt rise out of the plain. The cracked brown earth of the site crumbles in your hands. There is no sign of animal life anywhere. The scarce water has all been poisoned by chemicals leaked from the mine.



Huge channels and tracts have been cut into the desert, each running with heavily polluted water. The blue glow of chlorine makes the water look almost magical, but these glistening pools are highly toxic. The chlorine used to water down the potentially carcinogenic lithium and magnesium compounds that are commonly found in the water table around lithium deposits.



A Chilean delegation recently visited Salar De Uyuni to warn locals of the problems of lithium mining. According to the delegation's leader, Guillen Mo Gonzalez, the unique landscape of the salt plateau would be destroyed within two decades.



The increasing water scarcity around the Chilean mines has also accelerated the decline of the region's subsistence agriculture. An entire way of life is disappearing as families leave their near-impossible existence in the mountains and head for the cities.



'It is hard to show how much water mines are using,' says Gonzalez.



'What's undeniable is that communities are facing severe water shortages. We are seeing patterns of rural subsistence farmers simply giving up and taking their families to horrendous living and working conditions in the cities.



'Like any mining process it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells. This isn't a green solution - it's not a solution at all.'



It's dawn in Colchani, a grey salt-mining town on the edge of Salar De Uyuni. In the soft light the salt plains take on a pink hue, stretching out into the distance in all directions.



Overnight rain has left the flats a mirror, reflecting small family bands of workers scraping at the salt crust with crude picks as they have done for generations. The thin layer of water they dig through perfectly reflects the cloudless blue sky and a brooding distant volcano, a sinister ribbon of yellow sulphur staining the crater mouth.



As we pass through the village, children rush out of their homes shouting 'Comprame, gringo!' ('Buy from me, white man!') as they thrust small bags of peanuts and coloured pasankalla, an indigestible chewy popcorn, into my arms.



Looking on, Francisco Quisbert, 67, the leader of Fructas, a farmers' collective, says, 'We want political power because as Morales says we have a right to our own land. We have been here before, with the Spanish, who came and plundered our gold and silver and enslaved our people.



'This time we are in control, it is our land, no outsiders will be tolerated. There will be blood spilled on this white earth if they arrive to take what isn't theirs. People tell us Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium. But it cannot be done at the cost of our homes and environment.'



The men who gazed at Salar DeUyuni from the Moon will never forget what they saw that day. If the Americans return to the Moon in 20 years' time they may no longer see the salt plain from space.



Is the world's need for a green solution to transport worth the destruction of this unique environment and the ancient way of life that lives on it?





INSIDE THE HIGH-POWER BATTERY



In its metallic form, lithium is silvery and the lightest of all metals. Most people will remember it from school chemistry lessons when it violently whizzes around on the surface after being dropped into water. The reaction is so vigorous that the metal becomes red hot.



One of the big problems with the metal is that it is highly corrosive and can catch fire spontaneously - in the science lab it has to be stored under oil to prevent its violent oxidisation.



The first commercial lithium-ion battery was released by Sony in 1991, a massive development that revolutionised consumer electronics.



Lithium-ion batteries are filled with a pressurised lithium salt dissolved in an organic solvent, usually ether, with two electrodes and a separator made of non-conductive micro-perforated plastic sandwiched between them. When part of a circuit, lithium ions move from the negative electrode made from carbon (the anode) to a positive electrode (the cathode) made from lithium cobalt oxide, freeing electrons which then travel round the circuit, so creating power.



The batteries are re-charged by applying power to the battery. This forces the ions to move back to the negative electrode and so the process can start over again.



Lithium batteries are light, and have a low self-discharge rate at about five per cent a month. They are far more powerful than comparable batteries using other chemical mixes.



They are available in many shapes and sizes. The battery packs used in electric cars will contain several batteries strapped together to create one unit.



Lithium-ion batteries have a long shelf life, but eventually they stop holding their charge. They are extremely toxic and need to be recycled.





THE CARS DRIVING THE FUTURE





More money than ever is being poured into electric-car technology. In the UK one car in particular, the Electric Lightning GT, appears to have everything an eco-conscious lover of British sports cars could want: luxurious interior, top speed of 130mph and acceleration to match most petrol-driven vehicles. And it's all generated from 30 onboard rechargeable electric batteries, with no direct greenhouse gas emissions.



The lithium-powered car will not be a true zero-emission vehicle unless the electricity used to charge the battery comes from a renewable source, such as wind power. But, according to the Energy Saving Trust, charging an electric car from the mains still produces 'significantly less' carbon pollution than using petrol or diesel.



It saves money, too. Electric cars are exempt from car tax and the London congestion charge. When fuel is also taken into account, the Lightning could save drivers a fortune.





The Lightning Car Company, based in Peterborough, unveiled its handbuilt prototype at the 2008 British International Motor Show in London and by the end of this year hopes to begin delivering them to customers, some of whom have already paid a £15,000 deposit.



Iain Sanderson, the CEO of the company, told Live the car is aimed at people who are 'high net worth individuals' with an interest in cars and the environment. Sanderson claims the Lightning GT does 0-60mph in four seconds and is able to travel up to 200 miles on a single battery charge. It will generate 700bhp, about the same power as seven Ford Fiestas.



'We believe this is the future and that electric cars like the Lightning GT, powered by lithium, will blow the myth of electric cars being cumbersome and slow out of the water. This is a special car with looks to match the best supercars in the world.'



The Lightning is not the first electric sports car. The US firm Tesla launched its £60,000 battery-powered Roadsters this year. About 900 have been ordered.



lightningcarcompany.co.uk



