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“There’s a huge opportunity to do it here in Alberta, because what you need is land and a professional skill set,” Doornbos said. “And we have all of those pieces here.”

The possibility for Canada to become the supplier of choice for a low-carbon, ethically produced lithium is real, said Jason Switzer, executive director of the Alberta Clean Technology Industry Alliance.

“Lithium is one of those plays that speaks to Alberta’s strengths. We’re already pumping a lot of lithium up, we’re just basically putting it back down the hole right now,” Switzer said. “But we shouldn’t kid ourselves, it’s a bit of a race to be first. It’s a bit like LNG — whoever gets there first is going to lock in a market. If you’re second or third, you may miss that opportunity.”

Another Alberta company working in the lithium space is Summit Nanotech. The Calgary-based company was founded last year and is currently testing its own environmentally friendly extraction process that uses nanotechnology principles to get lithium out of brine water. CEO Amanda Hall said the company’s target market is the South American lithium industry, though Alberta could be a secondary market if it gets its own lithium sector off the ground.

“We have a lot of benefits in Alberta because the wells we would use to get the lithium out of the ground are already drilled, and the disposal wells to get rid of the byproducts are already here,” Hall said. “However, the operation costs and the capital needed to build the actual refinery for these lithium extraction processes is going to be something we struggle with. We need as much support as we can get from the oil and gas industry, and the provincial and federal governments as well.”