Arkansas may be home to a vast resource that could reshape the world’s energy needs: a valuable battery component called lithium that’s been nicknamed “white gold” and “the new gasoline.”
It’s an important discovery because renewable energy needs batteries and many batteries need lithium. But the resource is in short supply globally and especially in the United States.
A release this week from the U.S. Geological Survey suggests the U.S. might have all the lithium it needs in ancient brine which dates back to the Jurassic period and is buried deep below southern Arkansas.
There could be between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium buried there, enough to meet projected world demand for lithium car batteries nine times over, the USGS said in a statement.
The catch: figuring out how to extract that much lithium without wreaking havoc on the environment and the water table. Lithium is notoriously difficult to extract and has been linked to water depletion and other issues.
The discovery in Arkansas isn’t unprecedented: Other nations also have vast, hard-to-reach deposits of lithium. But the location in Arkansas has already caught the eye of companies like Exxon that hope to develop practical ways to mine the valuable metal.