London (AFP)
Cornwall, a new eldorado for lithium?
This is the bet of a British mining company ready to revive an ancestral tradition and to ride the boom of this essential metal in electric cars.
This leafy region of southwest England is known for its picturesque villages and beaches, but in the hinterland, around winding roads, Cornish Lithium has made its home on the site of a former mine.
Its aim is to extract enough lithium from hot groundwater to meet the exploding demand for electric batteries, respecting the environment and defending British industry.
Jeremy Wrathall, boss of Cornish Lithium and former investment banker, embarked on the adventure in 2016, attracted by the "green" revolution in the automobile.
"A friend told me that lithium had been found in Cornwall and I thought it was something that was not known in the UK," he told AFP.
Lithium, first identified in Cornwall in 1864, is a metal which is used in the composition of the rechargeable batteries most used in electric vehicles.
The road has not been easy.
We had to get the rights to drill from the landowners, then find the technology to bring water to the surface and then recover the lithium.
The company may even consider using water heat and geothermal energy to generate clean energy at extraction sites.
Cornish Lithium is currently carrying out tests on two sites, one in groundwater, the most ecological resource and the most promising since it could be available elsewhere in the region, and the other in rock.
"The initial results are encouraging," says Mr Wrathall, who touts "very clean Cornish water" where "there is a lot of lithium and very little other stuff, like salt or magnesium, which is a huge advantage ".
Another plus, the people of Cornwall are well disposed towards the project.
"Cornwall has a long mining history and therefore people understand the industry better than in other places in Europe," he said.
The company is not the only one to make this bet in the region.
Its competitor British Lithium is trying to extract lithium from granite.
These companies are heirs to a mining tradition - in particular to extract metals such as copper and tin - which dates back 4,000 years in Cornwall, where the last mine closed in 1998.
"Of course I would like to revive the mining industry in Cornwall but this is a commercial project. I have no mission to the point of being emotional or romantic," warns Mr. Wrathall.
Despite attractive prospects, Cornish Lithium is not yet certain of being able to move on to the production phase, which it hopes for 2025.
"We know that we can extract lithium. Whether we can market it remains to be confirmed", according to the leader, ready to "supply a significant proportion of British demand", which is expected to reach 75,000 tonnes by 2035.
- Energy sovereignty -
For the United Kingdom, this is a matter of sovereignty in the race for energy transition.
Lithium is mined primarily in Australia and South America, and China controls the supply chain.
The Faraday Institute, a research center on electric batteries in the United Kingdom, evoked at the end of December a new "gold rush" for metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel.
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And the needs will be enormous as for the country which will ban new gasoline and diesel cars from 2030. The Japanese Nissan has a giant battery factory project in the country.
For now, "Europe has no offer," regrets Mr. Wrathall, which poses environmental problems since lithium and batteries made in Asia are often produced with polluting fossil fuels.
In France, there is a project to extract lithium from the basement in Alsace and in Germany the Vulcan group thinks it can produce it in the Rhine valley.
For Alex Keynes, from the Transport & Environment NGO in Brussels, in the short term, environmentally friendly lithium mining is necessary to meet the explosion in demand.
But within 15 or 20 years, "the majority of materials like lithium should come from efficient and clean recycling" when the first electric batteries reach the end of their life.
© 2021 AFP