Geothermal Lithium

[Mikehig]

Lithium prices have rocketed lately and there's been speculation about the impact on EV costs, possible resource constraints, etc.. So an article on Euractiv caught my eye - it's about extracting lithium from underground reservoirs as a by-product of geothermal projects. There seems to be substantial potential:

"Vulcan Energy is in the process of building five geothermal power plants in the Upper Rhine Valley, above one of the world’s richest reserves of lithium in geothermal brine.
Together, these would represent the largest lithium reserves in Europe, at 15.85 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, Kreuter said. The extracted raw lithium will then be sent to a nearby central refinery, where it will be converted to lithium hydroxide and be delivered to battery and automobile factories across Europe.
By 2025, Vulcan Energy plans to extract emission-free 40,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide from the Upper Rhine Valley – enough to supply batteries for the equivalent of about one million cars per year.
Once the plants are up and running, Vulcan Energy could support 100% of the battery industry in Germany – or 25% of the expected demand in Europe, Kreuter continued."

Here's the article:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/lithi...

Similar moves are underway at Cornish geothermal projects with aims to start producing Lithium by the end of next year.

[ALawson]

Shouldn’t this be in the Finance Gambling thread?

Goes of to check the company out. .

[Martyn76]

The Cornish efforts have already been highlighted by a couple of outlets, Fully Charged did a YT video on them, i think there is another company called GB\UK Lithium or something also working in the SW.

https://youtu.be/FbzL09SoHdo

If viable could be a shot in the arm for the SW and UK in general?

[Evanivitch]

I think this will suffer the same issue as fracking gas. It's only economically viable if the price is high and stays high. The site will shutdown if/when the price plummets and markets are typically volatile. There's lots of lithium out there, just a question of who turns on the taps.

[kambites]

Evanivitch said:

I think this will suffer the same issue as fracking gas. It's only economically viable if the price is high and stays high. The site will shutdown if/when the price plummets and markets are typically volatile. There's lots of lithium out there, just a question of who turns on the taps.

Isn't the whole point that the brine is a by-product of the geothermal plant anyway? Unless you think the value of "heat" is going to plummet?

[Evanivitch]

kambites said:

Evanivitch said:

I think this will suffer the same issue as fracking gas. It's only economically viable if the price is high and stays high. The site will shutdown if/when the price plummets and markets are typically volatile. There's lots of lithium out there, just a question of who turns on the taps.

Isn't the whole point that the brine is a by-product of the geothermal plant anyway? Unless you think the value of "heat" is going to plummet?

Low temperature ("quality") heat is low value anyway. There's very few Combined Heat and Power projects in the UK because despite our relatively high energy costs, businesses really done care for the waste heat and the required infrastructure costs.

So unless they're co-locating a customer with a non-seasonal high-demand for low-quality heat (i.e. not vertical farming) then it's difficult to maintain a joint heat a brine process.

[Mikehig]

kambites said:

Evanivitch said:

I think this will suffer the same issue as fracking gas. It's only economically viable if the price is high and stays high. The site will shutdown if/when the price plummets and markets are typically volatile. There's lots of lithium out there, just a question of who turns on the taps.

Isn't the whole point that the brine is a by-product of the geothermal plant anyway? Unless you think the value of "heat" is going to plummet?

It may be making a virtue out of necessity: scaling is probably quite an issue when circulating hot, salty brine. I haven't seen any detail on the process but maybe someone realised the potential brass in the pile of scraped-out sludge?

[DonkeyApple]

The problem is that VUL is listed on the ASX, the spiritual home of the small cap mining fraud. The share price through 2021 looks like a perfect retail pump and dump with the cash out already happening.

Li itself is a bit of a messy market anyway. We had several years of over supply that collapsed value and caused a large amount of mothballing but there's now a supply bottleneck because of this mothballing and you have a 6-18 month lag on bringing operations back online.

So the supply shortage isn't due to an actual lack of physical supply but due to 3-4 years of excess production followed by Covid and the stting down of operations. If you look at the 2018 Li supply levels you can see that there is more than enough cheap, surface Li to meet 2021/22 commercial demands.

This year's spike in prices has brought out a whole bunch of mining shyster plays to cash in on retail spanking. Trying to filter real investments from the snake oil would require a lot of in depth work, much more than someone writing DYOR on a finance board.