Oct 5 (Reuters) – In a February meeting with mining executives, President Joe Biden laid out an aggressive goal for the United States to produce more of its own minerals for the electric vehicle revolution in ways that respected the environment.
A “big part” of those efforts, the president said, was a plan by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc to filter lithium from superhot geothermal brines swirling beneath California’s Salton Sea, something that had never been done before.
The project aimed to help usher in a new way of producing lithium – a key constituent of EV batteries – in the United States while avoiding the controversies that come with building mines that are often unpopular with local communities.
The U.S. Department of Energy had chosen Berkshire the day Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 for a $14.9 million grant to study how Salton Sea-region lithium could be used to make lithium hydroxide, a specialized type of the metal that produces more efficient and longer-lasting EV batteries.
For the rest of this article: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-steps-away-flagship-lithium-project-with-berkshire-2022-10-05/