LITHIUM COULD TRANSFORM IMPERIAL COUNTY
Imperial County — the 4,176-mile jurisdiction with 180,000 residents between San Diego County and the Arizona border — is one of the poorest parts of California, with many households having income less than one-quarter of the state’s median. Now, however, decades of hopes that the poor, heavily agricultural county can be transformed into an economic engine appear closer to fruition than ever. The optimism is driven by repeated confirmations that it is home to major underground deposits of lithium, the lightest known metal, which can hold an electric charge for long periods and is essential to hopes to extensively deploy a wide range of powerful technologies. Most importantly, it is seen as crucial to fighting the climate emergency by expediting the switch to electric vehicles and allowing for electricity grids to store renewable energy at times when wind and solar farms aren’t providing real-time sources of electricity.
This has led Gov. Gavin Newsom to be an increasingly vocal proponent of having the state work with three companies to turn Imperial County into “Lithium Valley” — what Saudi Arabia is to oil. State surveys back these firms’ optimism that as much as a third of global supplies could come from the county. On Monday, Newsom again visited with local politicians, scientists and executives to tout the unique resource, whose open-market price has soared in recent years. A crucial point made by the governor: the extraction technique used in the county — in which minerals including lithium found in an underground reserve of boiling geothermal brine are pumped up and then separated — is far more environmentally friendly than methods used elsewhere to access lithium reserves, including rock mining.
Last year, at Newsom’s behest, the state allocated $80 million in funds for a science-technology building at San Diego State University Imperial Valley’s campus in Brawley, with the goal of having a local workforce in place when the first commercial plant opens in a year or two, as expected. The governor has also promised to do all he can to ensure much of the wealth created by the nascent industry stays in Imperial County. “This is one of the great economic transitions, one of the great economic opportunities to change the way we produce energy, to create clean energy,” he said Monday.
San Diego County is well along in its own science-tech evolution/revolution, emerging in particular as a global hub of life sciences and biotechnology. For the good of the region — and the planet — here’s hoping lithium extraction lives up to its enormous promise and allows Imperial County to emerge out of San Diego’s shadow in dramatic fashion.