Inconvenient Truths About Green Economy Emerge in Maine Wilderness

Electric vehicles (EVs) are, in some form, going to become a dominant presence on our roadways. Probably not as quickly as EV advocates want, or government mandates require, but still, a real presence that will change the way we get from point A to point B.

Or they will if there’s enough lithium to go into the batteries that power all those present and future EVs.

Lithium is an essential ingredient in batteries and producing it is not exactly the most environmentally friendly process. But there are some huge natural lithium deposits in the U.S., potentially worth billions of dollars.

One such deposit is in Maine:

At current market prices, the deposit, thought to contain 11 million tons of ore, is valued at roughly $1.5 billion. Measuring up to 36 feet in length, some of the lithium-bearing crystals are among the largest ever found.

But don’t expect this lithium deposit to be developed any time soon:

…under Maine’s recently enacted mining laws, it’s unclear whether it will ever be extracted.

“We know that the Maine mining laws are such that there’s not one single active mine in Maine,” said Mary Freeman, who owns the land with her husband, Gary, a co-author on the paper describing the find.

“We’d have to get clarification from the state,” said Freeman, when asked whether the couple planned to apply for a mining permit. “They don’t have an area of the rule that explains this kind of work.”

Maine’s metallic mining law was designed to protect the state’s natural resources and keep its water clean. But the state, and its residents, will also need lithium-ion batteries to store energy from wind and solar panels, and run electric vehicles.

Yet lithium is a metal, and state regulations passed in 2017 prohibit mining for metals in open pits of more than three acres, which would be the only way to cost-effectively extract lithium at Plumbago North.

There were good reasons to ban open pit mining in Maine, owing to the environmental devastation previous mines left behind. And there may be ways to finesse the regulations to allow for some sort of lithium extraction.

It will take considerable time. And, very likely, a few lawsuits along the way.

This is just one example of the ongoing clashes between preserving wild places and developing resources to power a 21^st-century green economy. These types of clashes, some based on conservation, others on partisan feints or some rooted in old-fashioned NIMBYism, are a drag on the global energy transition.

And that makes them a major reason why that transition may take much longer, cost more and be more difficult than many green advocates say it will.

Until then, refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (just in case).

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