Recently, the ministry of mines announced that approximately 60 lakh metric tons of lithium, or white gold, or new oil," had been found in Jammu and Kashmir. Although lithium has been discovered in India before, that is the first time such large quantities have been discovered. But what does this lithium mean for India's growth? Will extract it? Is all of it is actually mineable? When can we expect the result of the assessment? How can we exploit these reserves to their full potential?
these are some very good questions and very nicely answered in very latest video of Dhruv Rathee
Source YouTube:(301) $3 Trillion Lithium Found in J&K | Geopolitics of Natural Resources | Dhruv Rathee - YouTube
On 9th February, India's Ministry of Mines made an announcement that encouraged some people to invite Elon Musk to the country. They announced that in the Reasi District of Jammu and Kashmir almost 6 million tons of Lithium were found. The thing is, Lithium is considered to be White Gold. From the battery in your smartphone, to the electric vehicles everything that uses lithium-ion batteries drives up the demand for Lithium. Today, it has become a highly valuable natural resource. According to one estimate, if you look at the global lithium reserves, the country with highest reserves, is Chile at number 1, with 9.2 million tons reserves. Followed by Australian(2nd) at 5.7 million tones. Does this mean that now India has the second largest reserve of lithium? Does this mean that the nation has hit a lottery? Similar to how the gulf countries became rich due to oil reserves, can India become rich due to the lithium reserves? In this blog you let try answer such questions. News reporter," India has announced its first significant discovery of reserves of lithium. A rare mineral, crucial for manufacturing of electric vehicles." Let us clear up one thing that There's no uncertainty that Lithium is an extremely valuable metal. All smartphones, irrespective of the brand, your phone has either a lithium-ion battery or lithium-polymer batter. Additionally, any electric vehicle that is manufactured today, by any company, almost every one of them has a lithium battery. This is because in comparison to the other types of batteries such as lead acid batteries, that life span of lithium batteries is almost 10 times longer. They weigh about 50%-60% lighter and have higher efficiency. so much so that for storing renewable energy, power grids are also using lithium batteries. In India almost Rupee 88 billion worth of lithium batteries and Rupee 1.7 billion worth of lithium metal was imported from other countries in 2020-2021. And the global lithium market, it's the total value in 2021 was rupee 600 billion. It is projected that by 2028, its value would cross rupee 1.3 trillion. As people move away from petrol and diesel vehicles toward electric vehicles, as solar and wind energy are used more, replacing coal power plants, we will see a growth in lithium demand. The lithium reserves discovered in J&K, have been categorized as inferred resources. Resources whose quantity and quality can be estimated. But cannot say for sure the quantity of lithium reserves actually presents here, or the quality of Lithium, or whether it will be economically possible to mine it or not, we don't know this. The costs, the Enviromental impact, we don't know much about these. In the provided graph, on top of Inferred Resources are the Indicated Resources and then Measured Resources, Proven Reserves, Probable Reserves. Y- Axis represent how much we know about the geological area, and X- Axis represents other factors. Such as whether it'll be economically possible to mine or not. The Ecological Survey of India has put it into the G3 category of initial assessment. They've claimed that more such research and studies are needed to take up to the G1 and G2 categories. Once they reach those categories, they can be considered mineable reserves. Only after that, the Ministry of Mines would be able to know the exact tonnage of lithium present. how much of it could be extracted, it's quality but to reach this stage, friends, it can take up to 5-7 years, before we can commercially exploit it. 2 Years ago, in 2021 similar news from Karnataka, when government announced that they found 1,600 Tonnes of lithium event that was in the inferred category. But in the current news, the quantity of lithium is much higher and so it is significantly more important. At the beginning of blog there is written that the largest reserves are in Chile in South America. At 9.2 million Tonnes. Second, in Australia, at 5.7 million Tonnes. Does this mean that India is now in the second spot? Not Yet, because the reserve is still in the category of inferred resources.
If you compare with this logic, Bolivia has the largest lithium reserves in the category of inferred resources, 21 million Tonnes. The global known supply is at 89 million Tonnes. Even so, it means that in India, 5.5% of the global lithium reserves are present. That's a huge number. If the top players of Lithium Industry are compared more than half of the global lithium reserves, are in 3 South American countries. Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. On the other hand, China is the number 1 player of producing lithium-ion batteries. Of all the lithium batteries produced worldwide, more that 75% of it, are produced in China. According to a recent study by an international energy agency China controls 58% of the lithium processing globally. In the second spot is Chile at 29 percent, and Argentina at the third with 10 percent. In terms of lithium extraction, Australia's share is the highest 52 percent followed by Chile at 13%. It is interesting to note that China has not discovered many lithium reserves, but the lithium processing is the highest in China. They have focused so much to develop this industry. Obviously, there's high environmental cost of Lithium mining.
Similar to mining for other resources, lithium mining produces water, soil, and air pollution too. The process of extraction lithium from its ore is water intensive. A lot of water is wasted for this. According to an estimate, to produce 1 ton of lithium, 2.2 million liters of water is required. The same amount of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Second lithium is often extracted from hard rocks and underground brine reservoirs. This begs the question will lithium mining increase the chances of incident like Joshimath? We will if the government ignores the environmental impact. Third, what about the air and soil pollution produced by mining? It is true lithium is being used to manufacture the electric vehicles and batteries that is reducing the overall carbon emissions. But here, we cannot ignore the carbon emissions from Minning. We will have to balance it all. These are of those facts stated in Dhruv Rathee latest video for all details visit and watch his latest video link is mentioned above.
