With roughly 85 percent of the nation’s known lithium deposits, Nevada is a hotspot for the lightest mineral on Earth.
Over millions of years, the state’s arid environment and closed basin hydrologic systems combined to deposit vast amounts of the mineral deemed critical to the clean energy movement. As desire for lithium swelled earlier this century amid growing demand for electric vehicles and grid-scale battery storage, the rush was on for Nevada’s resources.
“Lithium got hot in the late teens, early 2020s, and people started looking for it more. When you look for something harder, you generally find more of it,” said Sean McKenna, executive director of Desert Research Institute’s (DRI) division of hydrologic sciences. “We found a lot more in the U.S. over the last five years, a lot of it in Nevada.”
Thousands of mining claims were staked across the Silver State, home of the nation’s only operational lithium mine. The lithium rush was on.
As lithium’s popularity grew, its price soared. In 2017, prices for the mineral were three times what they’d been just two years prior; by February 2023, lithium reached an all-time high price of $80,000 per ton, up from about $4,000 per ton in 2020. That same year, U.S. electric vehicle (EV) sales topped 1 million; worldwide, EV sales reached nearly 14 million.
But then the global lithium market reached a saturation point. In January of this year, Reuters reported prices plummeted 86 percent, forcing mine closures worldwide. By February, lithium prices had dropped to their lowest level since 2021.
But Nevada’s active and aspiring lithium developers are undeterred by the market swing.
Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer and operator of Silver Peak, the nation’s only operational lithium mine, announced in 2021 it would expand its Esmeralda County operation, and last month, federal agencies initiated the public input portion of the process.
And Nevada’s two fully permitted (but not yet built) mines are moving forward despite low global lithium prices, with what they describe as fundamental components working in their favor.
Lithium Americas is moving dirt at Thacker Pass, the world’s largest known lithium deposit, near the Nevada-Oregon border. Because of the vast size of Thacker Pass’ deposit, Lithium Americas estimates it will be able to produce lithium cheaper than the mineral’s current market rate.
Australian company Ioneer is developing central Nevada’s Rhyolite Ridge, one of only two known lithium-boron deposits in the world. Those boron deposits will account for about a third of the project’s final product and will bolster the operation during times of low lithium prices, the company says.
“We’ve always known the lithium price is volatile, and you have to plan around that volatility,” said Bernard Rowe, Ioneer’s managing director. “If you don’t plan projects around it, you’re going to be in trouble.”
And with the Trump administration wanting to enhance the U.S.’ critical mineral production, Nevada’s lithium industry appears well positioned.
“We’re going to need a lot more lithium, especially with the current administration’s policies around protectionism,” said Andrew Woods, director of UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research. “If we’re going to have tariffs and this ever-increasing trade war … It means the supply has to come from somewhere, and that that supply, at least in the next four years, could come from the United States.”
Silver Peak
Lithium was first mined in the U.S. in the 1800s in South Dakota. The following century, North Carolina became a major producer, and Albemarle opened its Silver Peak facility in 1967 in Nevada. But American lithium production reached its zenith in 1974, and now Silver Peak is the only operational mine in the country.
In 2021, Albemarle announced plans to expand capacity at its Nevada operation, which currently operates on 6,500 acres of public and private land in Esmeralda County.
Last month, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal permitting agency for those types of projects, initiated the public input process for the plan to add 1,600 acres of public and private land to its operation, which produces lithium from solar evaporation ponds that concentrate brine.
Lithium brine is primarily found in arid locations such as Nevada where, millions of years ago, lithium-rich magma rose to the surface, cooled and formed mountains. Those mountains slowly eroded, carrying lithium to the state’s low-lying areas. Because the Great Basin is a closed system and water doesn’t leave the basin, the lithium permeated Nevada’s groundwater instead of flowing into a river, creating lithium-rich water known as brine.
That brine is what many developers are seeking in Nevada. As of September 2024, there were an estimated 23,500 active lithium claims in Nevada, many of them in the Clayton Valley area around Silver Peak.
Silver Peak processes approximately 3.8 billion gallons of brine annually, according to a report from the Desert Research Institute, and last year, Silver Peak produced about 3,200 tons of lithium; the year before it produced about 4,500 tons, according to the Nevada Division of Minerals. Tesla’s Model S, for example, contains about 138 pounds of lithium (one ton could power about 15 of the cars), while other electric vehicles use much less.
Expansion of the facility, including adding additional brine ponds, well drilling sites and associated infrastructure, could allow the mine to double production.
Multiple attempts by The Nevada Independent to contact Albemarle were unsuccessful, but in 2021, Eric Norris, then-president of lithium for Albemarle, said in a press release that the expansion “shows that we are committed to looking at the many ways in which Silver Peak can provide domestic support for the growing EV market.”
A final permitting decision should be issued early next year.
Ioneer
Located about 65 miles southwest of Tonopah in the Silver Peak Range and one of only two known lithium-boron deposits in the world, Rhyolite Ridge sits just west of Silver Peak.
The project relies on clay deposits rather than brine, and Rhyolite Ridge’s unique mineralogy allows the company to blend its ore to produce boric acid. In times of low lithium pricing, Ioneer can prioritize the high-boron ore to boost revenue, according to Rowe. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of the project’s revenue is expected to come from boron, a mineral used in everything from glass to medicine to cleaning products.
“Boron is uncorrelated to lithium, so when it comes to the economics of our project, we have an advantage over not just lithium projects in the U.S., but in the world,” said Chad Yeftich, Ioneer’s vice president of corporate development and external affairs. “When lithium prices are low, we can help absorb that aspect of it.”
In 2020, Ioneer initiated the formal permitting process for Rhyolite Ridge, and last fall, the company received its final federal permit (that federal approval prompted a lawsuit by conservationists seeking to protect a rare flower that grows at the site). In the interim, Ioneer signed sales contracts with Dragonfly Energy, Ford Motor Company, Korea’s EcoPro Innovation, and a joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic. In January, it closed on a $996 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy — a substantial portion of the estimated $1.5 billion needed for the project.
But another critical funding segment recently fell through.
In 2021, $10 billion global mining company Sibanye-Stillwater and Ioneer established a joint venture agreement to develop Rhyolite Ridge, with Sibanye-Stillwater contributing $490 million for a 50 percent interest in the venture. Ioneer would retain the other 50 percent as well as operations.
In February, just months after it laid off 700 workers — about 40 percent of its staff — at one of its mines in Montana, Sibanye-Stillwater announced it would not proceed with the agreement.
“They were not in a financial position to put up the $500 million-plus required under our agreement,” Rowe said. “They were in a strong financial position four or five years ago, but they’re not today.
“We have to replace that equity [and] we’re in the process of doing that.”
The company’s resources are an asset as it searches for a new investor. Earlier this month, Ioneer announced a substantial increase in the estimated amount of resource available at the site — ongoing sampling has increased projected totals by 45 percent, from 350 million tons to 500 million tons of resource-rich rock.
Once operational, the mine is expected to produce 20,000 tons of lithium per year.
“America will have done quite well to have Thacker and Rhyolite in production by the end of the decade,” Rowe said. “That will be a big, big change in the supply chain as it pertains to the United States.”
Thacker Pass
Located in northern Humboldt County, Thacker Pass is now the largest measured and indicated (meaning it has been drilled for and tested) lithium resource in the world.
“The resource is massive,” said Tim Crowley, Lithium Americas’ vice president of government and external affairs.
Thacker Pass sits in the McDermitt Caldera, a 16.3-million-year-old collapsed super volcano. A lake once formed in the caldera’s basin, collecting lithium-rich clay, before eventually draining, depositing lithium near the surface. Deposits are as shallow as 35 feet below the surface.
Lithium Americas acquired claims to the area about a decade ago, and after permitting was finalized, construction of the open-pit lithium mine started in early 2023 when lithium prices were at their highest.
Now, earthwork for phase one, which includes the mine’s processing plant, is 95 percent complete, and the company expects to start pouring concrete as soon as May, the same month the company’s workforce hub is set to open. At that time, a workforce of 2,000 people will be needed for construction.
Only two phases of the project are permitted, but in a recent technical report, the company outlined a total of five phases. Phase one is expected to span 45 years and produce 40,000 tons of lithium per year.
Despite low lithium prices globally, the company estimates that it can produce lithium at a rough cost of $7,000 per ton, which means that even with current costs hovering around $10,000 per ton, the mine would still operate in the black.
“All of our focus is on phase one, not even phase two right now,” Crowley said. “The market suggests that going to phase two, three, four and five will be a really good thing. But if something slows development of future phases, phase one will still be a really successful project.”
The combined capital needed for all five phases is $12.4 billion.
The final piece of the funding puzzle fell into place for Lithium Americas earlier this month when global investment firm Orion committed to a $250 million investment.
That investment satisfies requirements for the company to capitalize on a $2.26 billion federal loan to finance construction of the mine’s phase one processing facilities. Lithium Americas expects it will first draw on the federal loan later this year.
“The fact Lithium Americas now has that full investment … is going to almost guarantee that that mine is going to be up and operating in the next couple of years,” said Rob Ghiglieri, administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals. “That’s going to be a big game changer.”
There are currently no production-scale facilities extracting lithium from clay or brine without evaporation, said DRI’s McKenna, and Nevada could have both of those within the next few years.
Before earthwork began, the Thacker Pass project drew opposition from local tribes and some conservationists, who staged sit-ins and filed lawsuits against the project. Now, the project, including the company’s announcement of three potential additional phases, is causing alarm in Orovada, an unincorporated town of roughly 150 people just 45 minutes north of Winnemucca that serves as the gateway to the project.
“This came as a huge shock to the communities of Orovada and Kings River, as Lithium Americas had assured us many times that they had no intention to expand the footprint of the mine to the area now proposed,” Susan Frey, a member of the groups Thacker Pass Concerned Citizens and Thacker Pass Working Group, said in an email to The Nevada Independent. “We aren’t sure what this means for the future of our farming communities, but we fear it is the beginning of the end of life as we know it here.”
A financial investment decision (FID) is expected by the company’s board within the next few weeks, Crowley said, which would allow production to begin by 2027. An FID is a critical stage in large-scale projects that marks the transition from planning to execution.
When that happens, Crowley said, the board will have indicated to the company “go build this thing.”
“These mines aren’t betting on short-term pricing. They’re betting on long-term pricing,” Woods said. “You don’t get in it to make a quick buck. These aren’t the gold rush days.”
