Editorial: India’s lithium advantage

Given the surging demand for the mineral globally and its limited reserves, India must draft policies to extract the best possible advantage

The discovery of nearly 6 million tonnes of lithium reserves in the Reasi district of Jammu & Kashmir, for the first time, may well be a game changer for India as it plans to transition into clean energy and push for electric vehicles. However, there are several challenges and environmental concerns involved in the mining of lithium, a mineral that is in huge global demand because it holds key to modern-age projects requiring both chargeable and non-chargeable batteries in fields such as clean energy, transport and medical devices like pacemakers. While the lithium-ion battery — whose developers won the Nobel Prize — has already transformed electronic communications, the targets for making electric vehicles and moving away from carbon-emitting fuels are also dependent on it. However, the Reasi find is still in the initial exploration stage and it will take some more years before India could mine and refine it to make it consumption-ready. Among the challenges towards this end is ensuring environment-friendly excavation in the ecologically fragile Himalayan surroundings of Reasi. Till then, India will have to keep importing lithium as deadlines for its various projects aimed at zero-carbon emissions draw near. Lithium is a soft, silvery-white mineral which plays a critical role in much of what we do in our daily lives. During the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in 2021, India vowed to cut emissions towards net-zero by 2070. The availability of lithium would be crucial to meet such targets in future.

Lithium is also one of the key components in electric vehicle (EV) batteries, but according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), global supplies are under strain because of rising EV demand. As per the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world could face lithium shortages by 2025. The IEA estimates that about 2 billion EVs will be needed by 2050 for the world to hit net-zero, but sales of EVs stood at just 6.6 million in 2021. Lithium supply faces challenges not only from surging demand but because resources are concentrated in a few places, and over half of today’s production is in areas with high water stress. In addition to EVs, other uses of Lithium are found in rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras, computers, power tools and battery storage of energy generated from wind and solar power. Given the surging demand for the mineral globally and its limited reserves, India needs to tread cautiously and draft policies to extract the best possible advantage, both economically and ecologically. Apart from its own domestic mines, China has established many lithium mines in other countries to ensure a steady supply. The monopoly over lithium’s availability is a challenge to India’s quest for self-dependence as far as green energy is concerned.

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