The Appalachian Lithium

There’s lithium in them thar hills. More than 2 million metric tons of the valuable mineral, the United States Geological Survey reports, rests beneath America’s Appalachian Mountains. The lithium lode is enough to cover America’s needs for centuries, and could supply batteries for some 180 billion laptops, per the geological survey, or 130 million electric cars. Will militant eco-activists allow it to be mined? The geological survey’s estimate of the lithium trove comes at a time of renewed focus on so-called rare earth minerals as a factor in global economic competition. Communist China’s control of as much as 90 percent of certain critical minerals gives the comrades at Beijing an element of leverage in trade negotiations with America. Some of these minerals are needed in defense production and for, say, semiconductors and high-powered magnets.For these reasons, the geological survey recently designated lithium a critical mineral. Currently, America depends on imports to supply its needs for lithium, posing a potential risk. The discovery that “the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation’s growing needs,” says the USGS’s director, Ned Mamula, makes “a major contribution to U.S. mineral security, at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly.”The challenge, though, is how to get the lithium into the manufacturing supply chain. Even just three decades ago, America was the world’s dominant producer of lithium, Mr. Mamula has said. Yet “lithium production today pales in comparison to its past production levels,” Fortune reports. The nation has “just a handful of lithium projects” to process and refine the element, Fortune adds, and most of these are far from the Appalachians.Indeed, the nation’s only working lithium mine is in Nevada, and America mined but 610 metric tons of the mineral in 2024, per Fortune, and this amounted to 0.3 percent of the world’s output. Efforts are afoot to turn this around. President Trump’s energy department is spending millions of dollars on a lithium project in southwest Arkansas. The undertaking is eyeing an initial yield of some 22,500 metric tons of lithium, Fortune reports.Yet the Appalachian region shows promise of even vaster supplies of the critical mineral. The western region of Maine could feature 900,000 metric tons of lithium, per the USGS, and the Carolinas could contain some 1.4 million metric tons more. The geological survey’s findings, based on analysis from the agency’s scientists, offers a chance to restore America’s lost dominance in this critical area — if the nation can summon the will to act.Doing so would require overcoming hostility from environmental activists who reflexively oppose mining projects despite their economic benefits. Native American tribes, too, have been thwarting projects located near sacred sites in the West. Litigation can lead to years of delays in getting mines open and operational. America’s security and economic needs, though, suggest the urgency of capitalizing on our stores of Appalachian lithium.

The Appalachian Lithium

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