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XThe Lithium Race Takes Shape in the Salton Sea
David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
Located roughly a hundred miles east of San Diego, the Salton Sea is California’s largest landlocked body of water, for now.
Measuring 5 miles across and 35 miles long in its current form, the lake was created by diverting water from the Colorado River into the region for agricultural purposes. Once a vacation destination renowned for its wildlife and wetlands, a series of environmental mishaps and mismanagement have left the lake toxically salty, shrinking and often malodorous. Conditions have gotten so bad that Palm Springs Life Magazine called the region’s transformation “the biggest environmental disaster in California history” in March of 2020.
But against this unlikely backdrop, new life—or at least new industry—is scrambling to set up shop in the region. The Salton Sea, it turns out, is rich with lithium, an element that has taken center stage in the world’s transition to clean energy and its ever-growing demand for batteries. From smartphones to electric vehicles, there’s a pretty good chance that the last battery you used had lithium ions inside. Prices for the metal reached an all time high in September, and futures are up more than 400% since the start of 2021. With Biden’s new economic policy outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act, there are strong financial incentives to move battery production back to North America.
If that’s going to happen the Salton Sea could very well become the lithium capital of North America, or to paraphrase Governor Gavin Newsom, the region could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” and the players are already starting to assemble.
Currently, there are three companies attempting to set up plants in the Salton Sea for direct lithium extraction: EnergySource Minerals, Controlled Thermal Resources and BHE Renewables, a branch of Berkshire Hathaway. All three companies have similar business strategies from a high level, all of which involve geothermal power plants. These plants, which are common in many parts of the world, draw hot, salty water from deep in the ground to create steam which drives a turbine to produce electricity. What makes the Salton Sea so special is that its geothermal brines just happen to contain lithium.
In a 2017 study, researchers from the U.S. DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy analyzed more than 2,000 samples of geothermal fluid from U.S. sources and found that only 1% had significant lithium concentration. This rare confluence of geothermal activity and lithium presence provides an opportunity for companies to generate electricity and mine lithium simultaneously.
Beyond their marriage of geothermal energy and lithium extraction, the three companies begin to diverge.
According to former dot.LA engagement editor Luis Gomez — whose newsletter Lithium Valle, is essential reading on this topic — EnergySource seems to be out in front early.
“They claim to have the technology that’s patented, they claim to have done the research, they claim to have the funding, and they claim they're ready to go and start production,” says Gomez. “They are kind of considered the canary in the coal mine.”
According to a report from the United States Department of Energy, EnergySource plans to eventually scale production up to over 20,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide per year using its proprietary Integrated Lithium Adsorption Desorption technology.
Construction on the plant was slated to start earlier this year, but has been delayed. EnergySource has said publicly that lithium production might begin in the second quarter of 2024, but it’s unclear whether this date will also be pushed back. The company has a long history of operating in the region, having run the John L. Featherstone geothermal plant since 2012. The new venture into lithium would leverage that same plant, but without more details about how their proprietary technology works, there’s not much to do but wait and see.
One potential problem facing all three lithium extraction companies is that the Salton Sea geothermal brines are not the same as the brines in evaporation ponds similar to those in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, where more than half of the world’s lithium is produced. Specifically, the deep geothermal brines in the Salton Sea contain more silica and transition elements, which may complicate the chemistry of purifying the lithium. Still, many researchers are extremely bullish on the prospect of tapping into these reserves. Alex Grant, The Principal at Jade Cove, a research organization focusing on direct lithium extraction technologies, says that much of the skepticism surrounding the technology can be attributed to competing financial interests that are trying to squash the nascent tech’s potential in favor of an established method.
Lithium Mines in the Atacama Salt Flats, Chile from an altitude of 15km via Google Earth. The facility is about 10km wide.
Google Earth
For its part, BHE Renewables, operating as CalEnergy, runs a fleet of 10 geothermal plants in the Imperial Valley. The company had previously announced its intent to set up a direct lithium extraction demonstration plant sometime before the end of 2022 to assess the viability of lithium extraction. If that pilot program goes well, the company could build a commercial-scale facility as early as 2026 with a projected annual capacity of 90,000 metric tons of lithium.
Obviously, having the backing of Berkshire Hathaway comes with advantages and capital. Add into the equation another $15 million in DoE grant money obtained last winter, and BHE appears to be well positioned as a major player in the long term.
Finally, there’s Controlled Thermal Resources. As the only company not already operating a geothermal business in the region, CTR is something of an outsider and dark horse. By 2024, the company hopes to build both a geothermal energy plant and a direct lithium extraction plant to operate in parallel, projecting a capacity to extract 300,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent annually by 2030. As dot.LA previously reported, Controlled Thermal Resources has partnered with Statevolt, a company that intends to build a $4 billion gigafactory nearby that will run on power from CTR’s geothermal plant and make batteries from the lithium it extracts. It’s a beautiful closed-loop business model. But again, all of this relies on the direct lithium extraction technology, and details are scant.
According to Gomez, despite the typically cut-throat nature of the energy industry, the relationship between the three upstarts in the Salton Sea is often surprisingly cooperative at the moment.
“They want the others to succeed because it kind of gives them the confidence that their technology is also eventually going to succeed,” he says. “It gives confidence to investors.”
Which is all to say, there may well be space for all three companies if the technology is as solid as they claim. If that’s the case, the Salton Sea and its surrounding region may have yet another miraculous transformation up its sleeve.
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David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
A Breakdown of the Data TikTok Collects on American Users
09:00 AM | July 19, 2022
TikTok has come under renewed scrutiny over how it handles U.S. data, with some lawmakers calling for an investigation into the Culver City-based company.
What kind of data does TikTok collect? And should we worry about a potential national security threat when Americans’ data is accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company?
To answer these questions, dot.LA reviewed TikTok’s privacy policy and interviewed Thomas Germain, a technology writer for Consumer Reports who specializes in privacy issues.
What Data TikTok Collects
Like other social media giants, TikTok gobbles up a lot of user information. To start, TikTok receives names, ages, phone numbers and emails when people sign up for the service. The app also knows users’ approximate locations and mobile device identifiers, such as IP addresses.
Germain told dot.LA the most valuable info may come from the way users interact with the video sharing app. TikTok is quite good at figuring out peoples’ interests based on the videos or accounts they’ve previously liked or followed. Those insights are useful for advertisers and—potentially—for spreading political messages, Germain noted.
“This vast trove of data that every social media company has—on what people are interested in, what makes them upset, what makes them happy—is incredibly valuable,” he said.
The company’s privacy policy permits TikTok to collect a wide range of additional data, from consumers’ keystroke patterns to biometric info. However, the company says it doesn’t necessarily take in or store all of this. For example, keystroke patterns may be used solely for anti-fraud and spam purposes, according to TikTok. Regarding biometrics, TikTok said editing features may automatically locate a person’s face to apply an effect, but those features do not uniquely identify individuals.
Why U.S. government officials are concerned
TikTok is owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance and China is an economic and foreign policy rival to the U.S. government. With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exerting considerable power over the nation’s tech companies, U.S. lawmakers and administration officials contend that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a national security risk.
“The CCP has a track record longer than a CVS receipt of conducting business & industrial espionage as well as other actions contrary to U.S. national security, which is what makes it so troubling that [ByteDance] personnel in Beijing are accessing this sensitive and personnel data,” Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr recently said.
TikTok says it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, nor would it do so if asked. Additionally, the company recently announced that all of U.S. user traffic is now routed to American software giant Oracle’s servers.
“The TikTok app is not unique in the amount of information it collects, compared to other mobile apps,” the company said.
TikTok is hardly the only company swallowing a lot of data on Americans, from car makers to smart doorbell firms. Consumers’ credit card purchases, contact lists and recent GPS locations are hawked by hundreds, if not thousands, of companies in the so-called data broker industry, Germain noted.
“If the Chinese government wanted it, they could just go out and buy it because it's for sale,” he said. “...I think people, when they're worried about TikTok doing something, they should ask themselves whether they should be worried about American companies doing the same thing.”
Still, Germain said there’s some genuine cause for concern, since China’s government has previously pushed the country’s companies to do its bidding. But to Germain, that concern has less to do with China knowing your phone number and more to do with propaganda.
“The Chinese government could instruct Tiktok to manipulate its algorithm to show people content that promotes the goals of the Chinese government,” Germain said. “That could totally happen and that is something that is of concern. But that does start to move away from questions of data privacy.”
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Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Evan Xie
From mass layoffs to the rocky economic climate, tech workers have had a rough few months. TikTok hasn’t been immune to these issues. In July, the company laid off about 100 employees across the globe, and then cut at least 20 advertising employees one month later. In January, TikTok cut a handful of people from its HR department over the team’s “limited practical value” to the company.
But TikTok also faces a problem different from any of its competitors—the US government is assessing whether or not its platform should be banned from the country. Leaving TikTok’s current 32,000 headcount in jeopardy of mass layoffs.
Though the company’s Chinese ownership is at the root of its political dispute, TikTok’s US headquarters are in Culver City. First opened in January 2020 with 400 employees, the location brought employees back to the office twice a week in July 2022. TikTok has not released information about how many employees work out of LA, but its Mountain View office houses roughly 1,000 employees. LinkedIn lists around 1,000 LA-based employees, but that number is slightly muddled by influencers listing TikTok as their employer. Offices in New York City, Austin and Nashville round out its US footprint.
Of course, TikTok could still be bought out by another company. But it's unclear what company would pay TikTok’s fee, which ranges from $40 billion to $100 billion. Experts have noted that major tech companies like Google and Meta already run their own social media platforms, so buying a competitor would open them up to antitrust scrutiny.
Others point to Microsoft and Oracle as potential buyers. But both companies have undergone recent layoffs this year, which brings into question how many TikTok employees would be kept aboard. Microsoft has also funneled $10 billion into OpenAI, which means the company might not be interested in diverting funds to a social media platform. Whoever the new owner is, the company could potentially scrap TikTok’s Culver City office, leaving a gaping hole in LA’s tech scene.
Still, any TikTok employee who survives a potential sale may benefit from a change in ownership. Even before the company was under political fire, TikTok faced scrutiny for cultural differences between its Chinese owner and its US offices. Last year, multiple employees across the country spoke out about being pressured to adhere to China’s “996 policy,” which has employees work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Its content moderates have revealed taxing work environments that exposed them to graphic content. And even high-level executives have struggled as TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, maintained decision-making authority.
If Congress does vote to ban TikTok, that could leave thousands of employees across the country in search of new jobs. And it couldn’t come at a more difficult time. Meta, Snapchat and Twitch, among other social media companies, have all had mass layoffs in the past few months. Which means there’s already a pool of unemployed tech workers in search of work, a number of whom have decidedly turned to other fields.
It’s unclear what the long-term timeline of the TikTok ban looks like and when the government’s ultimate decision will hit employees. But LA’s tech scene might need to brace itself for a mass wave of employees seeking a new home. And this time, they won’t have TikTok to document their employment woes.
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
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