Floodlights illuminate steam rising from a CalEnergy geothermal plant along the edge of the Salton Sea near Calipatria in Imperial County on March 19, 2024. CalEnergy is one of three companies with plans to retrofit their geothermal facilities to begin extracting lithium in the region.
“The conditions are different,” said Christelle Khalaf, an economist and the associate director of the Government Finance Research Center at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “There's a lot more room, from my perspective, for growth.”Calipatria City Councilmember Michael Luellen sits for a portrait at city hall in Calipatria in Imperial County on April 26, 2024. Luellen has big dreams that the arrival of the lithium industry could transform the working-class farm town.
But changing that is a priority for both California and the Biden administration as the climate crisis continues to accelerate.ongoing efforts to build out battery storage and replace fossil fuel-dependent cars with electric vehicles will be crucial to slowing the destruction brought on by climate change., the same brine that geothermal plants have been tapping into for decades. U.S. Department of Energy researchers predict there could be enough lithium there to extract 3.
But in Imperial County, the three main energy companies hoping to develop lithium facilities plan to use a newer method called “direct lithium extraction.” The goal there is to pump geothermal brine out of the ground, filter the dissolved lithium out of it, then pump it back into the earth. The plants will also produce geothermal power in the process.
“It's the easiest for regulators, for local elected officials to be able to do something about it,” she said. “They can easily say, ‘let's make sure that labor is local.’”Imperial Valley College in El Centro is pictured in Imperial County on May 7, 2024. The school has started up new training programs for residents hoping to join the lithium industry.
“But genuinely, I do believe that our community will grow – that the services we offer will expand,” Luellen said. “Within 10, 20, 30, 40 years, I truly believe Calipat will be extremely different.”A park in Calipatria is pictured in Imperial County on May 7, 2024. A massive workforce will be needed to process the metal into millions of batteries and electric cars. That number of workers will far outweigh the jobs related to pulling the mineral out of the ground.