Lithium is a subject I like to consider from time to time, particularly our ability to scale up lithium production for use in batteries. CNet's Green Tech Blog has an interesting post on Simbol Mining's plans to extract lithium from the water flowing through geothermal power plants, which is a pleasing synergy.

If Simbol Mining's plans work out, within a decade it will deliver one-fourth of the world's increasing demand for lithium, used in batteries of hybrid and electric cars without creating waste or pollution.

The start-up eventually aims to mine more than 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate each year from geothermal sources. That's more than the current annual market for the compound; the company expects demands for it to quintuple by 2013. Current mining methods won't provide enough for the future need for lithium-ion batteries, according to Meridian International Research.

Geothermal power plants bring silica, lithium, zinc, manganese, and other valuable materials in a hot stew of brine from 10,000 feet underground to the earth's surface, then inject them back down. "It's equivalent to a glass of lemonade," explained Simbol Mining's president and co-founder, Luka Erceg. He likened the valuable ingredients to lemonade powder mix that dissolves in water but can be recovered when dried out.

Simbol Mining would use off-the-shelf nanofilters, like those in water-treatment systems, to extract minerals and metals from the salty water. Attendees of the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco voted Simbol Mining's technology the most promising at the show on Tuesday. Erceg and the start-up's six geochemists and engineers seek $5 million to get off the ground.

Simbol Mining plans to pay energy companies royalties to access the brines. However, Erceg hopes eventually to extract materials without piggybacking on power providers.

The start-up says its zero waste process doesn't threaten drinking water because brine comes from beneath the level of groundwater.

Simbol Mining has licensed from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a silica-extraction process that could make it easier to recover other materials geothermally. Because silica clogs pipes and filters, removing it clears the way for getting lithium and other ingredients. Mining silica, abundant in the earth's crust, is a goal in its own right. The water-absorbent compound is used in toothpaste, dehumidifiers, and even high-end automotive tires.

Erceg believes his company's singular focus can help it succeed in geothermal mining where an energy company preoccupied with producing power could not. CalEnergy abandoned in 2002 its attempt to extract zinc from aquifers beneath the Salton Sea in Southern California. The power provider said it wasn't able to get zinc at the right "purity." Simbol Mining, based in Houston, Texas, aims to start working with plants in Nevada and southern California.

Most lithium comes from South America, where the cheapest extraction method evaporates salty brine in ponds lined with toxic PVC, Erceg said. And in lithium-rich regions of Chile, mining the material uses two-thirds of the area's drinking water. Erceg described another exploratory method--of piping in ocean water to mine minerals--as inefficient because it requires treating the saline water first.

Simbol Mining's technology, on the other hand, even could make use of the materials otherwise wasted by water filtration and purification systems, he said. And it could grab minerals and metals left behind in tapped-out wells of oil and natural gas, which are filled with water that is commonly trucked out and left to evaporate.

Peter Matthiessen (author of "The Snow Leopard") has an article in The New York Review Of Books on the slow creep forward of big oil on he north slope of Alaska - "Alaska: Big Oil and the Inupiat-Americans".

On August 2 of this year, asserting a symbolic claim to almost half of the Arctic Basin, a Russian submarine with two parliamentarians on board planted a corrosion-resistant titanium flag more than two miles down directly under the North Pole. In its international implications, the flag-planting anticipated a second epochal event when, on August 21, it was officially announced that the Northwest Passage, emerging at last from millennia of ice, was navigable and open to commercial shipping, removing as many as five thousand miles from long world voyages by way of the Panama Canal. A week later, on August 28, came the latest reports of a scarily accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice attributed by most scientists to global warming, a loss that on September 5 would be confirmed as the greatest on record.

All of these circumstances, of course, bore directly on the imminent development of the Arctic sea floor as a lucrative new field for the industrial extraction of the fossil fuels whose carbon emissions were the principal component of the greenhouses gases that are the primary cause of Arctic warming in the first place. As in Iraq, what was driving all this activity, for better or worse, was the region's mineral resources, and as in Iraq, the one clear beneficiary of this earth disaster was the international energy industry, a.k.a. Big Oil. Though present estimates may be inflated and not all of the deposits economically accessible, it is thought that these undersea deposits might suffice to fuel the world for a few years, after which this last clean wilderness will be fatally filthied and contaminated and lost forever to mankind. ...

When the energy industry's twenty-seven-year campaign to drill the refuge coastal plain was forestalled by the Republican loss of Congress in 2006, the Inupiat and the Gwich'in who had most to lose were among those Americans most relieved that Big Oil's unrelenting pursuit of fossil fuels into the heart of America's most pristine and magnificent wildlife sanctuary had at least been slowed. But as it turns out, the industry was less interested in the refuge as a marginal oil and gas field than as a shore base for a vast drilling operation in the oil-bearing strata not far off the coast, with even more ominous implications for the native people.

Faithfully supported by the Bush administration, corporations like Shell Oil were expediting plans to prospect and develop Alaska's continental shelf, littering the Beaufort Sea with drilling ships and wells, supply ships and barges, airplane and helicopter racket, blasted-out harbors, ice-fortified steel piers, and hundreds of miles of pipe—not only an immense increase in contamination and disturbance but an incalculably risky project that threatened to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of the indigenous sea hunters and an entire precious ecosystem already seriously under stress from Arctic warming.

Environmentalists are quite aware that despite society's desperate need for clean energies, carbon fuels will drive the world economy for years to come, and political pressures for ocean drilling may be insurmountable. But the risks of ecological disaster from irreparable accidents such as oil spills in Arctic seas are truly enormous, which is why critics feel so strongly that the oil industry's ambitions are premature at best and at worst reckless. In addition to severe operating and maintenance difficulties in fierce Arctic conditions—never satisfactorily tamed even on land—any offshore drilling operation would have to deal with freezing ocean storms and shifting ice and four bitter months of winter darkness.

When one considers the more than four thousand spills--over one a day--recorded by the oil industry in its land operations in the last decade, and keeping in mind that offshore hazards are far greater, the inevitable accidents seem certain to accumulate into an ongoing and permanent calamity. A black effluvia of crude petroleum and drilling mud and chemical pollutants would spread inshore, suffocating plankton and invertebrates and bottom-dwelling fish and poisoning great stretches of Arctic coast with a viscous excrescence. The same toxic mixture will blacken the drifting ice, fouling the pristine habitat of Arctic birds, the Pacific walrus, four species of seals, and the beleaguered polar bear, while contaminating the migratory corridors of the white beluga and endangered bowhead whales—all this defilement made much worse by the grim fact that no technology has ever been developed for cleaning up spilled oil in icy waters. Even in spills in temperate waters, such as the Exxon Valdez disaster, only an average of less than 15 percent is ever removed.

While the engines of the legacy fossil fuel industry grind grimly onwards in the far north, there are some brighter signs elsewhere in Alaska - Popular Mechanics has a report on a low temperature geothermal power development near Fairbanks - "Geothermal Power in Alaska Holds Hidden Model for Clean Energy".

The whine of the power plant sounds like a jet engine as refrigerant blasts through the turbine at 1000 mph. Though the equipment is compact, the din fills the vast hangar, and mechanical engineer Gwen Holdmann has to shout to be heard: “What you see here is very Alaskan. It’s not painted. It’s not pretty. But it’s real.” I place my hand on the steel door capping the plant’s evaporator; it’s warm to the touch, filled with Alaska’s most promising new energy source—plain water.

It’s midnight at Chena Hot Springs Resort, 56 miles northeast of Fairbanks, and outside, the July sun has only just slipped below the horizon. Holdmann’s blond hair escapes a loose ponytail as she climbs onto a metal walkway to point out the heat exchanger. A black-eared husky named Amberlynn watches her every move from below. “The cool thing about this ... ,” she begins, as she does most sentences, and it occurs to me that it’s appropriate every time: This is cool. It is Alaska’s first geothermal plant, and it’s producing electricity from lower temperature water than any plant in the world.

Heat stored beneath the Earth’s surface holds 50,000 times the energy of all the oil and gas in the world combined. If it could be harnessed, it would be an ideal source of base-load power: Geothermal is cleaner than fossil fuels, and more reliable than alternative sources like tidal, wind, wave and solar. Today, geothermal plants in the United States generate nearly 3000 megawatts of electricity—enough to power South Dakota. Almost all of it comes from reservoirs that are at least 300 F.

The water rising through a fracture in the granite pluton under Chena is only 165 F. Experts didn’t think it was hot enough to produce serious power. But with the nearest electrical grid 32 miles away and generators burning through $1000 worth of diesel fuel daily, Chena had the incentive to prove the experts wrong. Now, its tepid water not only generates electricity, it heats the resort’s buildings, maintains a greenhouse and keeps an ice museum frozen year-round. There are thousands of such low- to moderate-temperature geothermal systems scattered throughout Alaska and the rest of the country. Power plants like the one at Chena could tap them to produce tens of thousands of megawatts of electricity.

“I think we have an opportunity here in Alaska to be leaders in moving toward a more renewable energy economy,” Holdmann says, her voice an equal mix of practical and impassioned. “The cost of power can be exorbitant in our villages—as high as a dollar a kilowatt-hour. It’s a real bummer for a lot of these communities, but it can also be a real motivating factor.” She pauses at the door of the hangar. “We’re an oil-producing state and we’re worried about our energy costs. It’s just a matter of time before the rest of the country catches up to where we are.” ...

The Seattle Times has an article on prospects for geothermal power in Washington state. The "underground windmills" moniker isn't one I've ever heard applied to geothermal energy before, but it is encouraging to see interest in this forgotten source of clean power springing up everywhere.

The United States is frequently embarrassed over its energy policy. The most recent occurrence was in the area of geothermal energy. Last fall, the Senate's Energy and Natural Resource Committee sat through one of the best presentations on our nation's geothermal energy potential. It was delivered by the president of Iceland.

He spoke to the expansion of geothermal energy in the Western United States. That expansion is coming to Washington state. Our location on the edge of a regional "hot zone," along with the accelerating interest in all forms of renewable energy, means that developers soon will be knocking at our doors.

Underground windmills, heat mining and enhanced geothermal systems are all names and references for geothermal energy. Instead of digging or drilling for gas or coal to burn and generate steam in order to turn a turbine, you tap the Earth's natural heat to create energy. It works. And, it works today.

Power engineers consider it a mature technology — a demonstrated one — and most of the technology, though 20 years old, is available today off the shelf. Utilities show keen interest in it because it is steady, not intermittent like wind and solar. However, like those two energy sources, geothermal is renewable. It has high initial costs, roughly two-thirds coming from drilling. But, once built, it has no fuel costs.

The hot zone of California, Nevada (the Saudi Arabia of geothermal), Idaho and Oregon could produce tens of thousands of megawatts along the spine of the Sierra Nevadas and Cascades. Washington state sits on the edge of this hot zone. The 34 thermal hot springs throughout the state are just the surface of our potential.

Yet, Washington state has zero megawatts of geothermal. "It also has zero planned, proposed or within the plant-approval process, even though we have excellent potential," laments Susan Petty, one of the world's leading geothermal reservoir engineers. Petty, who is based in Seattle, points out there is no current hard data on the exact nature of the state's geothermal resources. But, working off 25-year-old geologic studies, it's reasonable to say we are among the top-10 states. ...

Yet, we must not mislead ourselves into thinking geothermal is a clean and limitless energy (we did that with nuclear power in the 1950s). There are impacts. Water issues are the biggest concern, especially if developers work on the cheap and do not have the proper recovery technology. Carbon dioxide is produced, but the impacts are one-fifteenth to one-thirtieth those of natural gas, the cleanest of the abundant fuel sources currently in our portfolio.

If geothermal is done correctly and respectfully — no development on sacred sites or in wilderness areas and national parks — we can bring hundreds of megawatts online in Washington state. The discussion needs to begin now with the tribes, utilities, environmentalists and state agencies.

It is time for Washington state to recognize the great potential for what is being called "the forgotten renewable." The underground windmills are waiting.

Kurt Kleiner at Nature has a good summary article on geothermal industry - "Promise Boiling Over" (focusing on Iceland, the US and Australia rather than trying to survey the whole planet like I did in "Geothermia Revisted").

Iceland is famously rich in geothermal energy. The country sits on a geological hot spot that provides enough power to generate one-quarter of its electricity and heat 90% of its homes.

Now, the Icelandic bank Glitnir has decided that the time is ripe to take advantage of geothermal opportunities elsewhere. In September, the bank opened an office in New York to pursue what it boldly predicts will be $40 billion worth of geothermal investment in the United States over the next 20 or so years.

Glitnir's move is one of a growing number of signs that geothermal energy is ready to become a more significant player in world energy production. "If you're a utility, your first choice of renewable energy is geothermal," says Thomas King, managing director of the US Renewables Group investment fund in New York. "It's the cream of the crop."

King's bullishness reflects a growing belief among energy analysts that although the technology hasn't received as much attention as wave or solar power, geothermal companies have outstanding long-term potential. Robert Wilder, chief executive of Californian clean-energy consultancy WilderShares, points to Ormat Technologies, a maker of geothermal plants based in Reno, Nevada, as a sign of the trend: its share price has risen from about $16 a share in April 2005 to $50 this week. Nevertheless, with just 9 gigawatts or so of installed capacity, geothermal energy accounts for only about 0.2% of all electricity produced around the world. In theory, geothermal heat can be found anywhere in the world if you dig deep enough. But in practice, it has only been worth harnessing in regions where water is found in combination with hot, porous rock close to the surface.

For instance, just north of San Francisco, a geothermal field called The Geysers generates 760 megawatts of electric power. The plants there take advantage of a large, naturally occurring underground steam reservoir that can be tapped by drilling relatively shallow wells.

The Geysers are examples of 'dry-steam' power plants: the steam that comes out of the reservoir contains little or no liquid water, and can therefore be routed directly to a turbine to create electricity. However, most plants are of the 'flash-steam' variety. These plants use water that has been heated to about 180 °C, but remains liquid because it is highly pressurized underground. The water is then pumped to the surface. Because the pressure there is lower, most of the water 'flashes' into steam, which can be used to operate a turbine. ...

Even in favourable geological locations, geothermal power has a high capital cost, mainly because it costs a lot to dig the wells. Balancing that are its low fuel costs. Overall, conventional geothermal plants in the United States deliver electricity for between 5 cents and 8 cents per kilowatt-hour: not much more than the average of 4 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity from a coal-fired power plant.

In Australia, a firm called Geodynamics is trying to develop a new technique that can take advantage of geothermal energy in the absence of a ready-formed reservoir of water. "We believe that our area is probably the best location in the world to make this approach economically viable," says Doone Wyborn, a founder and executive director of Geodynamics in Queensland. The firm plans to use the Cooper Basin, a geological feature of the Australian interior, in which rocks with a temperature of about 270 °C are available quite close to the surface.

Geodynamics aims to drill two wells to a depth of 4.3 kilometres, and to fracture the hot granite in the rocks by pumping down cold water. Once the rock is permeable enough, the system will act as a heat exchanger — water will be pumped down one well, migrate through the rock to the other well, from which it will be extracted and used to generate electricity.

The company plans to have a 50-megawatt power plant in operation by 2010. It estimates the potential capacity of the Cooper Basin at 10,000 megawatts of power, which could be realized by drilling hundreds of wells.

The Geodynamics project is an example of a technology called 'hot-dry-rock' or 'hot-fractured-rock' geothermal. A report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge published in January concluded that this type of 'enhanced' geothermal power generation could greatly enhance our ability to tap geothermal energy. "I feel it's been an ignored option," says Jefferson Tester, the chemical engineer at MIT who headed the panel that wrote the report, The Future of Geothermal Energy. "But I'm very optimistic about the possibility if a lot of things come into place."

Eventually, geothermal energy could be available almost everywhere, the report contends. Deep drilling from any location will eventually hit hot rock. In the United States alone, the report says, the amount of energy available by drilling up to 10 kilometres below the surface is a stunning 13 yottajoules (1024 joules), or 130,000 times the annual energy consumption of the entire country.

Only a fraction of that is economical to exploit. Even so, the report concluded, in the United States alone, enhanced geothermal electrical capacity could reach 100 gigawatts in the next 50 years — enough to fill about 10% of the country's electricity needs.

An important benefit of such systems is their flexibility, Tester says. They could prove to be economical from a very large scale, all the way down to a relatively small, 1-megawatt plant that also provides direct heating to buildings. As in Iceland, this combined heat-and-power approach greatly enhances the economics of geothermal power. But it requires building communities that can make use of the heat. ...

Tester says that geothermal power will make economic sense even without special incentives or restrictions on carbon emissions. As governments move to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions, geothermal power is set to look even better.

King adds that the standards for renewable energy being set by individual states have kicked off a flurry of interest in geothermal power. "It's clean, it's close to zero emissions, and it's baseload power that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And a well-managed reservoir can keep going practically forever," he says.