An enormous lithium mine in the Nevada desert was granted final government approval Thursday in a project the miner predicts will quadruple US production of a mineral critical to the renewable energy revolution. Operations at Rhyolite Ridge will produce enough lithium to supply the batteries for more than 370,000 electric vehicles every year, Australian operator Ioneer said. The plant will create 500 construction jobs over the next few years and 350 jobs during its decades of extraction, the company said.
"There are few deposits in the world as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge," said Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway, heralding the permit issued Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management. The company's managing director, Bernard Rowe, said construction would begin next year. "This permit gives us a license to commence construction in 2025 and begin our work in creating hundreds of good-paying rural jobs, generating millions in tax revenue for Esmeralda County, and bolstering the domestic production of critical minerals," he said.
The news comes less than two weeks before Americans go to the polls to elect a new president, and will be welcomed in Nevada, where unemployment is well above the national average. The administration of President Joe Biden has made the green transition a key plank of its economic policy, investing heavily in technologies aimed at slashing the pollution that is causing the climate to change. Scientists say electric vehicles are a vital link in that ch.