Seventh largest lithium deposit in the world found in India

The find in the India of a deposit of 5.9 million tons of lithium, the new ‘owhite riverwould lead the Asian country to have the seventh largest deposit and would give wings to its desire to boost the manufacture of electric vehicles, essential to reach net zero emissions in 2070.

Indian Coal and Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday referred to this discovery, among others, as a push to contribute to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to make India a self-sufficient nation.

The discovery occurred in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir, and was revealed yesterday by the Indian Ministry of Mines, which specified that this was the first time that resources of this mineral were identified in India.

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However, estimates of its quantity and quality are limited, making it necessary to continue exploring the deposit, the government specified.

If his calculations are true, the 5.9 million tons of lithium found would place India as the seventh country with the largest amount of this mineral within its borders, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). which has not yet included the Indian find.

This agency dependent on the US Government reports that, for the moment, 98 million tons of lithium have been identified throughout the planet, with Bolivia (21 million), Argentina (20 million) and the United States (12 million) being the countries with a larger sum of ‘white gold’.

But global reserves, that part that can be exploited, are reduced to 26 million tons worldwide, according to the USGS, a section in which Chile stands out with 9.3 million extractable tons.

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ESSENTIAL FOR NET ZERO

Lithium is a fundamental component of electric vehicle batteries, and its consumption reached 134,000 tons in 2022, an increase of 41% over the previous year, driven by the growing popularity of this type of vehicle in the world.

The Indian government has decreed several measures in the last decade to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, granting incentives to production or reducing its VAT from 12 to 5%, with the aim that 30% of the country’s car park is electric for 2030.

This percentage was only 0.47% last July, when the Ministry of Industry indicated that only 1.3 million vehicles, of the almost 300 million that roll on Indian roads, were electric.

To increase that figure, India closed several agreements in the last year with Australia, Argentina and Chile, three of the main producers of this mineral in the world, to have access to this white gold.

Increasing the proportion of electric vehicles is a key step for India in its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2070, a goal announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during COP26 held in Glasgow (United Kingdom) in 2021. .

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Although this figure does not meet the UN request to reach net zero level of global emissions in 2050.

Despite having more than 1,400 inhabitants, 17% of the world’s population, India was responsible for 7.5% of global emissions in 2021, a record that is expected to continue to increase in the coming years.

Source: EFE