![]() While the sum of money was relatively small for the mining world and the Salton Sea grant was for a pilot project, the tale of Berkshire’s tangle with Washington shows how Biden’s plan to shift the economy away from fossil fuels faces some significant technical and business challenges. The withdrawal of the grant has not been previously reported. Two weeks later, though, the Energy Department rescinded the grant, according to emails and documents obtained by Reuters, after Berkshire requested what the Energy Department called a “material change” to its lithium project. “We’re going to set America up to lead the world by building a clean energy economy and a clean energy future,” Biden said at the February event, which was billed as a critical minerals roundtable.Īlicia Knapp, chief executive of Berkshire’s BHE Renewables division, told Biden that Berkshire was “working to secure the most abundant source of lithium in the United States using the world’s most environmentally friendly technology.” Department of Energy had chosen Berkshire the day Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 for a $14.9 million grant to study how Salton Sea-region lithium could be used to make lithium hydroxide, a specialized type of the metal that produces more efficient and longer-lasting EV batteries. The project aimed to help usher in a new way of producing lithium – a key constituent of EV batteries – in the United States while avoiding the controversies that come with building mines that are often unpopular with local communities. ![]() (Reuters) – In a February meeting with mining executives, President Joe Biden laid out an aggressive goal for the United States to produce more of its own minerals for the electric vehicle revolution in ways that respected the environment.Ī “big part” of those efforts, the president said, was Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s plan to filter lithium from superhot geothermal brines swirling beneath California’s Salton Sea, something that had never been done before.
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