At 310m (1,020ft) high, the tallest building in London, The Shard, could be comfortably buried inside. In 2019 the mine's owners Talison Lithium received permission to double the site's size in an A$1.9bn ($1.2bn/£1.1bn) expansion that, when complete, will cover an area 2.6km (1.6 miles) long, 1km (0.6 miles) wide and 455m (1,490ft) deep. In 2021, the lithium mined at Greenbushes alone accounted for more than a fifth of global production – and it is expected to grow. The environmental case for buying a coal mine.Lithium batteries' big unanswered question.What would happen if the world stopped mining?.Which begs the question, as the world reaches for this metal in an attempt to help with decarbonisation – how sustainable is lithium mining? This has sparked claims of a new lithium-rush and Australia has positioned itself to be the world's go-to supplier. By 2040 the International Energy Agency expects demand for lithium to grow more than 40 times current levels if the world is to meet its Paris Agreement goals. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, spodumene sold for $4,994 (£4,300) a tonne in October 2022, up from $415 (£360) in January 2021. In less than two years, prices for Australian spodumene – a lithium-rich raw material that can be refined for use in laptop, phone and EV batteries – has grown more than tenfold. Today the Cornwall tin pit is closed for business, and Greenbushes has become the largest lithium mine in the world. It wasn't until decades later when the existential risk posed by climate change became widely understood, and governments began talking about replacing the estimated 1.45 billion petrol cars worldwide with electric vehicles, that the reserves at Greenbushes began to be seen in a very different light. Lithium, a soft, silvery-white reactive alkali metal, was considered more of a geological oddity.Ī small-scale mining operation began in 1983, extracting lithium for use in niche industrial operations like glass making, steel, castings, ceramics, lubricants and metal alloys. In 1980, another metal was found at Greenbushes which, at the time, didn't give the mine owners much pause for thought. When the surface-metal was scoured from the landscape, methods changed eventually giving way to open-cut mining in the host pegmatite vein – an igneous rock with a coarse texture similar to granite. At roughly 265m (870ft) deep, the terraced wall of the pit represents a century's worth of work that began in 1888 when a pound of tin was lifted out of a nearby creek. This is the site of an old tin mine known as the Cornwall Pit. Roughly a three-hour drive south of Perth, Western Australia, off the South Western Highway and behind the historic mining town of Greenbushes, the land beyond the town's primary school falls away to reveal a deep, grey scar.
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