Lithium is the lightest metal, so soft that you can cut it with a knife. Its structure gives it the ability to store large amounts of energy, making it ideal for manufacturing batteries. As the world moves to create a lower-carbon economy, it is not an overstatement to say that the future of energy may hinge on lithium.
To learn more about lithium, how it is produced, and its role in electrification and the shift to renewable energy sources, Brown Advisory's Erika Pagel sits down with Eric Norris, President of Energy Storage at Albemarle—the largest producer of lithium in the world.
Episode Introduction
Lithium. We've been hearing a lot about this mineral as a linchpin for decarbonizing our economy. It's the world's lightest metal, soft enough to cut with a knife. Its superpower is that it can store large amounts of energy, making it ideal for manufacturing batteries. And it's particularly ideal for electric car batteries, where its ability to create lighter-weight, more powerful batteries is key to making electric vehicles appealing to consumers. But before it gets to a battery and into an electric vehicle, lithium has to be extracted from either rocks or salt water, which is not an easy process. Our guide to where and how we get access to this increasingly important mineral is Eric Norris, the president of Albemarle's Energy Storage business.
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