Damage inevitable, maybe catastrophic: Oxford professor about the Jadar project

The Rio Tinto company continues its plans for lithium mining in the Jadar Valley, which poses an environmental catastrophe threat to Serbia. Environmental damage is an absolute inevitability, emphasizes Professor Goodale, noting that lithium extraction is a complex process and that consequences of mining cannot be avoided.

He says Bolivia had to deal with many of the same questions that Serbia is dealing with: “Should we begin mining lithium? If we do, what would the consequences be? How does our lithium project relate to the green energy transition, the global pressures? What are the different actors involved in the lithium project…Just in 2023 we finished our four-year project, this year I’m writing a book about lithium based on that research,” said Professor Goodale.

He added that one thing about lithium is that is requires interdisciplinary expertise.

“One person cannot understand all of the aspects involved. There are geological questions, issues of chemical engineering, there are political questions, economic questions, you have to understand political science…I myself was responsible in a way for the cultural, political, economic, social dimensions of the project. And then we had another researcher on the project who spent time in the communities around this area where the lithium was being mined,” Goodale told Radar.

Why lithium?

“Lithium is an alkaline metal, it is very light. In fact, it is the lightest metal in the universe. The thing about lithium that you might ask is - why lithium why not another element or another mineral? Basically it has to come down to the fact that lithium, when it’s used in batteries, has certain characteristics which make it ideal for producing and storing energy. It is capable of producing a tremendous amount of energy density, the amount of energy per mass. It is used in cell phones, and before electric vehicles, which is in fact what everybody is talking about, lithium was first used in consumer electronics,” explains the professor.

We are in the midst of a global energy transition, away from oil and gas, toward so-called clean or sustainable forms of energy, he adds.

“In that transition, lithium-ion batteries are playing a central role…Because they are used in transportation, and transportation produces around 20 percent of all the carbon emissions, lithium-ion batteries play the most important role in the so-called green energy transition. Lithium for lithium-ion batteries is going to be the technology for the next 15, 20, 30 years,” he said.

Market for lithium has exploded

The professor says that, in South America, lithium is not mined from rock but brine, a highly salty liquid that has elements, which is completely different from what is planned to be done in the Jadar valley.

“The other way that lithium is mined is through rocks, so this rock, this element jadarite, which was discovered only I guess 20 years ago by Rio Tinto exploration geologists, it contains different kinds of things in this ore – one is boron, and the other one is lithium. They have known about this for 20 years, but the market in lithium was nowhere near what it is today. So there was a market for lithium in 2004, but it wasn’t really electric vehicles. It was going to be at a certain point consumer electronics, and they used lithium to treat mental illness, bipolar disorder, and in nuclear weapons. But the market for lithium for electronic vehicles and for batteries for electronic vehicles is very new,” said Goodale.

The market for global lithium exploded over the last four or five years, he added.

“When I started my project in 2019 in Bolivia, the price of lithium carbonate was around 7,000 US dollars per ton. When I ended it in 2023 it hovered between 50 and 60 thousand. The demand for lithium has caused the market, the economics of lithium to explode. So of course, the great ‘rush for lithium’ has begun. There’s lithium in Portugal, maybe in Germany, and, of course, this apparently huge deposit in northwestern Serbia, which could be the biggest deposit in Europe,” explained the professor.

Mining in zone of human habitation unusual

Goodale reflects on the environmental consequences of lithium mining.

“One of the things I have seen and read about the Jadar, about this part of Serbia, and what’s going to make this so unusual, even in the world, is the fact that it’s going to be in the zone of agriculture, in a zone where people live. It’s very much unlike the lithium mines in Western Australia, which still produce the most lithium in the world, which is mostly desert. The difference in Western Australia is that this is not a zone of agriculture, it’s not a zone of intense human habitation, with life giving rivers that people depend on for drinking water,” the professor said.

Most chemically-intensive interventions

Goodale told Radar that getting lithium requires some of the most chemically-intensive interventions one can imagine.

“Maybe millions of gallons of chemicals are used in order to get that element,” he said, adding that tons of chemical waste are produced in the process.

Even though Bolivia is still not producing lithium at an industrial level, they are in the process of moving to an industrial project, in 2017 it launched its state lithium company that partners with foreign companies.

“This is very different than extending, just basically giving a license to a foreign company for a fee and for future taxes and royalties, but the profits from what is taken go to a different country. What they are doing with the lithium project in Bolivia is what they did with the gas project – the government nationalized the gas industry in 2006. What the first indigenous President Evo Morales was elected, the first thing he did in the spring of 2006 was to nationalize the gas and oil industry. Over the next 12 or 13 years, Bolivia did generate billions of dollars in revenue and did manage to redistribute must of that in terms of social benefits. So they created new grants for pregnant women and students and so on…Obviously, Serbia is a very different case… The vast majority of the profits from that mine is going to go to the Anglo-Australian company of Rio Tinto, it’s not going to go to the Serbian people,” stressed Goodale.

Since the Rio Tinto company has two headquarters - in London and in Melbourne, this means that the money won’t even end up in the European Union (EU), he said.

“You have the initial investment of 2.2 billion that is being paid for the license, the rights, and then you have somewhere, many years down the line small amounts. What is the Serbian Government doing with the initial amount? Are they using that to build infrastructure, to improve roads and schools and other kinds of things? That would be the important question,” emphasized the professor.

Europe looking for internal sources of lithium

Goodale said the process of EU enlargement is obviously stalled.

“Serbia is definitely a country that is part of the EU process, and the EU has been desperate for the last at least five years to look for internal sources of lithium inside of Europe. There is Germany, but the deposit, from what I understand, is going to be much larger in Serbia. So I can imagine that the European Union is very interested in Serbia beginning lithium production, whether it happens through a Serbian company, or through a private company, it doesn’t matter, because this could be a way of again bringing Serbia closer to the European Union, which has, especially Germany, large auto-manufacturers,” said the professor.

Auto industry and import of batteries from China

After 2020 where was something called the European Green Deal, which was a major policy initiative announced by the European Commission, that pledged one trillion euros to ensure from 2020 to 2050 that Europe would be the first carbon-neutral continent in the world, explained the professor.

“All of the major European auto manufacturers announced that they were transforming their production lines from fuel to electric, so they have to buy all of their lithium-ion batteries from China, Japan and South Korea. And the European Union and the auto companies inside of the different countries are most concerned about the fact that China dominates the global lithium-ion battery market,” he said.

Damage an absolute inevitability

Professor Mark Goodale said the mining process is extremely chemically-intensive.

“Rio Tinto and other big mining companies have dozens and hundreds of projects all around the world. I think what you want to do is look at the environmental record of a company that is proposing a new mining project, see what is happening. Even with the best of intention, the environmental damage is an inevitability, is it an absolute inevitability. I think that in this case, the bottom line would be is that this is going to be a very unique project, in the center of an agricultural region, put in place by a company that has no lithium mines in the world. Rio Tinto is the second largest mineral company in the world, but not in lithium, this will be their first major lithium project. There are a lot of unanswered question here. But I think a question which we can already answer is: will there be major irreversible environmental damage, and I think the answer is absolutely yes for this project,” he stressed.

People of Jadar asked to make sacrifices for the benefit of Europe, world

He added that the people of Jadar are asked to make sacrifices for the benefit of Europe and of the world.

“What the people of Jadar are being asked to do is to in a way sacrifice their agricultural livelihoods and the potential ecosystem for the benefit of Europe and for the benefit of the world. But under the best of circumstances, there is going to be environmental damage, absolutely, it could be catastrophic, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was catastrophic, so it could destroy the livelihoods of the people living in the area,” stressed professor mark Goodale.