It has become a strategic issue. A few weeks ago, a French group succeeded in proving that lithium in the basement of Bas-Rhin, just a few kilometers from Strasbourg. This light metal, already present in our phones and laptops, has become one of the crucial materials for the energy transition: it will notably be used to build millions of batteries for electric cars. Its delicate exploitation could put an end to, or at least limit, France’s dependence on lithium.
To get your hands on this “new white gold”, you have to knock on the door of Eramet. This group, which specializes in minerals, has recently been working on this new lithium extraction activity. First in Argentina, then in France: for three years, he prospected in Alsace. While France is very dependent on lithium from South America or Russia, Eramet succeeded in proving a few weeks ago that lithium could be extracted from the French subsoil, a few kilometers from Strasbourg.
The result is a sample of lithium carbonate taken from a small box. “To visualize, that’s the carbonate. It looks like a white powder. And that one is battery grade,” that is, it can be used to make electric car batteries, explains Nicolas Verdier, head of strategy for the Eramet group.
To understand how this operation is structured, franceinfo therefore went about sixty kilometers from the Alsatian capital, in front of the machines ofStrasbourg Electricity. A geothermal installation there captures extremely hot water, brines, at a depth of 2,600 meters, to supply energy to a company. It is in this water that lithium is found.
“Scientists are still debating the origin: does it come from granite, does it come from sandstone…? In any case, one thing is certain: today, there is lithium in the Rhine ditch”, Explain Christophe Neumann, director of industrial development for Electricité de Strasbourg. “We found a stable concentration of lithium in the brines.”
“The potential is there”
Christophe Neumannat franceinfo
Eramet therefore connected to the geothermal installation, and somehow filtered the brines, before bringing them to the surface and recovering the lithium. This pilot project, supported by Europe, works and has a limited impact on the environment according to Nicolas Verdier, the head of the group’s strategy department: “On the one hand, it is C02-free, and on the other hand, we have a lot of recycling loops. So for the reuse of water resources for example, it is a very limited process in terms of impact”, he assures us, even if “Like any industrial process, we cannot say that there is zero impact. But it is extremely positive in terms of exploitation”.
Our basement has large quantities of lithium, already exploited for ceramics or to tint glass. But economic interest was limited ten years ago. Today, along with a few other raw materials, lithium has become what is called a “critical mineral”. Europe estimates that we will consume 18 times more within eight years, for the batteries of electric cars which will be built in particular in two mega-factories in France.
The BRGM, the Geological and Mining Research Bureau, has therefore mapped the subsoil. “If we only consider brines, the first estimates show that this resource could constitute between 20 and 30% of the demand in the years to come”, explains Romain Millot, who monitored the pilot site in Alsace for the BRGM. “He must therefore consider other sources of lithium, in particular which would be contained in the subsoil, under our feet, in granites or pegmatites rare metals.”
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These rock reserves of lithium are found in the Massif Central and in Brittany. But it is an extraction process that is more compromising for the environment. Several start-ups or companies are in the running, and Eramet is currently one step ahead. But the extraction capacity near Strasbourg is not sufficient for the company. For his Head of the Strategy Department, Nicolas Verdier, iYou should be able to change the scale: “In this lithium market, we are in global competition”, he explains. “The other producers are Australian, in South America…so we have to be globally competitive as well.”
For this, the Eramet group must reach “a critical size, that is to say a sufficiently large operation. The challenge, in particular, with Électricité de Strabourg, is to check in the coming months that we can increase the size of our production, that we can perhaps aggregate several unit productions to reach a sufficient critical size in France.” To reach this goal, Électricité de Strasbourg hopes to obtain three new concessions.
The week of January 10, former Peugeot CEO Philippe Varin presented a plan to the government to try to secure the supply of critical battery metals. In the meantime, Europe depends for lithium on Chile, the United States and Russia.