Lithium & Politics Clash In Serbia - CleanTechnica
Steve Hanley
9–11 minutes
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If the future of clean energy depends on lots of batteries to power electric vehicles and store electricity, the world will need lots of lithium. China realized that in the early part of this century and started securing lithium supplies all around the world. That is now having political repercussions, as other nations do not want to be beholden to China for their supply of a critical resource. Some people joked that past wars were fought over oil but future wars would be fought over lithium, but today the joke has turned sour as the political implications of access to lithium are coming into sharper focus.
In Serbia, the collision between lithium and politics is taking place today. Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining companies in the world, has elaborate plans to mine lithium in the Jadar Valley in the western part of that country. But those plans have sparked huge protest rallies across the country by Serbians who are concerned the mining will create enormous environmental problems.
A report by The Hague Center for Strategic Studies estimates that if it the EU is to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, Europe will need 60 times more lithium by that year than what it imported in 2020 from China and elsewhere. Michael Schmidt, a lithium expert at Germany's Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, told the New York Times that Europe might be able to reach its targets without supplies from Serbia, but "the Serbian project is one of the largest, and that is why it is so significant. We need each and every project to reach targets." Chad Blewitt, the head of Rio Tinto's Serbian operations, added that the company planned to invest more than $2.55 billion in the project. "There is no green transition in Europe without this lithium," he said.
The project has been supported by the United States and the European Union, which is in desperate need of lithium to meet its climate goals. But it has generated a wave of public fury in Serbia, where fears that the mine will poison the air and water have set off huge street protests against President Aleksandar Vucic.
Lithium & Politics
The Serbian government gave preliminary approval in 2019, but canceled it before an election in 2022 because it was worried about losing votes during protests. However, Serbia changed its mind against in July because it wants to become a member of the European Union and the EU wants Serbian lithium. Serbia's mining minister, Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic, said mining probably would not start for another two years, but once it did, lithium from the Jadar Valley would allow Serbia to manufacture batteries and electric cars, providing about 20,000 jobs.
Michael Schmidt, a lithium expert at Germany's Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, said Europe might be able to reach its targets without supplies from Serbia. But, he said, "the Serbian project is one of the largest, and that is why it is so significant." He added, "We need each and every project to reach targets." Last month, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and executives from Mercedes Benz, which has big electric vehicle plans, visited Belgrade to push for the Rio Tinto project to get started. Geoffrey Pyatt, US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, cheered the Serbian lithium project on social media last week, calling it "an opportunity to contribute to the green transition at home and abroad."
At a recent protest in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, Angela Rojovic held a sign at a protest against the Rio Tinto lithium project that said, "He sold out Kosovo but is not going to take away our clean water. She said the president had not done enough to defend the interests of Serbs living in mainly ethnic Albanian Kosovo. She also said Mr. Vucic was sacrificing Serbia's environment to serve Europe's climate goals. "I don't need green cars," she said. "I need green apples and green grass."
International Implications
The proposed mine in Serbia has not only provoked fury among farmers, environmental activists, and ordinary citizens, it also has become a proxy battleground in the West's efforts to extract the country from the orbits of Russia, its traditional ally, and China. For those who view Serbia as a partner for the United States and Europe rather than a Moscow-aligned and authoritarian regional bully, Mr. Vucic's support for Rio Tinto, along with his assent to Serbian-made weapons being sold covertly to Ukraine, is evidence he is serious about disengaging from Russia.
But Russia has strong support among hardline Serb nationalists, and some diplomats and analysts say Moscow has been stirring the unrest over the mine. Mr. Vucic, however, has said Moscow told him that the West is orchestrating the protests because it wants to topple him. "Unfortunately, it has become a political fight, a big political battle," said the mining minister, Djedovic Handanovic.
Among those taking part in recent nationwide demonstrations against Rio Tinto have been leaders of People's Patrol, an ultra-nationalist group aligned with Moscow. Social media accounts known for spreading Russian disinformation have been active in promoting horror stories about the planned lithium mine. Last week, a post on Serbian social media claimed an exploratory hole bored by Rio Tinto was belching radioactive fluid. But leftists and middle-of-the-road pro-Europeans have also joined the protests, chanting opposition to a project that has become a lightning rod for diverse grievances against the government.
In Gornje Nedeljice, a Jadar Valley village that sits atop Europe's biggest known deposit of high-grade lithium, the project has alienated Mr. Vucic's previously stalwart rural base. Dragan Karajcic, the district head for a cluster of small settlements around the proposed mine, said he was a member of Mr. Vucic's governing party but still joined a local protest group hostile to Rio Tinto and the government.
Goran Tomic, a native of Gornje Nedeljice who now lives mostly in Germany, said he understood the need to combat climate change by moving away from gasoline-powered cars, but he was still appalled that his older brother had agreed to sell his house and land to Rio Tinto. "He allowed himself to betray himself for money, and in doing that he betrayed us all," Mr. Tomic said, sitting on his front stoop with his mother, who was also angry but proud that two of her three sons refused to sell to Rio Tinto.
Nebojsa Petkovic, a villager from Gornje Nedeljice and an anti-lithium activist, traveled to Belgrade to help organize a demonstration on Saturday, August 10, that attracted tens of thousands of people. "Let the Germans save the planet," Mr. Petkovic said. "We need to save ourselves." Germany's role has only amplified opposition. Dragan Karajcic, the district head, said he was infuriated by German assurances that the mine would be safe, recalling Nazi atrocities in a nearby town in 1941 that the Germans had promised would be left unhurt. He said his great-grandfather fought nearby against Austrian troops during World War I. "He fought to keep our land, and now I'm supposed to give it away to Rio Tinto. No way," he said. "There is a lot of bad blood in these hills."
The Takeaway
If all this sturm unmd drang over lithium in Serbia makes your head hurt, joint the club. In the comfort of our homes far from the fray, we hear that Serbia has high-grade lithium sources and assume they will be developed soon so the price of electric cars will fall. We covered another story about how the quest for lithium is disrupting life for Indigenous people in Argentina. There, the crux of the problem is that the lithium is in an arid location but extracting it requires copious amounts of water. The native people fear the lithium operations will unalterably change their lives and force them to move.
The answer, of course, is to use other minerals — like sodium, potassium, or iron — to make batteries, but unfortunately none of the batteries made with those materials are as good at storing electricity as lithium ion batteries, at least not yet. It seems inconceivable that extracting lithium could create so much opposition when almost no one objects to drilling oil and gas wells anywhere on Earth. As former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said "All politics is local."
Whether the issue is solar farms, wind farms, or lithium extraction, the opposition is loud and persistent, and yet fossil fuels put all of us at risk. Something's gotta give, somewhere, somehow. That may mean pivoting away from lithium as the foundation of the technologies that will provide us with a world free of carbon and methane emissions, which could be easier to do than untangling the torturous politics of Serbia. If we all need to get along in order to get to an emissions-free world, we are in a lot of trouble.
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