No one wants metal in their soft drink.
But in the 20th century, lithium was used as the “active” ingredient in 7-Up, just enough to provide a small mood boost.
Other than that, there were few industrial applications for the metal.
That’s changing extremely fast.
In just a few years, lithium has become a key element required for human survival.
Its unique properties—it’s lightweight, malleable, and has extremely high energy density—make it ideal for energy storage in the form of a lithium-ion battery.
And reducing carbon emissions to keep the planet from burning is going to require a lot of batteries:
The entire transportation sector, which accounts for a full 25% of U.S. emissions, must be fully electrified.
Utility-scale storage must be built out for the entire energy grid.
The electrification of the U.S. transportation system alone will require hundreds of billions of lithium-ion batteries.
That may sound like an exaggeration to you. I assure you that it is not.
A single EV battery pack uses more than 7,000 individual batteries.