With a quarter of the world's known lithium, Bolivia finds itself among the newly anointed winners in the global hunt for the raw materials needed to move the world away from oil, natural gas and coal in the fight against climate change
Part of the vast area of salt flats at Salar de Uuyuni in Bolivia on Aug. 30, 2021. An American entrepreneur says he has a better way to extract lithium there. (Meridith Kohut/The New York Times)
SALAR DE UYUNI, Bolivia — The mission was quixotic for a small Texas energy startup: Beat out Chinese and Russian industrial giants in unlocking mineral riches that could one day power tens of millions of electric vehicles.
A team traveled from Austin to Bolivia in late August to meet with local and national leaders at a government lithium complex and convince them that the company, EnergyX, had a technology that would fulfill Bolivia’s potential to be a global green-energy power. On arriving, they found that the conference they had planned to attend was canceled and that security guards blocked the location.
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