[SinParadise]

>If we really can't find any more, then billions or trillions of dollars will be redirected to bring lithium extraction from seawater to commercial scale.

And we are probably going to burn fossil fuel to obtain the energy for this?

[burkaman]

No probably not, since solar is already the cheapest option for new generation and lithium extraction is an ideal application for intermittent power, I would expect these operations to be primarily powered by renewables. That's just thinking about the economics, but obviously there will also be very strong cultural and legal pressure to minimize emissions as well.

You can look at recently-proposed remote green hydrogen facilities as inspiration. Similar to hydrogen, since you don't need to worry about connecting to the grid, you can build solar and wind generators pretty much anywhere that has a ton of sun and wind, extract the lithium onsite, and then ship it to where it's needed.