West Australian company Vulcan Energy Resources, backed by mining magnate Gina Rinehart, has signed a geothermal heat energy offtake agreement with a major German energy supplier, MVV Energie. Vulcan is planning to eventually secure a lithium supply from the same deep brine source in the Upper Rhine Valley, Germany.
In April, Vulcan Energy Resources, an Australian listed company backed by the country’s richest woman Gina Rinehart, announced it had signed a 20-year binding purchase agreement for at least 240 GWh of renewable heat per year with major German energy supplier MVV Energie AG.
The agreement is set to commence in 2025 and is part of Germany’s push to move itself off a dependance on Russian gas. The agreement includes the supply of a minimum of 240 GWh per year to a maximum of 350 GWh per year and is set to supply households in Mannheim, south of Frankfurt, Germany.
The Rhine Valley project involves Vulcan drilling several deep wells into an underground brine reservoir – essentially hot, salty water – outside Mannheim then pumping it to the surface where its heat will be transferred “via heating grids and a series of underground pipes that deliver hot water or steam to buildings in the local community.”
Eventually, Vulcan plans to extract lithium using this same geothermal wells using a method it claims has among the lowest footprints for lithium extraction.
Exactly what that process involves is a bit opaque, but the company’s website says: “through wells into the deep sub-surface, hot, lithium-rich brine from our project area is pumped to the surface… the spent brine then gets re-injected in a closed-loop cycle.”
Vulcan says the method “incur[s] virtually zero disruption to communities or the environment.”
“We believe that geothermal renewable energy on a mass scale, combined with lithium extraction from the same deep geothermal source, can and will play an important part in achieving Europe and Germany’s energy security and independence,” Vulcan’s Managing Director Francis Wedin said.
The company is targeting an annual lithium hydroxide output of 40,000 tonnes from 2024 – roughly enough to power one million electric vehicles (EVs). Its plans have already seen Vulcan ink deals with numerous European carmakers, all of whom are desperate to secure lithium supplies, including France’s Renault, Dutch company Stellantis and Germany’s Volkswagen.
It’s worth noting that lithium extraction has come under fairly fierce criticism in Europe, and getting the project across the line in terms of environmental and social licenses in such a rich and densely populated region in Europe may prove difficult.
Vulcan’s lithium plans are still in fairly early stages, and were probably somewhat shaken by the recent and very public end to Rio Tinto’s $3.3 billion Jadar lithium-borates project in Serbia – which came shortly after the country’s tennis star Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: [email protected].
Reinhart-backed WA company to supply Germany with geothermal heat before turning to lithium extraction – pv magazine Australia & More Germany Latest News Update
Reinhart-backed WA company to supply Germany with geothermal heat before turning to lithium extraction – pv magazine Australia & More Germany Live News
All this news that I have made and shared for you people, you will like it very much and in it we keep bringing topics for you people like every time so that you keep getting news information like trending topics and you It is our goal to be able to get
all kinds of news without going through us so that we can reach you the latest and best news for free so that you can move ahead further by getting the information of that news together with you. Later on, we will continue
to give information about more today world news update types of latest news through posts on our website so that you always keep moving forward in that news and whatever kind of information will be there, it will definitely be conveyed to you people.
Reinhart-backed WA company to supply Germany with geothermal heat before turning to lithium extraction – pv magazine Australia & More Germany Trending News Today
All this news that I have brought up to you or will be the most different and best news that you people are not going to get anywhere, along with the information breaking news today of this news, you can get other types of news along with your country and city. You will be able to get information related to, as well as you will be able to get information about what is going on around you through us for free
so that you can make yourself a knowledgeable by getting complete information about your country and state and information about news. Whatever is being given through us, I have tried to bring it to you through other websites, which you may like
very much and if you like all this news, then definitely around you. Along with the people of India, keep sharing such news necessary to your loved ones, let all the news influence them and they can move forward two steps further.
Credit Goes To News Website – This Original Content Owner News Website . This Is Not My Content So If You Want To Read Original Content You Can Follow Below Links