Bolivia's lithium bonanza
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2020
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Salar de Uyuni is a stunning pristine salt flat high in the Andes - it is also the world's biggest lithium deposit, worth many billions of dollars.
Ed Butler asks whether this as yet untapped resource will prove a blessing or a curse for the people of Bolivia. It has already played a role in the political instability that brought down the country's long-time socialist president, Evo Morales, last year.
Daniela Sanchez-Lopez, an expert in the geopolitics of clean energy at Cambridge University and herself Bolivian, explains how the exploding demand for lithium batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage, means that many powerful nations have their eyes on the salt flat.
Among them is Germany. Ed speaks to Wolfgang Schmutz, founder of ACI Group, the clean energy company that had won a contract to develop the lithium deposit, before being dumped during the political unrest last year. We also hear from Gunnar Valda, head of the Bolivian state lithium company YLB.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Woman standing on the Salar de Uyuni; Credit: hadynyah/Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. My name's Ed Butler. Today, a country that could be |
| 0:06.3 | sitting on the most valuable natural resource needed to decarbonize the world economy. |
| 0:11.7 | Bolivia is going to be a key player in the energy transition. Because if the battery technologies |
| 0:17.0 | keep on growing, electric vehicles keep on on increasing lithium will be important for the rest |
| 0:21.8 | of the world. But who will Bolivia choose to sell its lithium too? Will it be China? We hear from |
| 0:28.2 | a rival suitor in Germany. For sure, I think China is hungry. However, I think we really have |
| 0:35.0 | worked out a proposal which was totally different to any offer from China. |
| 0:41.1 | That's all to come on Business Daily from the BBC. So I was down in South America traveling, me and one other friend decided to kind of explore the continent a little bit. |
| 1:08.8 | So we went over to Chile, Machu Picchu, you know, super touristy type of attractions. |
| 1:14.6 | And then we went to Bolivia to see Salar de Ooni because it's a magnificent salt flat, the biggest in the world. |
| 1:26.9 | Our tour guide tells us that this is also the world's largest lithium reserve. |
| 1:32.8 | And I just thought to myself, this is the biggest opportunity I've ever seen. |
| 1:37.3 | Then he goes, you know, a lot of people think this is comparable. |
| 1:40.3 | It's what Saudi Arabia was in the 1970s. |
| 1:45.3 | The voice there of Teague Egan. |
| 1:47.5 | He's an American entrepreneur, and he's now trying to commercialize a new way of extracting lithium from salt lakes, like Bolivia's Salad de Uyuni. |
| 1:56.9 | Well, if his voice sounds familiar, that's probably because you heard him on Business Daily last month, |
| 2:01.5 | when we looked at the exciting future of lithium iron batteries. |
| 2:05.4 | Yes, it really is quite exciting. |
| 2:07.1 | Lithium is an essential ingredient in the future of battery technology. |
| 2:11.4 | Without a new generation of batteries, the world is going to struggle |
| 2:14.8 | to transfer away from fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.