Lithium mediates our access to places, energy, data, and more. Lithium’s ubiquity takes shape in batteries—large and small, high and low performance, new and recycled. Lithium-ion batteries provide energy storage in electric mobility and renewable energy systems. And all this matters because accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean/green/renewable energy is central to climate action and the planet’s future. 

Globally, the rising demand for green energy technologies is driving stiff national competition to secure the means of lithium extraction, production, and distribution. To keep up with ever-increasing consumption demands, governments across the world are declaring lithium a matter of national security and aiming to control every step in the supply chain.

With this comes the fast production and reproduction of an assortment of industrial and infrastructural types (the mining site, the industrial park, the gigafactory, the solar megafarm, the smart highway, the transcontinental sea routes, the charging station, and more), rapidly urbanizing the boundless territory and the lifestyles of those inhabiting it with a calculated banality. Habitat loss and fragmentation, land and water dispossession, waste and legacy pollution, and forced displacement come next.

What is at stake for us as architects, urban designers, and global citizens in this seemingly inevitable future?