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The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is meeting in Jamaica this month to elect its next leader and chart a path for the future of deep sea mining for the critical minerals needed to power clean energy tech. Plans to mine the seabed have alarmed environmentalists and scientists concerned about the ecological impacts.
Maha Haji
Assistant professor in Cornell Engineering
Maha Haji, professor of engineering at Cornell University, develops designs for offshore systems to sustainably harvest resources from the ocean, including minerals essential to clean energy. Haji says seawater itself holds abundant minerals that can be harvested using existing offshore infrastructure — a promising alternative to seabed mining.
Haji says:
“As an alternative, tech-essential minerals such as lithium and cobalt can be found dissolved in abundant quantities in seawater itself. For example, the ocean contains approximately 230 billion tons of dissolved lithium, a quantity that is 11,000 times greater than that found in terrestrial deposits. Using passive adsorbent-based technology, we could potentially harvest these dissolved minerals more sustainably than seabed mining.
“Some regions of the world may even hold higher concentrations of these minerals than others. For instance, our preliminary water samples from the Gulf of Mexico suggest it has a lithium concentration 2-3 times the reported lithium concentrations from seawater. We could also leverage existing offshore infrastructure to keep costs low. Our preliminary cost-analysis shows retrofitting retired oil and gas platforms, for instance, in the Gulf of Mexico to harvest lithium could yield over 2.7 times the amount of lithium consumed domestically in 2022, worth over $300 million.
“The development of passive mineral harvesting could enable any country with a coastline to domestically source their own critical minerals in a potentially sustainable way.
“Recycling electronics could meet anywhere from 10-20% of our critical mineral needs (as estimated by the IEA and Worldwide Wildlife Fund) so we are still going to need an additional source of minerals to meet the other 80-90% of our needs. I think the oceans are the solution through passive mineral harvesting. Seabed mining would be devastating to ecosystems and it is up to the ISA to put in place the regulations necessary to protect this fragile part of the world.”
