In 2016, a couple of polished young mining execs tapped on everyone’s computer screens and said, “Hey, not sure if you’ve noticed yet but everything you rely on right now for your work, play, and – soon – transport is running on lithium ion batteries. So, hey, maybe getting your hands on a solid supply of lithium is going to be important going forward.”

These dudes ran a company called Lithium-X, and that company’s aggressive marketing push was the first time many people heard about the Clayton Valley in Nevada.

The Clayton, you see, had a lot of lithium in it, and quickly every broker had a ticker symbol and a shell and a piece of rock somewhere near the Clayton and a share price doing forward flips.

The Lithium-X gang would sell their enterprise to Chinese interests for $265 million, right at the perfect time, as the ‘too many shells’ cludge hit and the market went looking for something else to chase.

Lithium’s problem, it turned out, was there’s not a lot of water to go around in the Clayton Valley, South American brines take a long time to bring on, and the big lithium players were able, without too much drama, to turn the taps on as they needed.

To be sure, lithium demand was, and still is, exploding. Your phone, your laptop, your car, they all run on rechargeables now, and the billions of  non-chargeable batteries in everyone across Canada’s junk drawers – most of which we didn’t know whether they still had any charge left or not but cost $15 a pack to replace –  were about to be obsolete. Add to that, the massive amounts being invested in solar and wind energy rely on massive lithium ion batteries to store their excess power for when the sun and wind aren’t running.

Lithium really was the very next big thing that everyone said it was, and it hasn’t fallen away any in the years since. It’s in your pocket. It’s in your briefcase. It’s in your iPad and in your ear. It’s in your Tesla, and your neighbour’s Tesla, and their kids’ Prius, and often enough it’s even fueling your fridge.

Nowadays lithium demand is less about “can you find any” (there’s more lithium about than most realize), but can you find it in a cost effective, high grade manner that is easy to get to and cheap to transport.

Nevada is key to the proximity question, because Elon, but as you move slowly outward from there you hit the red clay paradise that is New Mexico, and that’s where Lancaster Resources (LCR.C) has a small patch of work going on.

I say small when perhaps I should say ‘manageable’, because this patch isn’t insubstantial, it’s just not the ‘mega millions of acres’ we sometimes see from groups that confuse potential with possibility. What good is owning half the state of Wyoming if you’re only rocking two drill bits, a guy in a crop-duster taking Polaroids from above, and a small mule named Henry?

But there’s a twist in Lancaster that’s not immediately apparent to the casual passer-by… In the wake of all this rising demand for lithium, Lancaster Lithium is uniquely positioned to contribute to a sustainable future through their ambitious goal of becoming a carbon-negative lithium producer.

Okay, let’s be clear, every mining play has an ESG plan these days, whether they’re for show or realsies. But I’m not sure I know of another group that has determined that they can, by virtue of where their project is, pull down all the energy they need to produce lithium via investments in solar, wind, and geothermal.

In effect, they want to be a carbon neutral – or better – lithium producer.

Now if I’m playing the odds of people who read news stories about resource companies, I’d guess you might be sitting there thinking, “I couldn’t care less whether they’re carbon neutral or blowing up neutron bombs, will it be profitable?”

Two things; 1) Yeah, pulling energy from the sky is far more profitable than building high tensile energy lines across hundreds of miles of landscape and paying a monthly utility bill to whatever utility company is nearest to them. 2) I give a shit about ESG.

Me. I do. My kids do. The people in my life I talk to regularly about stocks and investing, they’re not wandering about investor conferences using walking frames. They played Minecraft growing up. They were raised in a world where half their friends were buying NFTs and crypto, and have since moved on to equities and options contracts.

They include women. Young people. Immigrants. LGBTQ folk.

Pick a minority, and that group is neck deep in finance because they understand it’s their only way to not even climb the ladder, but just not slide down it.

My kid? 17. Invests in stocks. My friend’s daughter? A 16 yr old hippy girl, obsessed with finance, because she knows there’s less point protesting what you don’t like about the world from the outside, and a lot more sense in fighting the good fight as a shareholder.

The market has changed, old man. And there’s no better example of that than Lancaster Resources CEO and President, Penny White.

White has two decades of public companies under her belt, including a pharma company that was sold for $342 million, and alongside her law degree you’ll find she’s also done the Leading Suistainable Corporations Programme at the University of Oxford.

By harnessing renewable energy sources and implementing carbon capture and storage technologies, Lancaster Lithium promises to not only help meet the global demand for lithium but do so while actively reducing their carbon footprint which, if you consider the sort of investor who is into lithium, puts the company right in the sweet spot for retail interest.

Their strategy transforms the traditional linear approach to resource extraction into a circular, sustainable one. Customers of Lancaster Lithium can be confident they’re sourcing lithium from a producer that’s committed to climate positivity, which isn’t just an environmental victory; it’s also a win for businesses looking to enhance their green credentials and meet their corporate social responsibility goals. Lancaster Lithium wants to demonstrate that it is possible to meet our energy needs without compromising the health of the planet.

COOL STORY – but is there lithium in them thar hills?