Standard Grant: The Lithium Trade

锂用于电动汽车、移动设备和可再生能源系统的轻型可充电电池。现在需求旺盛，全球锂市场正在迅速变化，这引发了人们对增长的预期，以及对经济崩溃和环境损害的担忧。例如，他们希望确保锂的稳定供应，而代表锂矿社区的民选官员希望吸引新的行业。这些社区还担心增加开采带来的环境后果，跨国公司也是如此，它们的品牌依赖于营销可持续产品。尽管旺盛的需求让这些担忧变得紧迫，但对利益分配和危害的类似担忧，在历史上也塑造了石油、铀和铜等对全球能源体系至关重要的其他矿产的开采、贸易和治理。这个项目询问自20世纪60年代以来锂的产量与这些其他矿物的产量相比如何。参与锂生产链的利益相关者将发现，这些信息有助于制定政策，以回应这些不同的预期，并对环境和社会负责。调查结果将通过出版物和公开讲座分发给各利益攸关方。该项目将为本科生和研究生提供西班牙语研究培训机会，扩大未占名额学生的参与范围。该项目还将与评估新的清洁能源产业带来的影响、机遇和挑战的科学家建立合作伙伴关系。该项目是对锂生产的比较分析，确定参与生产的专业知识形式，谁可以获得这些形式的知识，它们对国家发展政策的影响，以及锂数量如何通过全球生产网络流动的后果。研究将在不同的档案馆进行，为期两年，这些档案馆保存着企业、国家机构、军事办公室和锂开采先驱科学家之间的关系记录。通过追踪冷战期间的这些关系以及自由贸易全球化的兴起，首席研究员将分析技术和工业能力是如何创造和分配的。他们还将审查锂的发展政策，以及与铜、铀或石油利益相关者的比较，这些利益相关者长期以来被用来证明这些政策的合理性。这项研究将推进关于如何理解自然资源、科学和技术才能产生积极发展成果的理论。这些发现还将有助于学术和政策辩论，即如何评估长期开采锂的好处和可持续性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Lithium is used in light-weight, rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, mobile devices, and renewable energy systems. Now in high demand, the global market for lithium is changing rapidly, raising expectations of growth and fears of economic busts and environmental harm. For instance, there is the desire to ensure a stable supply of lithium, while elected officials representing lithium mining communities hope to attract new industries. These communities also worry about the environmental consequences of increased extraction, as do multinational companies whose brands rely on marketing a sustainable product. Although booming demand has given these concerns urgency, similar concerns about the distribution of benefits and harms have historically shaped the extraction, trade and governance of other minerals important to global energy systems, such as oil, uranium and copper. This project asks how lithium production since the 1960s compares with the production of these other minerals. Stakeholders engaged across lithium's production chain will find this information useful in developing policies that respond to these disparate expectations and that are environmentally and socially responsible. Findings will be disseminated to various stakeholders through publications and public talks. This project will provide research training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students in the Spanish language, broadening participation from under-represented students. It will also build collaborative partnerships with scientists assessing the impacts, opportunities, and challenges posed by new clean energy industries.This project is a comparative analysis of lithium production, identifying the forms of expertise that have participated in production, who had access to these forms of knowledge, their influence on national development policies, and the consequences for how quantities of lithium have flowed through global production networks. Research will take place over a two-year period in various archives that maintain records of the relationships between corporations, state agencies, military offices, and the scientists who pioneered lithium mining. Tracing these relationships through the Cold War years and into the rise of free-trade globalization, the principal investigator will analyze how technical and industrial capacity were created and distributed. They will also examine lithium development policies and the comparisons to copper, uranium, or oil stakeholders used over time to justify these policies. The research will advance theories of how natural resources, science, and technology are understood to produce positive development outcomes. The findings will also contribute to academic and policy debates about how to assess the benefits and sustainability of lithium extraction over long periods of time.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.