In the main square of Peine, a village of low houses and dirt streets in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert, there is barely any movement. It’s midday and the sun beats down from a cloudless sky. At this hour, the streets remain largely empty. Every now and then, a truck interrupts the silence of its steep and cracked streets. But it’s not always this quiet. Although this small town has just over 300 residents, its population can quadruple after 6 p.m. when workers from across the country return from mining lithium — the mineral that has turned this remote village into a crucial link in the global energy transition.
Peine sits on the edge of the nearly 1,200-square-mile Atacama Salt Flat, or Salar de Atacama. Sitting beneath its surface, dissolved in underground saline waters called brine, is one of the largest, most concentrated reserves of lithium in the world.
The mineral is used in everything from air-conditioning, computers, ceramics, and mood-stabilizing medication to, most recently, electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy storage. As count... Read more
