The Government of India will auction the 5.9 million tons (mt) of lithium reserves found in Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) Reasi district in December this year, the Secretary of the Ministry of Mines Vivek Bharadwaj said.

The Secretary was quoted by ANI news agency saying that the ministry has written to the J&K administration seeking a transaction advisor for the auction.

Bharadwaj said, “We have been lucky to discover 5.9 mt of lithium. We were looking for limestones which are available in Jammu Kashmir. We found limestone, bauxite, and lithium together. There has been renewed interest in exploring these minerals,” the official said at an industry event.

“We have completed the consultation process with stakeholders on the amendment of the Offshore Mining Act. Hopefully, we will soon bring it to Parliament for discussion.”

The discovery of lithium, a non-ferrous metal and a key component in electric vehicle batteries, is considered significant given that it is currently mined only in a few countries. Given its use in energy storage, lithium will play a vital part in the global energy transition to cleaner sources.

In February this year, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) said it had discovered 5.9 million tons of lithium reserves in J&K.

The Ministry of Mines had said that the GSI estimated an inferred resource of 5.9 million tons of lithium ore.

Automotive lithium-ion battery demand reached 340 GWh in 2021, more than twice the demand in 2020, primarily driven by the increase in electric passenger cars, which observed a 120% surge in registrations in 2020, according to an International Energy Agency report.

A study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab projected that the lithium find can significantly help India pave the way for cost-effective energy independence by 2047. It said that most of the 2 million tons of lithium needed by 2040 for manufacturing new electric vehicles and grid-scale battery storage systems could be produced domestically using newly discovered reserves.