Ioneer is an Australian company that came to Nevada after prospectors discovered a little-known lithium-boron project at Rhyolite Ridge. Over the last 8 years, Ioneer and its employees have been dedicated to finding responsible ways to source these beneficial natural resources and propel us toward a more sustainable future. Ioneer’s Government and Public Policy Manager, Tyson Falk joins us for an episode of The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast to discuss the exciting future for the lithium loop in Nevada.
Ioneer is Unlocking the Potential of Lithium Mining in Nevada
Focused on creating a more sustainable future, Ioneer is committed to pursuing environmentally and socially responsible ways to source lithium and boron in the United States. With their Nevada-based Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project, Ioneer has its sights set on quadrupling the lithium supply within the U.S., reducing dependency on imports. Dedicated to utilizing the potential of natural resources in the state of Nevada, Ioneer is an active member of the Nevada Battery Coalition (NBC) and is working to help close the lithium loop.
In this episode of the Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, Tyson Falk, Government and Public Policy Manager at Ioneer, joins host Dr. Denis Phares to discuss the evolution of the renewable energy sector and the opportunities it presents for economic development in Nevada. As a native Nevadan with a background in public policy, Tyson is committed to gaining government support for lithium extraction and domestic production. From the beginning of his time with the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization (NIREC) to his current position at Ioneer, Tyson has been passionate about utilizing renewable resources to build a thriving ecosystem for clean energy technology within the state. Throughout the episode, Tyson and Denis share their mutual excitement for the exciting prospects ahead for the renewable energy industry in Nevada.
Listen to the full episode or watch the recording on our YouTube channel, and be sure to follow Ioneer on LinkedIn and YouTube!
Podcast Transcript
Denis Phares 0:17
Welcome to the Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast. My guest today is Tyson Falk, a Government and Public Policy Manager at Ioneer.
Tyson Falk 0:27
Yeah, that’s right. Thank you so much for having me, Denis.
Denis Phares 0:28
Did I say that right?
Tyson Falk 0:30
You did, it was perfect. It’s a pleasure to be here, and thanks for having me.
Denis Phares 0:33
So, before we get into mining and Ioneer, let’s talk about you because I moved here about 11 years ago, and you’re one of the first people I met. And, at the time, you were working at a state agency called NIREC, which stands for what?
Tyson Falk 0:48
Yeah, so NIREC was the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization. We were based out of the Desert Research Institute, not too far from here. And we were working with researchers and professors in trying to help them commercialize the technology that they may have developed, whether that was intellectual property, a particular process, or something innovative, and, in particular, around the clean energy green space.
Denis Phares 1:12
Your background, you actually went to UNR, right?
Tyson Falk 1:15
I did. Yeah. So, I guess, taking a step back, I grew up in rural Nevada. I lived in Ely, and Elko, and Winnemucca, growing up. And then I moved to Reno and attended UNR. Ultimately got a pre-law degree there, and then went to grad school and got a master’s degree in Public Policy at UNR.
Denis Phares 1:33
So, you decided against law.
Tyson Falk 1:35
I decided against law. Yes.
Denis Phares 1:37
Okay. So, what did you do between UNR and NIREC?
Tyson Falk 1:41
So, I started as a lobbyist, actually. I took an internship and I worked at the state legislature and represented a number of different clients. And some of those, and actually, quite a few of them were in the renewable energy space. So, renewable energy advocacy. How can we as a state move forward in deployment of clean technology, renewable energy? How can we take advantage of the natural resources that we have here in the state? So, that’s how I got into politics writ large. And then, while I was going into grad school is when I worked at Nirec
Denis Phares 2:15
Oh, really? You were a grad student at the time?
Tyson Falk 2:17
I was, yes.
Denis Phares 2:18
Okay. I didn’t know that. So,when I first moved here, and I was thinking I want to start a lithium-ion battery company, and I was kind of getting my bearings and learning the city. I think, through the university, I was getting my MBA there, I was referred to NIREC. I don’t know if it was specifically to you, but I went to the DRI campus and we met. And I think the idea was, potentially, NIREC would help. But I guess you did actually supply funds to startups or entrepreneurs, but, at that time, that was close to the end of Nirec.
Tyson Falk 2:54
Right. Yeah. So, NIREC ended up closing its doors not too long after that, but we did help a number of companies, and we did a lot of startup entrepreneurship efforts. I think we were one of the first to do sort of a Startup Weekends, for example. And so, we really focused on entrepreneurship. And maybe it’s important to think back to the time that that was it, right? That was…
Denis Phares 3:18
Right. It was not a good economy.
Tyson Falk 3:18
It was not, no. Somebody that just graduated and you come into the worst recession that’s hit the country in a long time in Nevada, in particular, being the hardest hit, it was really a dire…
Denis Phares 3:28
It was 2012. Reno was hammered.
Tyson Falk 3:33
Yeah. I think I remember about 14% unemployment across the state. And so, there was really an effort to, “What can we do to diversify our economy?” We were certainly over-reliant, I would say, on gaming and tourism. And during a recession, of course, those are the first that get hit. And so, the state, in a lot of efforts, the state and NIREC was looking at ways that we can diversify our economy. How can we become more sustainable in really taking advantage of the resources we have here? It was at that time in Nirec that my colleague and myself, Brian McArdle, that we, actually, under contract with the Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy, wrote a couple of white papers in looking, particularly, at our opportunities around lithium in developing because we knew we had lithium resources here, and rare earth elements as well. And so, those papers were ultimately published through the Governor’s Office of Energy. And, lo and behold, here we are, what are we? 11, 12 years later, and we start to see this burgeoning economy from mining, to processing, to manufacturing, to recycling. So, it’s been kind of coming full circle.
Denis Phares 4:45
Whose idea was NIREC, and do you think it actually played an important role in getting to where we are today for the state?
Tyson Falk 4:52
So, NIREC was … It was funded through the National Department of Energy, actually. I want to say that that was some of the ARRA funds; American Reinvestment… Whatever that acronym was. And so, there was a lot of money deployed towards how can we develop clean energy technologies across the United States and in Nevada, in particular. I joined kind of late on in NIREC, they existed a few years before I joined on so I don’t know if I could go into the exact history of NIREC.
Denis Phares 5:27
Okay. So, NIREC closed, I guess it’s around 2013-ish. And then, where did you go after that?
Tyson Falk 5:35
So yeah. So, after NIREC was done, I did a couple of different things here and there just making ends meet. But ultimately, I got back into lobbying and I worked for a law firm here locally. And I went back to the legislature and worked a number of sessions representing various clients, and a lot of them in the clean energy space. And then, in 2020, I got a call from Ioneer, and wasn’t told who the mining company was, but, “Hey, would you be interested in coming, and working, and doing public and government affairs for a mining company?” And I found out that it was a lithium company and I was super excited to be part of it, understanding that this would be one of the first new mining projects for lithium mines that would be coming online in the United States in many, many, many decades. And so, fast forward, now I’ve been at Ioneer for the last three and a half years.
Denis Phares 6:30
Was lithium playing an important role in what you were doing from NIREC and beyond? You were doing public policy and working on renewable projects, but did you know lithium was sort of a central theme there?
Tyson Falk 6:41
Yeah. So, actually, I think one of the organizations that I’ve worked with since that time, actually, is a group called the Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition. And so, that’s an organization of juniors and explorers, the guys that are actually going and finding the deposits. And so, I represented them both at the state legislature, helping organizing their meetings, doing advocacy around the country in different trade shows, and really highlighting Nevada’s opportunity when it comes to our natural resources. Certainly, mining has played an important role here in the States, and our prowess is in gold, and silver, historically, and certainly, copper. But seeing the writing on the wall of seeing what 21st-century technology needs, and for our deployment of renewable energy, lithium was… We could see the writing on the wall, it was going to be very important. And so, I think lithium has been a focus from folks on the exploration side, on the mining side, and certainly, on the public policy side.
Denis Phares 7:49
In terms of being beyond exploration for lithium in the United States in general, there’s not a lot of projects that are beyond exploration. Ioneer is one of them, I guess, Lithium America is. These are projects that are imminent, that are going to come to fruition. Are there others? Is Piedmont coming online?
Tyson Falk 8:08
I don’t know if I could speak to the specifics of Piedmont. I think that we are probably one of… Probably, a handful, I would say, of projects have a chance to come online in sort of the near future. There’s a lot of exploration activity, of course, even in around where our project is in central Nevada. You see a lot of resources and a lot of work being put into finding that next deposit, but in terms of projects that could come online in the near term, yeah, we’re on that shortlist.
Denis Phares 8:42
But even now, there’s only one active mine. There’s the Silver Peak mine that has been… I don’t know how long they’ve been mining lithium, but it’s been around a while. Not necessarily for batteries, but mining lithium.
Tyson Falk 8:53
Right. Yeah. I want to say that that facility has been around since about the 1950s.
Denis Phares 8:58
Mm-hmm. Okay. And that’s a brine facility, right?
Tyson Falk 9:01
That is. That is a brine. And, I guess, to differentiate ourselves, so we’re in Hard Rock. Our ore deposit is actually pretty unique to the world. And we have, of course, lithium. We’re talking about lithium today, but we also have a lot of boron inside our ore, and we’re one of the largest lithium boron deposits on the planet. And so, our processing is inherently different. You see a lot of… They have the evaporation ponds, right? And we won’t have any of that, we’re more of a traditional mining company in that regard. We’re extracting, but then we’ll also be processing it right there on-site as well. So, we’ll be one of the first domestic refiners of lithium and boron materials here in the United States.
Denis Phares 9:50
Right. And the processing itself is proprietary to Ioneer, right? It’s your process.
Tyson Falk 9:55
Yes. It’s a bespoke process. I think various parts of that process have existed elsewhere, but putting them all together in one process is unique to us.
Denis Phares 10:07
That’s pretty exciting because that’s what we need now, especially in the lithium industry, is innovation. Obviously, there’s direct extraction techniques for brines, and we want to be able to come up with better and cheaper ways to get it out of rocks, and clays, and ultimately, lower the cost. Is that ultimately the mission?
Tyson Falk 10:29
I think the mission, yeah, I think you’ve hit on it. And I think, really, what we’re looking at is how can we onshore production? How can we figure out ways to, not only get the materials out, but then to ultimately refine them into materials that companies like Dragonfly can use, that you can put right into the manufacturing process? And so, figuring out ways to do that economically and environmentally in a friendly manner is kind of the keys there.
Denis Phares 10:55
Right. Well, we are in different parts of the supply chain when it comes to lithium-ion batteries. But I think that we’re similar in that we are also trying to onshore, and the way to do that to compete on the global stage is to innovate and make things cost-effective. It’s difficult to compete when you’re starting from scratch, but it’s also difficult to compete against very mature mining operations or cell manufacturing operations that have managed to lower the cost so dramatically. So, it really does take step function innovations. And, I would say, Ioneer is doing that. So, it’s nice for us to have a relationship with Ioneer. We have an offtake for lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide, you guys can make both, right?
Tyson Falk 11:49
So, we’re going to be primarily focused on lithium carbonate as we start, and it really depends on, ultimately, the customers and what they need. And I’m certainly not a metallurgist or chemical engineer, so I probably couldn’t go into the specifics of carbonate versus hydroxide. But, at the start, we’re going to be focusing on getting into lithium carbonate.
Denis Phares 12:13
Mm-hmm. Let’s talk about the support you’ve received. So obviously, the administration, the country as a whole has a vested interest to onshore the mining, obviously, on shoring the mining, onshoring the processing, on-shoring the development of cathode material, that’s something that we’re very interested in, keeping everything domestic. How has the government supported Ioneer in this endeavor?
Tyson Falk 12:39
Yeah. So, they’ve been very supportive. We have a conditional loan from the Department of Energy to help in the processing side. And you’re exactly right, the impetus or the focus from the federal government side is how can we onshore the production of these materials. Not just the extraction of it, but how can we keep the refining and the processing of it here. And so, we work closely with Jigar Shah and his team over at the Department of Energy. And so, we were the first lithium companies to receive that. And it’s a loan, it’s ultimately going to be a 10-year loan, but that we were able to get that backing from the US government was huge. And it speaks to the opportunities, I think, for companies like ours, but, ultimately, the industry as a whole, and, in particular, areas like Nevada that we have that support because it is important. I think that we see that there’s a national focus on electrification of technology, is reducing our carbon emissions, generally, across the transportation sector, across buildings, and ultimately, our energy systems. And so, it’s important that we onshore the materials necessary for that as much as possible.
Denis Phares 13:54
Let’s talk about Ioneer. Ioneer is originally an Australian company.
Tyson Falk 13:58
Yeah. So, Ioneer started in Australia. Our CEO, Bernard Rowe, he’s an Australian. And so, that’s the origins of that company. And that started back in, I want to say, 2016 and 2017. What we call Ioneer today, it was a different company before then, but Ioneer now, the vast majority, I would say, 80-90% of our employees are here in the US, and the vast majority of those are headquartered right here in Reno. Our offices are in Reno, not too far away from Dragonfly’s… From where you guys do all your great work. So, we are very much in Nevada and a US company. And we started as a publicly traded company on the Australian Stock Exchange, but now we are also on the NASDAQ and we did that last year.
Denis Phares 14:48
So, how did Ioneer get started?
Tyson Falk 14:52
So, Ioneer was started — and going back a little bit of ways — but yeah…
Denis Phares 14:55
I know you weren’t there at the time.
Tyson Falk 14:57
I wasn’t there at the time, no, but our CEO, he had done a lot of exploration and projects sort of around the world. And he ultimately found that there was a deposit at Rhyolite Ridge, that’s where our project is going to be, that had been explored for Boron way back when, back in the early 1900s. And so, we knew that there was boron there, and we knew there was lithium there, but certainly, up until the last couple of decades, there wasn’t much of a demand or we didn’t see that increase in demand for lithium. But then, all of a sudden, you take a look at it holistically and realize that there’s an opportunity to produce both boric acid and lithium carbonate from the same ore body, it became a very attractive project. And that’s how we started moving in that as our key project, that’s what we’re focused on, is bringing this project online.
Denis Phares 15:53
Did the project start because of the demand for lithium because of the onset of transportation and electrification of transportation, or was it a new process that you guys were excited to apply to this particular area?
Tyson Falk 16:06
Yeah. So, I think it’s both. I think the mineralogy itself lends itself to being able to be processed so you can extract, efficiently, lithium and the boron out of the ore body, but then you couple that with the demand that we see, and the incentives, and the focus on electrification technologies are pushed towards reducing our carbon emissions across the transportation and building sectors. I think you take all that together, and then that’s why we’re close to being into production and we’re going to start construction here pretty soon.
Denis Phares 16:41
Let’s talk about the economics of lithium There are skeptics who think there’s no way you could possibly have enough lithium to do what policymakers want to do for electric vehicles in terms of electrifying 80 to 100% of the entire fleet. And that creates, obviously, some pressures on the cost because it’s more difficult to get to the supply. So, what do you think’s going to happen? Am I putting you on the spot here? Or just give me your opinion, what do you think is going to happen in the future?
Tyson Falk 17:17
So, I would say that the demand, it’s pretty safe to say the demand is going to continue to increase. And where that price is, I guess, depends on the number of projects that come online. It takes a long time to develop projects…
Denis Phares 17:31
It takes a very long time. And right now, there’s only a handful. So, we kind of know what’s happening over the next five, seven years, but what happens after that, people need to start exploring and thinking about that now, right?
Tyson Falk 17:44
Yeah, that’s right. And it takes, on average, over a decade from once you discover that there is a deposit somewhere to then prove it out, prove out your process to get the investment that’s required to do all of that. And then, you have to go into the permitting side which also takes a very long time as well. So, that pipeline is important that we keep looking for what’s the next deposit, the next project, and ultimately, the price of which will be dependent upon how many projects can actually come online.
Denis Phares 18:21
Yeah. It’s an exciting time, but there’s also a lot of uncertainty as to how you fill in some of these gaps. We talked about the production of the cathode. You can get all the lithium out of the ground, but then you still have to figure out how to produce the cathode here domestically, otherwise, you’re shipping it back to Asia, right?
Tyson Falk 18:41
Right. Yeah. And I think you see now, China, in particular, controls a vast majority of the processing of it. Very little of the ore is actually coming from China, it comes from South America and Australia, but China has long controlled the processing and the refinement side. So, to your point of us being able to onshore the production of cathodes and anodes, it’s important for us to be able to get that processing done right here in the United States.
Denis Phares 19:10
Right. But from the point of view of Ioneer, it’s a secure business because whatever you get out of the ground, someone’s going to buy it. Demand is that big over the next decade.
Tyson Falk 19:20
I would say that there’s no shortage of interest in folks looking to bring their supplies of what they need from right here in the US.
Denis Phares 19:31
Mm-hmm. Well, we’re a decade now removed from when we first met, and I didn’t really have a whole lot going on, and you were at NIREC that was shutting down. Did you think we’d be here?
Tyson Falk 19:42
Never in my wildest dreams. Frankly, it’s very cool to be part of this ecosystem with seeing the success that you guys have had, to see this burgeoning lithium ecosystem. You have not only the mining and the processing, but we have folks like you that are manufacturing, and then you have the recycling. And to see all that within the state’s borders, it’s… Yeah. No, never in my wildest dreams would I think that we’d be here as part of a really exciting time.
Denis Phares 20:11
Yeah, me too. I’m really thankful for Ioneer. You guys do see the value of what we’re doing, and the fact that you partner with us is a feather in our cap.
Tyson Falk 20:26
Well, we’re happy to work with you, and it’s a pleasure. I think, from my perspective as a Nevadan, I grew up here, and seeing the challenges that we’ve had over… Certainly, talking about the recession in ‘08, to seeing this really exciting opportunity for all of Nevada too. And I think that maybe that’s something that is really exciting to me, and sort of close to me, is that I grew up in rural communities. And so, this ecosystem isn’t going to just benefit one area of the state, it’s going to be in the rural parts of Nevada. We’re in Esmeralda County, it’s the least populated county in the state. And in terms of the US, it’s one of the most sparsely populated counties across the lower 48. And so, we’re going to be able to bring considerable benefit to that area of Nevada. And then, because of us being able to produce materials here, you’re going to continue to see further entrepreneurship, economic development from the Dragonflys of the world. And so, to see that, really, it’s a statewide economic development opportunity. It’s a really cool time to be in Nevada.
Denis Phares 21:35
Absolutely. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Tyson Falk 21:37
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure, and I hope to come back soon.
Denis Phares 21:41
Tyson Falk from Ioneer. Thank you for listening to the Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast. And be sure to subscribe on any of your favorite listening platforms.
