E3 Lithium employees walk through the company’s lithium pilot plant near Olds

From the Canadian Energy Centre

E3 Lithium milestone advances critical mineral for batteries and electrification

A new Alberta facility has produced its first battery-grade lithium carbonate, showcasing a technology that could unlock Canada’s largest resources of a critical mineral powering the evolving energy landscape.

In an unassuming quonset hut in a field near Olds, Calgary-based E3 Lithium’s demonstration plant uses technology to extract lithium from an ocean of “brine water” that has sat under Alberta’s landscape along with oil and gas for millions of years.

Lithium is one of six critical minerals the Government of Canada has prioritized for their potential to spur economic growth and their necessity as inputs for important products.

“The use for lithium is now mainly in batteries,” said E3 Lithium CEO Chris Doornbos.

“Everything we use in our daily lives that has a battery is now lithium ion: computers, phones, scooters, cars, battery storage, power walls in your house.”

A vial of lithium at the E3 Lithium demonstration plant near Olds, Alta. CP Images photo

Doornbos sees E3 as a new frontier in energy and mineral exploration in Alberta, using a resource that has long been there, sharing the geologic space with oil and gas.

“[Historically], oil and water came out together, and they separated the oil from the water,” he said.

“We don’t have oil. We take the lithium out of the water and put the water back.”

Lithium adds to Canada’s natural resource strength — the country’s reserves rank sixth in the world, according to Natural Resources Canada.

About 40 per cent of these reserves are in Alberta’s Bashaw District, home to the historic Leduc oilfield, where E3 built its new demonstration facility.

“It’s all in our Devonian rocks,” Doonbos said. “The Devonian Stack is a carbonate reef complex that would have looked like the Great Barrier Reef 400 million years ago. That’s where the lithium is.”

Funded in part by the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta via Alberta Innovates and Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), the project aims to demonstrate that the Alberta reserve of lithium can be extracted and commercialized for battery production around the world.

E3 announced it had produced battery-grade lithium carbonate just over two weeks after commissioning began in early September.

Inside E3 Lithium’s demonstration facility near Olds, Alta. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

In a statement, ERA celebrated the milestone of the opening of the facility as Alberta and Canada seek to find their place in the global race for more lithium as demand for the mineral increases.

“By supporting the first extraction facility in Olds, we’re helping reduce innovation risk, generate critical data, and pave the way for a commercial-scale lithium production right here in Alberta,” ERA said.

“The success from this significant project helps position Alberta as a global player in the critical minerals supply chain, driving the global electrification revolution with locally sourced lithium.”

With the first phase of the demonstration facility up and running, E3 has received regulatory permits to proceed with a second phase that involves drilling a production and injection well to confirm brine flow rates and reservoir characteristics. This will support designs for a full-scale commercial facility.

Lithium has been highlighted by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) as an emerging resource in the province.

The AER projects Alberta’s lithium output will grow from zero in 2024 to 12,300 tonnes by 2030 and nearly 15,000 tonnes by 2034. E3 believes it will beat these timeframes with the right access to project financing.

E3 has been able to leverage Alberta’s regulatory framework around the drilling of wells to expand into extraction of lithium brine.

“The regulator understands intimately what we are doing,” Doornbos said.

“They permit these types of wells and this type of operation every day. That’s a huge advantage to Alberta.”

From the Resource Works team.

On Truth and Reconciliation Day, Canadians are asked to honour residential school survivors and to support the families and communities who must live with that history.

It also calls for action, not mere commemoration. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for structural change in Canada, and that means clearing the way for Indigenous leadership across this country.

Economic reconciliation is a practical journey that shifts decision-making and ownership towards First Nations and Indigenous people more generally.

Throughout B.C., First Nations are already practicing what that looks like. The Osoyoos Indian Band has built a diverse economy in tourism, wine, and recreation that has sustained steady jobs and revenue.

“I think all Native leadership need to get the economic development focus going on and make the economy the number one issue. It’s the economy that looks after everything,” Chief Clarence Louie has said. That sense of mission, along with assets like Nk’Mip Cellars and Spirit Ridge, has helped to turn Osoyoos into a B.C. success story.

On the coast, the Haisla Nation is leading in innovation in the LNG sector. In 2024, the Cedar LNG facility was granted a positive final investment decision, along with the Haisla’s majority ownership of the $4 billion project.

“Today is about changing the course of history for my Nation and Indigenous peoples,” said Haisla Chief Councillor Crystal Smith during the long approval process. By seeing the project through, Haisla ownership has created the means to fund language, health care, and opportunity for generations that had found all of that out of reach.

In the Lower Mainland, the Squamish Nation’s Sen̓áḵw development is one of the biggest projects in the Vancouver real estate market, and will become an asset for decades to come.

“This project is not just about buildings, it’s about bringing the Squamish People back to the land, making our presence felt once again in the heart of our ancestral territory, and creating long term wealth for the Squamish Nation,” said Council Chairperson Khelsilem.

The Squamish recently restructured the partnership so Squamish holds half of phases one and two and all of phases three and four, while welcoming OPTrust to a 50 percent stake in the early phases. Indigenous leadership is not just transforming the rural resource economy, but the urban one as well.

Chief Ian Campbell of the Squamish Nation, former chair of the Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase event in Vancouver, has said that economic reconciliation is essential to the future of Canada.

“To move forward and reframe that complex dynamic, and put the lens on economic reconciliation, to me, is the path forward to create mutual benefits and values that benefit all Canadians, which includes Indigenous people,” said Campbell.

For governments and industry, there is a duty to align policy, permitting, and capital flows with Indigenous-led priorities. Beyond benefits agreements, reconciliation requires listening both early and attentively, and ensuring cooperation every step of the way.

The Bank of Canada itself has noted that “tremendous untapped potential exists”, but only when private firms and public agencies commit to economic reconciliation.

Listening also means resisting the temptation to cast Indigenous peoples as either monolithic supporters or opponents of development. Figures like Ellis Ross, former Chief Councillor of the Haisla, and his successor Crystal Smith have challenged these narratives, pointing instead to Haisla and neighbouring Nations’ experience with real jobs, careers, and community services tied to LNG and related infrastructure.

The Haisla message is straightforward: the path to revitalized language and culture runs through sustained opportunity and self-determination.

Truth and Reconciliation Day is a reminder that the past matters, and this is evident in the inequities of the present and in the possibilities now being realized by Nations that are reclaiming jurisdiction and building enterprises on their own terms.

Our task is to ensure public policy and corporate practice do not get in the way. On September 30, we remember, and then on October 1 and every day after, we have work to do.