A new US Geological Survey assessment suggests North and South Carolina may sit atop one of the country’s largest untapped lithium resources, a discovery that could carry outsized importance as utilities lean on battery storage to keep pace with rising electricity demand from AI data centers.
The study, published in Natural Resources Research, estimates the southern Appalachian region holds a median recoverable undiscovered resource of 1.43 million metric tons of lithium oxide, with the Carolinas likely hosting most of it. Researchers said that volume could theoretically replace more than 200 years of current US lithium imports. The USGS used geological mapping, geochemistry, geophysics, and probabilistic modeling to estimate how much lithium-bearing pegmatite may remain undiscovered across the region, building on known deposits at the Carolina Lithium and Kings Mountain sites, which already contain an estimated 1.6 million metric tons of lithium oxide in identified resources.
Why This Matters for Data Centers
Lithium is best known for its role in electric vehicles, but lithium-ion batteries are also central to grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS), which utilities increasingly use to manage load spikes tied to data centers, manufacturing, electrification, and population growth.
Robert LaChance, a technical leader in energy storage and distributed generation at EPRI, said data center demand strengthens the case for BESS deployment because most grid stress occurs over windows ranging from minutes to a few hours. He noted that battery storage can shift power more cost-effectively and faster than building new transmission and distribution infrastructure, and can help utilities improve overall grid utilization while shifting solar and wind generation to when it’s needed most.
Duke Energy, which serves a territory facing growth from data centers, AI, manufacturing, and population increases, said storage is expected to play a larger role in its resource mix but is not a dedicated power source for data centers specifically. A spokesperson described battery storage as part of a shared grid system that improves reliability for all customers while enabling more renewable use.
Lithium Supply Isn’t the Real Bottleneck
Albemarle Corporation is currently seeking permits to restart and expand mining at its Kings Mountain site, one of the few known hard-rock lithium deposits in the US, reviving operations idled since the early 1990s.
Even so, LaChance cautioned that raw lithium availability is not the primary constraint on battery storage growth in the near term. He pointed instead to manufacturing capacity, project economics, skilled labor shortages, and interconnection and grid infrastructure bottlenecks as more pressing challenges. Much of the world’s battery cell manufacturing remains concentrated in Asia, and battery prices have recently begun rising after a period of oversupply.
For hosting and data center operators watching power availability closely, the takeaway is that domestic lithium resources are a long-term supply chain asset, but refining capacity, manufacturing, and grid interconnection will determine how quickly that material translates into usable storage capacity.