In Cesano near Rome a local woman was stirring her coffee at the cafe while struggling to list the things that made her small town special.
“We have an army base outside town, a good restaurant for meat and truffles … and that’s about it,” Irene Patrignani, 29, said. “There’s also the train to Rome,” she added.
That could all be about to change after the discovery under Cesano of large deposits of lithium, an essential ingredient of electric car batteries.
European officials are now waking up to the need to dig deep to find the electro-chemical element, which is mainly mined in Australia, China and South America, closer to home as the continent looks to phase out new fossil fuel vehicles by 2035, and
© Times Newspapers Limited 2022.