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You misread that. It's $5 of electricity. Nothing about the membrane, how long it lasts, any of the construction and maintenance costs, etc. And that's if that quote on the cost of electricity is remotely correct too.

And unless they have any of these facilities under construction, they're not going to contribute to supply issues in the next 3-5 years.

That's a lot of "would" and "may" in the article.

Battery and lithium breakthrough articles are a dime a dozen

It seems that a typical battery might only need 5-75 kg Lithium.

So that would then be < $400 if your computation is correct. So even better. Even if this cost would be on top of existing costs this would still be not prohibitively expensive.

[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/13/instagram-...