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Why Spencer Gore decided it was time for Bedrock Materials to close up shop.
It wasn’t too long ago that the battery world was abuzz over sodium-ion batteries and their potential to be a cost-effective domestic competitor to the Chinese-dominated lithium-ion industry. The prevalence of sodium and the early-stage sodium-ion supply chain seemed to give the U.S. a shot at developing the next big battery for electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
But this past weekend, a promising sodium-ion startup called Bedrock Materials announced that it was shutting down and returning most of its $9 million seed funding to investors. The reason, according to CEO Spencer Gore? Its business model no longer made sense.
“We were responding to a very unique moment in the history of the battery industry,” Gore explained to me about his decision to start the company, which made cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries, in 2023. “Lithium prices had gone up about 10-fold, and so had other battery minerals by lesser degrees.” Experts predicted that the world was in for a long-term lithium shortage. Then the opposite happened: Lithium producers rapidly ramped up supply at the same time EV demand growth slowed, leading to oversupply and a 90% drop in price.
Before all of that happened, Bedrock saw the EV market as a good bet. Automakers were telling Gore that their first priority was lowering costs, and sodium-ion batteries seemed well positioned to help with that. The EV industry was also orders of magnitude larger than the battery storage market, and stood to benefit from the $7,500 consumer tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act, which incentivizes the use of domestic minerals and battery components.
The election of Donald Trump threw the future of that tax credit into sudden doubt. The cratering raw minerals market, on the other hand, didn’t immediately translate into falling prices for lithium-iron-phosphate cathodes, the chemistry Gore saw as Bedrock’s main competitor, he told me. So long as this lasted, he thought, Bedrock’s business would be viable. But it didn’t.
“LFP prices have now crashed down to the point where it would almost be a viable business to extract the lithium from them and sell it on the open market,” Gore told me. “The active material producers are running single-digit margins. And so when that happened, it just became clear that the economic case for sodium had collapsed.”
Not everyone agrees that the domestic sodium-ion industry is doomed. Bay Area-based Peak Energy, for example, is still chugging away, and the company’s president and chief commercial officer, Cam Dales, told me he doesn’t expect to face the same headwinds as Bedrock. For one, Peak is targeting the sodium-ion energy storage market rather than the EV market, which means that energy density — sodium-ion’s weak point — is not as important a factor. Secondly, Peak is not in the business of producing battery materials, which Dales sees as an inherently risky and low-margin proposition. Rather, the company plans to produce battery cells domestically by 2028, while sourcing cathode and anode materials from other, ideally domestic, manufacturers.
So while the economic benefits of sodium-ion batteries have certainly diminished, Dales told me that the potential performance benefits — longer cycle life, greater efficiency, and ability to withstand high temperatures — are exceeding his initial expectations. Specifically, Peak is developing a cathode chemistry composed of sodium iron phosphate powder, which Dales claims will save customers money over the 20-year lifetime of a storage project, even if the upfront cost of sodium-ion battery cells is now higher than LFP. “System-level and project-level economics vastly outweigh smaller differences at the cell level,” Dales claimed.
The two industry leaders know each other well, as they used to work together at the lithium-ion battery manufacturer Enovix, where Dales was the chief commercial officer and Gore led the EV products team. Dales said he was bummed to learn of Bedrock’s closure, but not surprised. For domestic battery materials producers such as Bedrock to thrive, Dales told me, he thinks temporary policies that protect and nurture their growth will be necessary to ensure they’re not instantly outcompeted by Chinese incumbents.
“Absent that, it’s hard to see how you build a new materials company in the U.S. and compete against a fully scaled supply chain in China,” he told me.
Indeed, when I asked Gore if there was anything he wished he had done differently, he responded without hesitation, “I would have gone to China the very first day that I founded the company.” When he did visit months later, he said his main takeaway was that “most of the sodium-ion companies in China were producing material at scale, but losing money doing it,” even though they were “essentially producing sodium-ion materials on the exact same production lines that they had been using for lithium-ion materials.” The interchangeability of the two production processes made it crystal clear to Gore that Chinese battery giants such as CATL and BYD already had a tremendous advantage over the U.S., which doesn’t have scaled-up battery facilities.
This is why Gore now rejects the notion that the U.S. could win the race to scale up sodium-ion. “If you lost it for lithium-ion, you’ve already lost it for sodium. It’s the same thing, same equipment, same process.” Now he’s more interested in figuring out a way to facilitate a “once-in-a-generation” transfer of knowledge and technology between the U.S. and China. As it stands, he told me, “they’re 20 years ahead of the rest of the world, and we can’t even tie our own shoes.”
Ironically, bolstering domestic industry was the primary rationale behind Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, which have since been put on pause for every nation except China, which will now be subject to 145% levies. And while Dales thinks tariffs would be a net-positive for his company, Gore told me he doesn’t expect them to help the domestic sodium-ion industry overall.
For one, tariffs will make the price of constructing domestic battery materials and cell facilities even more expensive than it already is relative to China. “So that’s one thing nudging us towards spreading out the factory costs over more energy dense cells,” Gore told me. Another incentive to optimize for energy density, tariffs or not, is the 45x tax credit, which gives cell manufacturers $35 per kilowatt-hour for domestically produced cells. “On a global basis, there’s a strong incentive for the most energy dense cells to be produced in the U.S.,” he argued.
While Peak will also have to contend with higher construction costs due to Trump’s tariffs as it builds out its sodium-ion cell production facility, the company’s customers are independent power producers and utilities that can pass cost increases onto ratepayers. This will mean higher electricity costs for Americans, which Dale acknowledged is not ideal, but he also told me, “I don’t think it actually affects our business that much.” While the company wouldn’t publicly disclose its partnerships, Dales said it’s “working with the majority of the large IPPs in the country,” as well as “a number of” utilities.
Gore thinks it’s possible that the sodium-ion performance advantages Peak is betting on will prove to be compelling for customers and investors in the energy storage space. It’s just not a bet he was willing to take. While Bedrock did explore pivoting into the energy storage market, Gore said he concluded that LFP batteries could likely be engineered to achieve the same cycle life, efficiency, and operating temperature benefits that Dales thinks makes sodium-ion stand out.
“Ultimately, we failed to find a niche where we thought that sodium was the best product,” Gore told me. Some investors were initially reluctant to accept that. They encouraged Bedrock to keep going, to pivot, to place a different bet. They had certainly never had a founder try and give back money before, Gore said. But to him, it just made good sense.
“It’s still possible that we would have succeeded,” he told me. “But I think that the likely size of the success and the likelihood of a success, given everything that we’ve now learned, is considerably smaller. The best expected value for us and for our investors was to simply return their money.”
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How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.
The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.
As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.
What’s received less attention than the eagles is that Trump’s team signaled it could go even further by using the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a separate statute intended to support bird species flying south through the U.S. from Canada during typical seasonal migration periods. At the bottom of an Interior press release published in late July, the department admitted it was beginning a “careful review of avian mortality rates associated with the development of wind energy projects located in migratory flight paths,” and would determine whether migratory birds dying because of wind farms qualified as “‘incidental’ takings” – harm or death – under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
While not stated explicitly, what this means is that the department appears to be considering whether to redefine these deaths as intentional under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to Ben Cowan, a lawyer with the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
I reached out to Cowan after the eagle investigation began because his law firm posted a bulletin warning that developers “holding active eagle permits” might want to prepare for “subpoenas that may be forthcoming.” During our chat earlier this month, he told me that the eagle probe is likely going to strain financing for projects even on private lands that wouldn’t require any other forms of federal sign-off: “Folks don’t want to operate if they feel there’s a significant risk they might take an eagle without authorization.”
Cowan then voiced increasing concern about the migratory bird effort, however, because the law on this matter could be a quite powerful – if legally questionable – weapon against wind development.
Unlike the Endangered Species Act or the eagle protection law, there is currently no program on the books for a wind project developer to even obtain a permit for incidental impacts to a migratory bird. Part of the reason for the absence of such a program is the usual federal bureaucratic struggle that comes with implementing a complex statute, with the added effect of the ping-pong of federal control; the Biden administration started a process for permitting “incidental” impacts, but it was scrapped in April by the Trump team. Most protection of migratory birds under the law today comes from voluntary measures conducted by private companies and nonprofits in consultation with the federal government.
Hypothetically, hurting a migratory bird should be legally permissible to the federal government. That’s because the administration loosened implementation of the law earlier this year with an Interior Department legal opinion that stated the agency would only go after harm that was “intentional” – a term of art under the statute.
This is precisely why Cowan is fretting about migratory birds, however. Asked why the wind industry hasn’t publicly voiced more anxiety about this potential move, he said industry insiders genuinely hope this is “bluster” because such a selective use of this law “would be so beyond the pale.”
“It’s basically saying the purpose of a wind farm is to kill migratory birds, which is very clearly not the case – it’s to generate renewable electricity,” Cowan told me, adding that any effort by the Interior Department would inevitably result in lawsuits. “I mean, look at what this interpretation would mean: To classify it as intentional take would say the purpose of operating a wind farm would be to kill a bird. It’s obviously not. But this seems to be a way this administration is contemplating using the MBTA to block the operation of wind farms.”
It’s worth acknowledging just how bonkers this notion is on first blush. Is the federal government actually going to decide that any operating wind farm could be illegal? That would put entire states’ power supplies – including GOP-heavy states like Iowa – in total jeopardy. Not to mention it would be harmful overall to take operating capacity offline in any fashion at a moment when energy demand is spiking because of data centers and artificial intelligence. Even I, someone who has broken quite a few eye-popping stories about Trump’s war on renewables, struggle to process the idea of the government truly going there on the MBTA.
And yet, a door to this activity is now open, like a cleaver hanging over the industry’s head.
I asked the Interior Department to clarify its timeline for the MBTA review. It declined to comment on the matter. I would note that in mid-August, the Trump administration began maintenance on a federal dashboard for tracking regulations such as these and hasn’t updated it since. So we’ll have to wait for nothing less than their word to know what direction this is going in.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – County commissioners approved the controversial AES Rancho Viejo solar project after months of local debate, which was rendered more intense by battery fire concerns.
2. Nantucket, Massachusetts – The latest episode of the Vineyard Wind debacle has dropped, and it appears the offshore wind project’s team is now playing ball with the vacation town.
3. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson is pausing permitting on Cypress Creek Renewables’ Carriger solar project despite a recommendation from his own permitting council, citing concerns from tribes that have dogged other renewables projects in the state.
4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – The county rejected what is believed to have been its first utility-scale solar project, flying in the face of its zoning staff.
5. Morrow County, Oregon – This county is opting into a new state program that purports to allow counties more input in how they review utility-scale solar projects.
6. Ocean County, New Jersey – The Jersey shoreline might not get a wind farm any time soon, but now that angst is spreading to battery storage.
7. Fairfield County, Ohio – Hey, at least another solar farm is getting permitted in Ohio.
Talking NEPA implementation and permitting reform with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer at Saul Ewing LLP.
This week’s conversation is with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP. I reached out to her to chat about permitting because, well, when is that not on all of our minds these days. I was curious, though, whether Trump’s reforms to National Environmental Policy Act regulations and recent court rulings on the law’s implementation would help renewables in any way, given how much attention has been paid to “permitting reform” over the years. To my surprise, there are some silver linings here – though you’ll have to squint to see them.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.
So walk me through how you see the Trump administration handling renewable energy projects right now under NEPA.
In general, the federal government has been much more reluctant to the timely issue of permits in contrast to what we might be seeing on the more traditional side of things.
But that’s separate from NEPA — it relates to public notice and comments and the opportunity for third parties to get involved, ensuring any decision-making on the government side is done in a way that’s evocative of a fair system. On the NEPA side, I don’t know if they’re going to treat renewables any differently than they’re going to treat other sorts of projects. That’s different, from a policy perspective, [from] how they’re handling the permits.
If, from a policy perspective, the federal government is less inclined to make a determination about a particular project — or if it decides that it doesn’t like wind, for example, and isn’t going to issue a permit — that’s different than the procedural elements associated with a NEPA review.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in the Seven County case that agencies can be granted a lot of deference in their reviews under NEPA, seeing it more as a procedural statute than a substantive roadblock. What will this lead to?
I think that what we’re seeing – and every agency’s different – but what the court said is that lower courts should defer to the agency to establish their own protocols under NEPA. They’ve begun to streamline the process by which they issue permits, issue notices of those permits, and give people the opportunity to comment on them.
What we’re anticipating will happen if the court gets its wishes – and candidly, I think this is a good thing for developers, on both the renewables and non-renewables side – is that we’ll see more expeditious permitting from the federal government.
You may not like the determinations. There’s a possibility that certain permits are denied if the nature of the permit is in conflict with the federal government’s policy and intention. But you’ll get a quicker decision than you used to get. And if there’s a will to issue a permit, you’ll get it faster.
We’ve heard the concept of permitting reform or NEPA reform as a leveling of the playing field, but in this environment, it is not entirely clear that’ll be the case. Where does the battleground turn then for those who get, as you put it, rejections faster?
That’s a great question. Regrettably, the immediate battleground is the courts. There is certainly a right and an opportunity for anybody who feels a determination was incorrect to challenge that, and to challenge the particular agency’s implementation of NEPA.
Okay, but what’s the remedy here if renewables companies are just getting rejections faster from the Trump team?
Without a real-world example, it’s hard to give you legal theories, but they will always exist. It’ll be circumstantial, and good lawyers always come up with good arguments. I don’t think this issue is fully resolved, either. The Supreme Court has done a favor to everybody by at least defining the issue, but now we’ll have to see what happens as agencies make these kinds of determinations.