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Sparks

ExxonMobil Is Getting into Lithium

Ready or not, here comes Mobil Lithium.

An Exxon sign.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

ExxonMobil on Monday announced plans to produce lithium in an area of southern Arkansas known for its vast deposits of the mineral, a key material in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries. The company aims to begin producing battery-grade lithium in 2027 in a 120,000-acre area known as the Smackover formation, “using conventional oil and gas drilling methods” from depleted oil wells. The ore would then be processed nearby, and sold as, imaginatively, Mobil Lithium.

An oil company’s desire to, in its words, “supply the manufacturing needs of well over a million EVs per year” by 2030 might seem akin to, well, a cigarette company getting into the vaping business. As Dan Becker of the Center for Biological Diversity toldThe New York Times, “[Lithium production is] an infinitesimal fraction of what Exxon does and most of what it does is dreadful.” But, he added, “we do need lithium, and it’s better that it comes from a spoiled industrial site where oil drilling used to take place than from a pristine place.”

ExxonMobil’s announcement comes just weeks after its $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources, a deal that will allow it to produce 2 million barrels of oil per day in the Permian Basin, the rich oil field stretching from west Texas to eastern New Mexico. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin noted at the time, ExxonMobil is also investing heavily in carbon-capture infrastructure and a Texas hydrogen plant. As it continues to expand across the southern United States, with ventures both clean and extremely dirty, ExxonMobil seems to be hedging its bets against an unpredictable energy future.

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Sparks

The Mad Dash to Lock Down Biden’s Final Climate Dollars

Companies are racing to finish the paperwork on their Department of Energy loans.

A clock and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Of the over $13 billion in loans and loan guarantees that the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office has made under Biden, nearly a third of that funding has been doled out in the month since the presidential election. And of the $41 billion in conditional commitments — agreements to provide a loan once the borrower satisfies certain preconditions — that proportion rises to nearly half. That includes some of the largest funding announcements in the office’s history: more than $7.5 billion to StarPlus Energy for battery manufacturing, $4.9 billion to Grain Belt Express for a transmission project, and nearly $6.6 billion to the electric vehicle company Rivian to support its new manufacturing facility in Georgia.

The acceleration represents a clear push by the outgoing Biden administration to get money out the door before President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to hollow out much of the Department of Energy, takes office. Still, there’s a good chance these recent conditional commitments won’t become final before the new administration takes office, as that process involves checking a series of nontrivial boxes that include performing due diligence, addressing or mitigating various project risks, and negotiating financing terms. And if the deals aren’t finalized before Trump takes office, they’re at risk of being paused or cancelled altogether, something the DOE considers unwise, to put it lightly.

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Sparks

Treasury Finalizes Another IRA Tax Credit Before You Know What

The expanded investment tax credit rules are out.

The Treasury Department building.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In the waning days of the Biden administration, the Treasury Department is dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the tax rules that form the heart of the Inflation Reduction Act and its climate strategy. Today, Treasury has released final rules for the Section 48 Investment Tax Credit, which gives project owners (and/or their tax equity partners) 30% back on their investments in clean energy production.

The IRA-amended investment tax credit, plus its sibling production tax credit, are updates and expansion on tax policies that have been in place for decades supporting largely the solar and wind industries. To be clear, today’s announcement does not contain the final rules for the so-called “technology-neutral” clean electricity tax credits established under the IRA, which will supercede the existing investment and production tax credits beginning next year and for which all non-carbon emitting sources of energy can qualify.

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Sparks

Trump’s OMB Pick Wants to Purge the Government of ‘Climate Fanaticism’

Re-meet the once and future director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought.

Russ Vought.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

President-elect Donald Trump spent the Friday evening before Thanksgiving filling out nearly the rest of his Cabinet. He plans for his Treasury secretary to be a hedge fund manager who’s called the Inflation Reduction Act “the Doomsday machine for the deficit”; he’s named a vaccine safety skeptic to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and his pick to head the Department of Labor is a Republican congresswoman who may want to ease the enforcement of child labor rules if confirmed.

And — in one of the most consequential moves yet for America’s standing in the fight to mitigate climate change — Trump also named Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget. The decision comes as no surprise — Vought served as deputy director of the OMB under Trump in 2018 and took over the top job in 2019, serving until the end of Trump’s first presidency. The strategic communications group Climate Power had been sounding the alarm on his potential return to the office since this spring, which included sharing their research on him with me.

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