nick.nigro@atlaspolicy.com

Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), a global leader in the specialty chemicals industry, announced it has been awarded a nearly $150 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the first set of projects funded by the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and the electrical grid and for materials and components currently imported from other countries. The grant funding is intended to support a portion of the anticipated cost to construct a new, commercial-scale U.S.-based lithium concentrator facility at Albemarle's Kings Mountain, North Carolina, location.

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP), a lithium-ion battery pouch manufacturer, will create 352 new jobs in Davidson County, Governor Roy Cooper announced today. The company will invest $233 million to build its first U.S. advanced manufacturing facility in the City of Linwood.

Epsilon Advanced Materials, a global provider of synthetic graphite used in electric vehicle batteries, announced today it will invest $649.9 million in a new manufacturing facility outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. The project, which will create 500 jobs in Brunswick County, will be one of the largest economic development announcements in the Southeast part of the state in the past 10 years and the largest-ever investment in North Carolina by a company from India.

Construction began in July 2023, integrating into the Triangle Innovation Point megasite, and is projected to generate $529 million in property tax revenue over 20 years.

Natron Energy said on Thursday it planned to invest $1.4 billion in a sodium-ion battery manufacturing plant in North Carolina, potentially raising the company's production capacity by 40 times. The facility, located in Edgecombe County of the state, will produce 24 gigawatts (GW) of battery storage at full capacity on an annual basis.

Toyota has announced plans to invest an additional $8 billion in its electric battery manufacturing site in Randolph County, including hiring another 3,000 employees. This historic announcement comes on the heels of Governor Cooper’s meeting with Toyota President Koji Sato during the SEUS/Japan Conference in Tokyo earlier this month. Toyota’s total investment in the Randolph County site will now total $13.9 billion and more than 5,000 jobs.

The vehicles emit only water vapor and warm air as exhaust, reducing air pollution in the neighborhoods where they run. But producing and transporting hydrogen for the fuel cells can be a significant source of climate emissions, which is why SARTA is partnering with energy company Enbridge and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2, on a plan to make the fuel on-site with solar power. “So it will be green,” said Kirt Conrad, SARTA’s CEO, referring to the use of renewable energy to power the production of hydrogen by splitting water.

The nation’s first networked geothermal system owned by a utility went live June 4 in Framingham, Massachusetts. The roughly $15 million network of ground-source heat pumps will cool and heat 36 buildings without fossil fuels, says Eversource Energy, the utility leading the project. As decision-makers nationwide eye networked geothermal as a technology with the potential to decarbonize entire neighborhoods, the two-year Framingham pilot aims to offer lessons for other communities.

Of the $100 million, $53 million is available for business and public-sector EV fleet purchases, while nearly $38 million is designated to upgrade infrastructure for non-residential charger installations. An additional nearly $9 million is intended for residential charging stations.

Already, the startup has worked with ready-mix suppliers to provide its cement for projects with Caltrans, the City of Santa Cruz, and the City of Berkeley, alongside various California-based contracting companies. Last year, Fortera received $85 million in series C funding to expand operations beyond its plant in Redding, California. Since then, it has begun engineering an expanded plant at an undisclosed location in the Western U.S., with the capacity to produce 400,000 tons of cement per year. (The Redding plant produces 15,000 tons per year.)