I just watched the hour-long webinar “U.S. Department of Energy Roundtable: A National Lithium Battery Blueprint”, hosted by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. Last week with great fanfare LAC announced that Jon Evans would be participating, and he was even mentioned as a participant at the start of the roundtable, but in fact he did not participate at all.

The participants represented ALbermarle, Applied Materials (semi-conductors), REC Silicon, Solid Power (solid state batteries), Kore Power (battery cells), TSLA, and Redwood Materials (recycling). Each had a few minutes to update/promote their cause and say what government can or must do to support the battery supply chain in the US. 

Lots of platitudes and the words “challenges” and “opportunities” were thrown around liberally. Although responsible, sustainable critical minerals mining was mentioned, it was clearly not the focus. The focus tended to be more on jobs created by processing materials and building batteries. 

Two positive points I took were that the TSLA rep mentioned that they were seeking partnerships within the US for critical minerals for their battery production, which could very well be LAC because it is the biggest and closest to production, and that the government was going to employ more public/private partnerships, especially where jobs created would advantage underrepresented groups in the workforce, perhaps such as American Indians (my suggestion). 

I was disappointed that Evans did not participate. I cannot imagine that it was because he pulled out, so I am wondering if it was determined at the last minute that it would be inappropriate because of the upcoming court cases where the federal government is effectively the defendant? I have sent an email to LAC’s Investor Relations asked them about his absence. Hopefully I hear back.