Charge Me Up: The Battery Mineral Rush

Billions to battery metal processors and recyclers. Battery nerds unite. Plus, GreenlashWatch is back.

Welcome back to Wicked Problems.

Yesterday was the first full day of a £12.50 ULEZ charge being extended across London, but a Zero Emissions Zone that would have completely banned ICE cars from the city centre seems to have been dropped. Florida braces for bathwater-hot-seas-supercharged Hurricane Idalia to make landfall. Twice. And planned GHG emissions cuts are nowhere near enough to avoid catastrophic climate change, according to [wait. wut?] ExxonMobil.

I Could Teach You, But I Have to Charge

Critical minerals are the new hotness. Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, Manganese, even sand. Securing the stuff crucial to producing the batteries that Auto OEMs wrap a chassis and drivetrain around and call an EV, or at gigascale to replace a coal or gas-fired power plant, is driving serious investment this week.

Redwood Materials, a now $5 Billion valued battery materials recycling and processing startup led by Tesla co-founder JB Staubel, raised an eye-popping $1 Billion Series D yesterday led by