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ExxonMobil enters into off-take agreement with EV battery manufacturer

it's a deal

The off-take agreement will provide SK On with ExxonMobil's lithium produced in Arkansas. Photo via exxonmobil.com

ExxonMobil has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with South Korean electric vehicle battery developer SK On.

The deal aims to secure a multiyear off-take agreement of up to 100,000 metric tons of MobilTM Lithium from the company’s first planned project in Arkansas. SK On will use the lithium in its EV battery manufacturing operations in the United States, which will contribute to ExxonMobil’s 2023 goal of supplying lithium for nearly 1 million EV batteries annually by 2030, and also assist in the build out of a U.S. EV supply chain.

The Arkansas project proposes an extraction of lithium from underground saltwater deposits and converting it into battery-grade material onsite. The approach will produce lithium more efficiently and with fewer environmental impacts than traditional hard rock mining, according to ExxonMobil. Consumer electronics, energy storage systems, and other clean energy technologies have all shown increased use in lithium needs.

The planned production of MobilTM Lithium will use ExxonMobil's core capabilities in drilling, subsurface exploration, and chemical processing, which should offer U.S. EV battery manufacturers a lower-carbon lithium supply option.

“The world needs more lithium to support its emissions goals, and we're doing our part to drive solutions forward in the United States,” Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, says in a news release. “This collaboration with SK On demonstrates the leading role we play in the growing market for domestically sourced lithium, a market that’s advancing energy security and climate objectives, as well as supporting American manufacturing."

The annual production capacity of SK On in the U.S. alone is expected to reach more than 180 GWh in 2025. That production is enough to power around 1.7 million EVs per year.

“Through this partnership with ExxonMobil, we will continue strengthening battery supply chains in the U.S.,” Park Jong-jin, executive vice president of Strategic Procurement at SK On, adds.

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Nonprofit looks to grow Houston’s urban farming movement from the East End

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Small Places, a Houston-based urban agricultural nonprofit, is looking forward to putting down roots beyond the fresh vegetables they grow in the East End.

After securing a 40-year land agreement with Harris County, the organization, which provides produce to families facing food insecurity in the Second Ward, is expecting to open their new farm in February 2025. Small Places’ founders hope the 1.5 acres of land named Finca Tres Robles, located at 5715 Canal Street, will be the beginning of Houston’s urban farming movement.

Founded in 2014 by brothers Daniel, Mark, and Thomas Garcia-Prats, Small Places was born out of the latter brother’s desire to work on an organic farm in his hometown of Houston. After farming in Maine, Iowa, and Nicaragua, Thomas had hoped to manage an urban farm but was unable to find a place. He then roped his brothers, who had no agricultural background at the time, into creating one.

“I joke that my journey in agriculture started the day we started out there. We didn’t grow up gardening or farming or anything of the sort,” says Daniel, Small Places’ director of operations. “It was a big learning curve, but how we approached it to our benefit was through our diverse set of backgrounds.”

Brothers Mark, Daniel, and Thomas Garcia-Prats are the co-founders of Small Places, a Houston-based urban agricultural nonprofit growing fresh produce for families in the East End. Photo courtesy Small Places

Small Places began their need-based produce distribution programs through a partnership with nearby pre-school, Ninfa Lorenzo Early Childhood Center, providing food insecure families with fresh produce and later cooking lessons in 2017. When COVID-19 hit Houston in 2020, Daniel says Small Places pivoted towards becoming a redistribution center for their farming contacts who needed to offload produce as restaurants shut down, selling their crops through the organization. Their neighborhood produce program was then born, providing free boxes of produce to nearly 200 families in the East End at the pandemic’s peak.

“We found ourselves in the middle of two communities who were in need, one being people in our community who were losing jobs and were in need of food as well as our farming connections who were losing restaurant accounts,” Daniel explains.

Small Places currently assists 65 families living predominantly within two miles of their original location and they recently restarted their programming with Ninfa Lorenzo Early Childhood Center, and accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (SNAP) at their farm stand. Daniel says once Finca Tres Robles opens, Small Places plans to bring back cooking classes and educational seminars on healthy eating for which his brother Mark, a former teacher, created the original curriculum. The farm will also have a grocery store stocked with Finca Tres Robles' produce and eventually food staples from local vendors.

“Being social and preparing a meal can be fun, interesting, and delicious. Being able to pull all of that into a program was really important for us,” Daniel explains.

Farming successfully in the middle of Houston for their subsidized programs and produce market requires Small Places’ team to be strategic in their operations. Using his background in engineering and manufacturing, Daniel says they’ve closely monitored trends in which crops perform the best in Houston’s varied, humid climate over the past decade.

They also follow Thomas’s philosophy of allowing nature to work for them, planting crops at times when specific pests are minimal or integrating natural predators into their environment. And lots of composting. Daniel says they accept compostable materials from community members, before burying the raw organic matter in the earth in between their plant beds, allowing it to mature, then later using it to nourish their crops. Daniel says he and his co-founders hope to see more community-focused, sustainable operations like theirs spring up across Houston.

“Small Places is about hopefully more than one farm and really trying to turn urban agriculture and a farm like ours from a novel thing into something that’s just a part of communities and the fabric of Houston for generations to come,” Daniel says.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

Is Enron back? Houstonians aren't laughing at the joke

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An elaborate parody appears to be behind an effort to resurrect Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified the worst in American corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001.

If its return is comedic, some former employees who lost everything in Enron’s collapse aren’t laughing.

“It’s a pretty sick joke and it disparages the people that did work there. And why would you want to even bring it back up again?” said former Enron employee Diana Peters, who represented workers in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Here’s what to know about the history of Enron and the purported effort to bring it back.

What happened at Enron?

Once the nation’s seventh-largest company, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2, 2001, after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The energy company's collapse put more than 5,000 people out of work and wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions. Its aftershocks were felt throughout the energy sector.

Twenty-four Enron executives, including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted for their roles in the fraud. Enron founder Ken Lay’s convictions were vacated after he died of heart disease following his 2006 trial.

Is Enron coming back?

On Monday — the 23rd anniversary of the bankruptcy filing — a company representing itself as Enron announced in a news release it was relaunching as a “company dedicated to solving the global energy crisis.” It also posted a video on social media, advertised on at least one Houston billboard and a took out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle

In the minute-long video full of generic corporate jargon, the company talks about “growth” and “rebirth.” It ends with the words, “We’re back. Can we talk?”

In an email, company spokesperson Will Chabot said the new Enron was not doing any interviews yet, but "We’ll have more to share soon.”

Signs point to the comeback being a joke.

In the “terms of use and conditions of sale” on the company's website, it says “the information on the website about Enron is First Amendment protected parody, represents performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only.”

Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show College Company, an Arkansas-based LLC, owns the Enron trademark. The co-founder of College Company is Connor Gaydos, who helped create a joke conspiracy theory claiming all birds are actually government surveillance drones.

What do former Enron employees think of the company’s return?

Peters said she and some other former employees are upset and think the relaunch was “in poor taste.”

“If it’s a joke, it’s rude, extremely rude. And I hope that they realize it and apologize to all of the Enron employees,” Peters said.

Peters, 74, said she is still working in information technology because “I lost everything in Enron, and so my Social Security doesn’t always take care of things I need done.”

“Enron’s downfall taught us critical lessons about corporate ethics, accountability, and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Enron’s legacy was the employees in the trenches. Leave Enron buried,” she said.

But Sherron Watkins, Enron’s former vice president of corporate development and the main whistleblower who helped uncover the scandal, said she didn’t have a problem with the joke because comedy “usually helps us focus on an uncomfortable historical event that we’d rather ignore.”

“I think we use prior scandals to try to teach new generations what can go wrong with big companies,” said Watkins, who still speaks at colleges and conferences about the Enron scandal.

Danish renewable company’s largest solar project to power Texas grid, preserve prairie habitat

seeds planted

The largest solar project in the global portfolio of Danish renewable energy company Ørsted is now supplying power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid.

Ørsted, which maintains offices in Houston and Austin, just flipped the switch on its 468-megawatt Mockingbird Solar Center in Lamar County, which is northeast of Dallas-Fort Worth and directly south of the Texas-Oklahoma border. The $500 million project can produce enough power for 80,000 homes and businesses.

ERCOT provides power to more than 25 million Texas customers, representing 90 percent of the state’s electric load.

In conjunction with the solar project, Ørsted donated 953 acres to The Nature Conservancy to establish the Smiley Meadow Preserve. This area, adjacent to the Mockingbird facility, protects a tallgrass prairie habitat featuring more than 400 species of grasses and wildflowers. Accounting for land already owned by the conservancy, Smiley Meadow exceeds 1,000 acres.

“Through the power of partnership, Ørsted has helped The Nature Conservancy protect an irreplaceable landscape that might otherwise have been lost to development,” Suzanne Scott, The Nature Conservancy’s Texas state director, says in a news release.

Mockingbird Solar Center is part of Ørsted’s $20 billion investment in U.S. energy generation. With this project now online, Ørsted owns a portfolio of more than six gigawatts of onshore wind, solar, and battery storage projects that either are operating or are being built.

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