ADVERTISEABOUT USSUBMIT A STORYSUBSCRIBETERMS OF USEPRIVACY POLICY
Visit our family of Brands

US awards $3B for EV battery production in Texas, other states

charging up

The grants will fund a total of 25 projects in 14 states, including Texas. Photo via Getty Images

The Biden administration is awarding over $3 billion to U.S. companies to boost domestic production of advanced batteries and other materials used for electric vehicles, part of a continuing push to reduce China’s global dominance in battery production for EVs and other electronics.

The grants will fund a total of 25 projects in 14 states, including Texas, as well as Ohio, South Carolina, Michigan, North Carolina, and Louisiana.

The grants announced Friday mark the second round of EV battery funding under the bipartisan infrastructure law approved in 2021. An earlier round allocated $1.8 billion for 14 projects that are ongoing. The totals are down from amounts officials announced in October 2022 and reflect a number of projects that were withdrawn or rejected by U.S. officials during sometimes lengthy negotiations.

The money is part of a larger effort by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to boost production and sales of electric vehicles as a key element of their strategy to slow climate change and build up U.S. manufacturing. Companies receiving awards process lithium, graphite or other battery materials, or manufacture components used in EV batteries.

“Today’s awards move us closer to achieving the administration’s goal of building an end-to-end supply chain for batteries and critical minerals here in America, from mining to processing to manufacturing and recycling, which is vital to reduce China’s dominance of this critical sector,'' White House economic adviser Lael Brainard said.

The Biden-Harris administration is "committed to making batteries in the United States that are going to be vital for powering our grid, our homes and businesses and America’s iconic auto industry,'' Brainard told reporters Thursday during a White House call.

The awards announced Friday bring to nearly $35 billion total U.S. investments to bolster domestic critical minerals and battery supply chains, Brainard said, citing projects from major lithium mines in Nevada and North Carolina to battery factories in Michigan and Ohio to production of rare earth elements and magnets in California and Texas.

“We’re using every tool at our disposal, from grants and loans to allocated tax credits,'' she said, adding that the administration's approach has leveraged more $100 billion in private sector investment since Biden took office.

In recent years, China has cornered the market for processing and refining key minerals such as lithium, rare earth elements and gallium, and also has dominated battery production, leaving the U.S. and its allies and partners "vulnerable,'' Brainard said.

The U.S. has responded by taking what she called “tough, targeted measures to enforce against unfair actions by China.” Just last week, officials finalized higher tariffs on Chinese imports of critical minerals such as graphite used in EV and grid-storage batteries. The administration also has acted under the 2022 climate law to incentivize domestic sourcing for EVs sold in the U.S. and placed restrictions on products from China and other adversaries labeled by the U.S. as foreign entities of concern.

"We're committed to making batteries in the United States of America,'' Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

If finalized, awards announced Friday will support 25 projects with 8,000 construction jobs and over 4,000 permanent jobs, officials said. Companies will be required to match grants on a 50-50 basis, with a minimum $50 million investment, the Energy Department said.

While federal funding may not be make-or-break for some projects, the infusion of cash from the infrastructure and climate laws has dramatically transformed the U.S. battery manufacturing sector in the past few years, said Matthew McDowell, associate professor of engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

McDowell said he is excited about the next generation of batteries for clean energy storage, including solid state batteries, which could potentially hold more energy than lithium ion.

From Your Site Articles
A proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule intended to encourage industry to adopt best practices that reduce emissions of methane and thereby avoid paying. Photo via Canva

EPA sets out rules for proposed 'methane fee' for waste generated by oil and natural gas companies

pollution deterrent

Oil and natural gas companies for the first time would have to pay a fee for methane emissions that exceed certain levels under a rule proposed Friday by the Biden administration.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule follows through on a directive from Congress included in the 2022 climate law. The new fee is intended to encourage industry to adopt best practices that reduce emissions of methane and thereby avoid paying.

Methane is a climate “super pollutant” that is more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide and is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. The oil and natural gas sector is the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States, and advocates say reduction of methane emissions is an important way to slow climate change.

Excess methane produced this year would result in a fee of $900 per ton, with fees rising to $1,500 per ton by 2026.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the proposed fee would work in tandem with a final rule on methane emissions EPA announced last month. The fee, formally known as the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, will encourage early deployment of available technologies to reduce methane emissions and other harmful air pollutants before the new standards take effect, he said.

The rule announced in December includes a two-year phase-in period for companies to eliminate routine flaring of natural gas from new oil wells.

“EPA is delivering on a comprehensive strategy to reduce wasteful methane emissions that endanger communities and fuel the climate crisis,” Regan said in a statement. When finalized later this year, the proposed methane fee will set technology standards that will “incentivize industry innovation'' and spur action to reduce pollution, he said.

Leading oil and gas companies already meet or exceed performance levels set by Congress under the climate law, meaning they will not have to pay the proposed fee, Regan and other officials said.

Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he was pleased the administration was moving forward with the methane fee as directed by Congress.

“We know methane is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere in the short term,'' said Carper, D-Del. He said the program "will incentivize producers to cut wasteful and excessive methane emissions during oil and gas production.”

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said oil and gas companies have long calculated that it's cheaper to waste methane through flaring and other techniques than to make necessary upgrades to prevent leaks.

“Wasted methane never makes its way to consumers, but they are nevertheless stuck with the bill,” Pallone said. The proposed methane fee “will ensure consumers no longer pay for wasted energy or the harm its emissions can cause.''

Republicans call the methane fee a tax that could raise the price of natural gas. “This proposal means increased costs for employers and higher energy bills for millions of Americans,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's largest lobbying group, slammed the proposal Friday and called for Congress to repeal it.

“As the world looks to U.S. energy producers to provide stability in an increasingly unstable world, this punitive tax increase is a serious misstep that undermines America’s energy advantage,'' said Dustin Meyer, API's senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs.

While the group supports “smart” federal methane regulation, the EPA proposal “creates an incoherent, confusing regulatory regime that will only stifle innovation and undermine our ability to meet rising energy demand,'' Meyer said. “We look forward to working with Congress to repeal the IRA’s misguided new tax on American energy.”

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, called the proposed fee "common sense,'' adding that oil and gas companies should be held accountable for methane pollution, a primary source of global warming.

In a related development, EPA said it is working with industry and others to improve how methane emissions are reported, citing numerous studies showing that and oil and gas companies have significantly underreported their methane emissions to the EPA under the agency's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

The climate law, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, established a waste-emissions charge for methane from oil and gas facilities that report emissions of more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year to the EPA. The proposal announced Friday sets out details of how the fee will be implemented, including how exemptions will be applied.

The agency said it expects that over time, fewer oil and gas sites will be charged as they reduce their emissions in compliance with the rule.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

CERAWeek crowns winners of 2026 clean tech pitch competition

top teams

Twelve teams from around the country, including several from Houston, took home top honors at this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition at CERAWeek.

The fast-paced event, held March 25, put on by Rice Alliance, Houston Energy Transition Initiative and TEX-E, invited 36 industry startups and five Texas-based student teams focused on driving efficiency and advancements in the energy transition to present 3.5-minute pitches before investors and industry partners during CERAWeek's Agora program.

The competition is a qualifying event for the Startup World Cup, where teams compete for a $1 million investment prize.

PolyJoule won in the Track C competition and was named the overall winner of the pitch event. The Boston-based company will go on to compete in the Startup World Cup held this fall in San Francisco.

PolyJoule was spun out of MIT and is developing conductive polymer battery technology for energy storage.

Rice University's Resonant Thermal Systems won the second-place prize and $15,000 in the student track, known as TEX-E. The team's STREED solution converts high-salinity water into fresh water while recovering valuable minerals.

Teams from the University of Texas won first and second place in the TEX-E competition, bringing home $25,000 and $10,000, respectively. The student winners were:

Companies that pitched in the three industry tracts competed for non-monetary awards. Here are the companies named "most-promising" by the judges:

Track A | Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization

Track B | Advanced Manufacturing, Materials, & Other Advanced Technologies

  • First: Licube, based in Houston
  • Second: ZettaJoule, based in Houston and Maryland
  • Third: Oleo

Track C | Innovations for Traditional Energy, Electricity, & the Grid

The teams at this year's Energy Venture Day have collectively raised $707 million in funding, according to Rice. They represent six countries and 12 states. See the full list of companies and investor groups that participated here.

TotalEnergies $1B payout shows evolution in Trump's anti-wind strategy

Shift in the Winds

The Trump administration’s $1 billion payout to TotalEnergies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind development is a novel tactic against the industry that supporters see as creative — but opponents see as foolish and extreme.

The Interior Department announced March 23 that TotalEnergies agreed to what is essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Texas and other fossil fuel projects instead. The department hailed it as an “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant so that the "American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.”

The tactical shift comes after federal courts have thwarted President Donald Trump's efforts to stop offshore wind through executive action.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, told The Associated Press that the payment “sets a dangerous precedent and is a shortsighted misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Robin Shaffer, president of the anti-offshore wind group Protect Our Coast New Jersey, applauded what he called “out of the box” thinking. Shaffer said after losing in the courts, the administration needed a way to take back leases that never should have been issued because of the harm offshore wind development causes to the marine environment.

“The Trump administration has been relentlessly creative in its efforts to stop offshore wind development in the U.S.," he said.

While the Republican president has been particularly hostile to offshore wind, he has also blocked dozens of clean energy projects and canceled billions of dollars in grants to promote clean energy, which he derides as the “Green New Scam.” This comes at a time when the U.S. is trying to boost power supplies in an artificial intelligence race against China and keep electricity bills from rising even higher.

The Iran war has also dealt a massive energy shock to the global economy by choking off most exports of crude oil and liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz.

A vow to stop offshore wind

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to end the offshore wind industry as soon as he returned to the White House. Trump said wind turbines are horrible and expensive and pose a threat to birds and other wildlife.

Connecticut is getting power from Revolution Wind, an offshore wind project, and estimates it will lower wholesale energy costs for the state. The National Audubon Society, which is dedicated to the conservation of birds, has said climate change is a greater threat to birds.

Trump has long opposed offshore wind energy. In 2015, he lost his yearslong battle to stop an offshore wind farm near Aberdeen in eastern Scotland when Britain’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled against him. Trump claimed the 11 turbines would spoil the view from his golf course.

He wants to boost production of oil, natural gas and coal, which cause climate change, because he argues that doing so would give the U.S. the lowest-cost energy and electricity of any nation in the world.

His first day back in office, he acted on his campaign promise, signing an executive order temporarily halting offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pausing permitting for all wind projects.

The deal comes after the administration is thwarted by the courts

U.S. District Judge Patti Saris vacated Trump’s executive order blocking wind energy projects on Dec. 8, declaring it unlawful as she sided with state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., who challenged the order. The administration is appealing.

Two weeks later, the administration ordered that construction stop on five major East Coast offshore wind projects, citing national security concerns. Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government didn't show that the national security risk was so imminent that construction must halt.

TotalEnergies wasn't one of those; it had already paused its two projects soon after Trump was elected. And the company has now pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said the refunded lease fees will finance the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and the development of its oil and gas activities, calling it a “more efficient use of capital” in the U.S.

Kit Kennedy, who directs the power division at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the proposed payment to TotalEnergies was a “boondoggle” that “transfers nearly $1 billion from American taxpayers to a foreign corporation and the oil and gas industry.”

Why is the U.S. using taxpayer dollars “to not develop power when we need energy?” she asked, calling the Trump administration deal a “scam” and harmful to the U.S. economy and environment.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor who has been following the lawsuits, called it “unorthodox.”

Democrats criticize stopping offshore wind when energy prices are spiking

As crude oil and gasoline prices surge, Democrats in Virginia said the U.S. should be strengthening its energy independence and resilience. Virginia started receiving power on March 23 from an offshore wind project targeted by Trump.

“Giving an energy company $1 billion of taxpayer money to pack up its jobs and invest elsewhere — in the middle of an unpopular and unwise war that is spiking energy costs — is beyond idiotic,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said in a statement to AP.

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat, questioned whether the payout is legal under appropriations law and said she would question Interior Secretary Doug Burgum about it at the upcoming budget hearings.

Dozens of commercial leases issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management remain active for wind energy development in the U.S.

Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice, said she wouldn't attempt to guess whether the Trump administration will pay to stop any others, but clearly it is willing to go to extreme measures.

“Will they do this again? Maybe,” she said.

Baker Hughes teams up with Google and XGS on energy tech

project partners

Houston-based energy technology company Baker Hughes recently forged two significant partnerships—one with tech titan Google and another with geothermal power startup XGS Energy.

Under the Google Cloud partnership, announced at CERAWeek 2026, Baker Hughes technology will be paired with Google Cloud AI and data analytics to improve the performance of AI data centers’ power systems and energy-transfer machinery. Furthermore, the two companies will explore opportunities for data centers to extract greater value from underused industrial and operational data.

“Infrastructure that powers the growing demand for AI and cloud computing is becoming one of the most critical drivers of global electricity needs,” Lorenzo Simonelli, chairman and CEO of Baker Hughes, said in the announcement.

“Through this partnership with Google Cloud, we are bringing together world-class power technologies and digital capabilities to help data center operators improve efficiency, enhance reliability, and accelerate progress toward lower-carbon operations,” he added.

Through the XGS partnership, Baker Hughes will provide engineering services for XGS’ 150-megawatt geothermal project in New Mexico. The project will supply energy to the Public Service Co. of New Mexico grid in support of New Mexico data centers operated by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

“With this single project for Meta in New Mexico, XGS will increase the state’s operating geothermal capacity by tenfold,” says Ghazal Izadi, chief operating officer at XGS.

“Geothermal energy plays a vital role in delivering reliable, cleaner power at scale,” added Maria Claudia Borras, chief growth and experience officer and interim executive vice president of industrial and energy technology at Baker Hughes. “By collaborating with XGS at this early stage, we are applying our ground‑to‑grid capabilities to reduce technical risk, accelerate reservoir validation, and engineer an integrated solution to deliver … power efficiently and reliably.”

California-headquartered XGS, which has a major presence in Houston, is known for its proprietary solid-state geothermal system that uses thermally conductive materials to deliver affordable energy wherever there is hot rock.

View All Listings