The Long-Sought Step-Change In Renewable Energy Battery Tech May Have Arrived

“No, policymakers are not aware. But quite frankly, that’s my job. My job is to educate the policymakers because I’m the CEO of the company that makes that product. So it’s my job to educate them and get them to understand.”

That was part of what Craig Jones, the CEO of Forever Energy, told me when I interviewed him in mid-September. Jones said he has been making frequent trips to Washington, DC to build support for his company’s proposed project to manufacture vanadium flow batteries at scale in the United States, from a factory/processing complex he hopes to base at the Caddo-Bossier Port near Shreveport, Louisiana.

The question I had posed to Jones was whether he thinks the regulators and members of congress with whom he has been meeting firmly understand that an energy transition from America’s current fossil fuel-heavy energy mix to one that relies more on renewables like wind and solar, along with electric vehicles, will of necessity mean that the U.S. must get back into the mining and mineral extraction business in a very big way. The question seems especially relevant in the wake of this week’s killing of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s bill that was designed to streamline federal permitting projects for energy-related infrastructure projects.

“You’re exactly right,” Jones continued. “People have to understand solar panels are fantastic. They are a very low cost, reliable, nonpolluting form of generating electricity. But when the sun goes down, you’ve got a problem. You need storage.

“Our vanadium battery absorbs all of that solar generated electricity beautifully – it’s a beautiful combination. But to have a vanadium flow battery, I need a lot of vanadium. And so, exactly what you’re saying is right. The United States should not rely on foreign countries for this supply. There are domestic supplies.”

The U.S. has very ample domestic supplies, in fact. Jones emphasized several times during our discussion that vanadium is one of the most abundant minerals on earth, with twice the global volume of zinc. However, because 99% of its current usage is for the hardening of steel, vanadium has been produced and processed in just a small fraction of the volume of zinc. “Every year, 12 million tons of zinc are processed around the world, compared to only 100,000 tons of vanadium,” he said.

Another problem is that, because the vast preponderance of the world’s steel manufacturing currently happens in China, the mining, processing and supply chains for this critical mineral are virtually non-existent outside of that country. “The supply chain is just totally nascent,” Jones said, “and that’s why one of our big initiatives of Forever Energy is we propose to build a processing plant in Shreveport in the Caddo Bossier Port” to support the company’s manufacturing operation.

Jones said the processing plant would bring in waste streams of industrial fly ash, a by-product of coal-fired power generation and some other industrial processes, which in some applications is laden with vanadium. This emphasizes one of the advantages of siting Forever Energy’s operations in Shreveport, including its nexus with the Red River, which ultimately flows into the Mississippi River and thus connects to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Louisiana, and North Louisiana in particular offers a lot of benefits,” he said. “This vanadium processing plant that we’re talking about will be able to produce 80 million pounds of vanadium per year, which we need for our batteries. We need river access because that’s bringing in waste streams from all around. So logistically, that makes a lot of sense.”

In another recent interview, Bernadette Johnson, General Manager for Power and Renewables at Enverus, emphasized to me that the renewables industry would need to find a step-change in stationary battery technology in order to meet U.S. and global net-zero goals. This long-sought step-change in battery technology has always seemed to be right around the corner every year for the last several decades, but has never managed to actually arrive.

Jones agrees, and notes that his company can finally deliver that change in the stationary battery space.

“Right now, the market for batteries, for storage is lithium,” he said. “They’re various lithium chemistries. It’s the lithium batteries in your phones, your consumer electronics, your automobile, and many people want it to be the stationary storage standard as well.” Jones said he believes that must change, and pointed out that the Chinese have pivoted to other technologies like vanadium flow as the stationary storage standard and are already deploying it at scale.

Forever Energy is in the process of finalizing negotiations with the state of Louisiana related to the proposed site, and is also in the process of raising capital, both debt and equity. One key event scheduled to happen soon is a final decision on the approval of a $1.6 billion loan from the Department of Energy, and Jones noted that the recently-enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) also contains advanced manufacturing credits that the company will be able to access.

Jones believes northwest Louisiana’s already-existing hydrocarbon economy could serve to speed the process for getting all the needed permits in place. “Another advantage of north Louisiana and Louisiana in general, is that it already has existing processes through the hydrocarbon economy that’s there. So, permitting and what have you is more expedited. You’re not skipping any steps: It’s just that the bureaucracy there understands how to process them because they do it all the time.”

From the perspective of the energy transition and helping the country reach the aggressive climate-related goals laid out by the Biden administration, Jones believes his plant could be producing vanadium flow batteries at scale within a year and a half from the date financing and permits have been secured.

“Our battery is a plastic and water battery. We could do this very quickly,” he said.

As I wrote in an August story on the subject of vanadium flow batteries, a series of errors made across three presidential administrations and general bureaucratic incompetence has cause the United States to fall far behind China in the realm of vanadium flow battery development and deployment. Jones and his team at Forever Energy believe their project would give the U.S. an opportunity to start catching up over the next few years.

To do that, the company will need the help of the same government that allowed the technology, developed in a DOE lab, to be sold to Chinese interests in the first place. For those agencies, it represents a shot at some measure of redemption.