D.C. Residents Could Be Left in the Dark Without An Essential Federal Utility Assistance Program
The federal utility assistance program is in limbo after the entire staff was fired in April.
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Batteries are finding their way into everything – from cars to heavy equipment to the electric grid.
But scaling up production to meet the demands of a net-zero economy is complicated and contentious. In this 5-episode season, we’re digging into the ways batteries are made and asking: what gets mined, traded, and consumed on the road to decarbonization?
Season 4 of The Big Switch drops Feb 28th. Listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So far over this season we've traced the global lithium-ion battery supply chain from mining to processing to manufacturing. And we've put it all into a geopolitical and economic context.
China has been the world's biggest battery manufacturer for over a decade. By 2022, according to the IEA, China manufactured 76% of the world's batteries. But that's changing.
Batteries can replace gasoline in our cars, or diesel in our generators with electricity. But batteries and petroleum-based fuels share something in common: they both rely on energy-intensive processes to turn extracted materials into something useful.
To produce enough batteries to reach global net-zero goals, the International Energy Agency says we'll need to increase production of critical minerals by six fold by 2040. It's a monumental task.
On April 30, 2025, the United States and Ukraine signed a long-anticipated economic partnership agreement establishing the US–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA jointly organized a workshop from December 3rd to 6th, 2024, in Bellagio, Italy, on how to finance responsible critical mineral supply chains.
The critical minerals executive order signed by President Trump on March 20, 2025, aims to significantly increase domestic production of critical minerals within the United States.