Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling Plant Joins ‘Battery Belt’ in South Carolina

The Redwood Materials building in Carson City, Nev., in June 2019. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

A Nevada-based electric vehicle (EV) battery startup company has announced its plans for a $3.5 billion recycling, refining, and remanufacturing battery plant in Berkeley County near Charleston, South Carolina.

Redwood Materials, started by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, was referenced among key players in mineral production in President Joe Biden’s Feb. 22 Fact Sheet on Securing a Made in America Supply Chain for Critical Minerals.

The company’s investment marks the largest economic development project in the state, which will create 1,500 jobs, Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, said in a press release.

The South Carolina Battery Materials Campus will manufacture a circular supply chain for EVs, McMaster stated.

“To do so, the company will onshore production of the most critical components in batteries—the anode and cathode—to drive down costs and emissions while securing the supply chain within the United States,” McMaster said. “All battery components will be built from as much recycled material as possible. The more than 600-acre campus, located at Camp Hall Commerce Park in Ridgeville, will initially produce enough anode and cathode material for 100 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery cell production or 1 million electric vehicles each year.”

According to a press release from Redwood Materials, anode and cathode components currently aren’t produced in North America, and battery cell manufacturers must source them through the global supply chain, which will cost U.S. battery manufacturers $150 billion overseas on those components by 2030.

The Battery Belt

The new facility will be one of many adding to what is called the “Battery Belt,” an EV and EV component manufacturing corridor running from Michigan to Georgia.

“Yet, unless metals like lithium and nickel are produced and refined and remain in country for domestic anode and cathode manufacturing at scale, these American battery cell facilities will have to continually source the majority of their components, predominantly from Asia,” the press release said. “This will send most (50–75 percent) of the economic value and job creation overseas.”

To combat this, Redwood said its Battery Materials Campus will recycle, refine, and manufacture anode and cathode components on its campus.

In 2021, the company announced that it had raised $700 million from high-profile investment firms such as Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures firm and Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Earlier this year, the company secured a multibillion-dollar deal to supply Panasonic Energy of North America with cathode material for battery cells made in a Kansas facility.

President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has emphasized a crusade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an act providing federal incentives to companies that create policies centered around climate change.

The act allows for a $7,500 Clean Vehicle Credit for buyers of EVs manufactured in North America.

Since its August passage, announcements for EV and EV battery plants have become more frequent.

Redwood said it plans to break ground on the campus in 2023, with production beginning by the end of that year.