The Advocate. March 6, 2024.
Editorial: Louisiana poised to lead the latest energy boom: renewables
The worldwide energy crisis triggered by climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also created unprecedented demand for renewable power sources. The International Energy Agency, an autonomous intergovernmental organization that tracks and forecasts global energy trends, predicts the world will add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the past 20.
That surge in demand will, in turn, create enormous opportunities for regions that already have strategic locations, natural resources and embedded industries that align with new technologies created to meet that demand.
If that narrative sounds vaguely familiar to folks in south Louisiana, it should. It’s the same scenario that catapulted our state onto the world stage as a leader in energy research, development and production back in the 1970s.
Otherwise known hereabouts as the Oil Boom.
Today, Louisiana remains a leader in oil and gas production. At the same time, our state is uniquely poised to capitalize on the next energy boom — renewables, particularly electric vehicle batteries and their components.
President Joe Biden has made domestic EV battery supply chains a priority, and in just the last two years Louisiana has become an early leader in that sector. In fact, Louisiana officials announced four EV battery component projects in the last year alone, and five in the last two years.
The most recent was UBE Corporation’s announcement on Feb. 29 that it will move forward with a $500 million plant at Cornerstone Chemical Company’s existing complex in Waggaman. The century-old Japanese industrial giant will turn Cornerstone byproducts into solvents used to make lithium-ion EV batteries.
When it begins operating late next year, UBE’s plant will be the first manufacturing facility of its kind in the United States.
Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bonnett Bourgeois called UBE’s investment “another win for southeast Louisiana’s manufacturing workforce.”
Indeed, it’s a big win for all of Louisiana, because it comes amid a wave of industrial investment in renewables in our state:
1. Koura, a Massachusetts-based company, announced last year it would invest $800 million in two EV battery material production units in the Iberville Parish community of St. Gabriel.
2. Element 25, an Australian mining company, plans to open a $480 million EV battery material plant in Ascension Parish by 2025.
3. Capchem Technology USA Inc. announced in November that it will build a $350 million plant — also in Ascension Parish — to produce solvents needed for EV batteries.
These and other green energy projects will bring billions of dollars of investment into Louisiana and create thousands of direct and indirect jobs.
Equally important, they will showcase Louisiana’s “all of the above” approach to energy development — particularly clean energy, which experts predict will power most of the world in our lifetimes.
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