Events

Babst Calland joins the Institute for Energy Law and the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation (EMLF) at the 15th Appalachia Energy Law Conference (f/k/a Law of Shale Plays Conference), September 4-5, 2024. Focused on legal issues related to onshore energy production, primarily oil and gas production in Appalachia, this conference brings together clients, attorneys, professional landmen, and other professionals to learn and discuss important cases, concepts, and trends. In addition, the conference features multiple networking opportunities with other attendees.

Attorney Jim Chen will be a co-panelist for the “New Opportunities in the Emerging Transportation and Energy Sector” session. New technologies have emerged with the increasing growth of alternative energy into the grid mix. These new technologies expressly include the use of energy storage in the form of lithium-ion batteries that have proven to be a resilient and reliable option to store energy to even the flow of generation from intermittent sources such as wind and solar. The battery technology has also proven helpful in grid stabilization, supplemental sources for peak demand, and backup power in cases of failures. With the increasing demand for this technology growing in several sectors (e.g., electric vehicles as well as stationary application), questions have arisen regarding the sourcing of the raw materials and processing of minerals to manufacture those batteries. Currently, the majority of minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, bauxite and others are either produced or processed in foreign countries of concern (e.g., China). The current Administration has established a policy of onshoring sourcing of these minerals and their attendant processing in the United States. Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $2.3 billion loan to Lithium Americas for development of a lithium carbonate processing plant in Nevada. Additional incentives and funding for those incentives were included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This seminar will review the background in the growth of this new sector and how domestic industries in mining and mineral processing can potentially benefit from the new and developing federal policies supporting the growth of this industry.

Attorney Jenni Hicks will serve as a conference co-chair. For more information, click here.

Jim Chen

Jenni Hicks