Energy Exploration Technologies, Inc. (EnergyX), led by CEO Teague Egan, has moved the United States closer to building a reliable domestic lithium supply chain. The company recently commissioned its Project Lonestar™ lithium demonstration facility in Texas, marking a key milestone in scaling direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies.
This development comes at a time when lithium demand is rising sharply due to electric vehicles and energy storage systems. At the same time, the U.S. remains heavily dependent on foreign processing, particularly from China.
- According to the US import data and Lithium import data of the USA, the total value of US lithium imports reached $432.36 million in 2024, a 9% decline from the previous year.
- The total value of US lithium imports (cells & batteries) accounted for $205.29 million in the first 6 months of 2025.
Against this backdrop, EnergyX’s progress offers both technological validation and strategic value.
From Concept to Reality: How Project Lonestar™ Works
Project Lonestar™ is EnergyX’s first major lithium project in the United States and its second globally. The demonstration plant, located in the Smackover region spanning Texas and Arkansas, is now operational and uses industrial-grade systems rather than small pilot equipment.
- The facility produces around 250 metric tons per year of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE).
While this output is modest compared to global supply, its importance lies in proving that EnergyX’s proprietary GET-Lit™ technology can efficiently extract lithium from brine. The plant processes locally sourced Smackover brine, a resource that has historically been underutilized despite its lithium potential.
Unlike traditional lithium production, which often relies on hard-rock mining or evaporation ponds, DLE technology directly extracts lithium from brine using advanced filtration and chemical processes. This reduces production time and may lower environmental impact.
- More importantly, the Lonestar™ plant can supply 5 to 25 tons of battery-grade lithium samples to customers.
This allows battery manufacturers to test and validate the material before committing to large-scale supply agreements.
Scaling Up: From Demonstration to Commercial Production
The demonstration plant is only the first phase of a much larger plan. EnergyX aims to scale Project Lonestar™ into a full commercial operation capable of producing 50,000 tonnes of LCE annually across two phases.
- The first phase alone targets 12,500 tonnes per year, which would already place it among the more significant lithium producers in the U.S.
- Significantly, the company has invested approximately $30 million in the demonstration facility, supported in part by a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
- For the full-scale project, EnergyX estimates total capital expenditure at around $1.05 billion.
Cost metrics suggest strong economic potential. The company estimates capital costs at roughly $21,000 per tonne of capacity and operating costs near $3,750 per tonne. If these figures hold at scale, the project could compete effectively with global lithium producers, particularly in a market where cost efficiency is becoming increasingly important.
Teague Egan, Founder & CEO of EnergyX, said,
“Bringing the biggest integrated DLE lithium demonstration plant online in the United States is a foundational milestone for EnergyX and for U.S. domestic lithium production in general. This facility not only validates the performance of our technology on an industrial scale under real-world conditions, but also establishes EnergyX as the lowest cost producer in the U.S. Ultimately this benefits all our customers who need large volumes of lithium for EV and ESS applications, as well as any lithium resource owners looking to implement best-in-class DLE technology whom we are happy to license to.”
Breaking the Bottleneck: Why U.S. Refining Matters
One of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. lithium sector is not resource availability but refining capacity. While lithium deposits exist across the country, most battery-grade lithium chemicals are processed overseas.
China dominates this segment, controlling roughly 70 to 75 percent of global lithium chemical conversion capacity. This concentration creates a structural dependency. Even when lithium is mined in the U.S. or allied countries, it is often shipped abroad for processing before returning as battery materials.
Project Lonestar™ directly addresses this gap. By integrating extraction and refining into a single domestic operation, EnergyX is working to build a complete “brine-to-battery” value chain within the United States. This approach could reduce reliance on foreign processing and improve supply chain resilience.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz highlighted the project’s importance, noting that domestic lithium production supports both energy security and defense readiness, particularly for applications in advanced battery systems.
- CHECK: LIVE LITHIUM PRICES
The Current Landscape: Limited Supply, Big Ambitions
How Much Lithium Does the U.S. Have?
The United States has a strong lithium resource base, but it still struggles to produce it at scale. Data from the United States Geological Survey shows that the country held about 14 million tonnes of lithium reserves in 2023, ranking it third globally.
Despite this, U.S. production remains very low. The country produced only 615 metric tonnes of lithium in 2023, according to USGS. This is tiny compared to global leaders. Australia produced around 86,000 tonnes, while Chile reached about 56,530 tonnes in the same year.
Lithium Reserves by Country 2026
In simple terms, the U.S. has plenty of lithium underground. But it still needs time, investment, and better infrastructure to turn those resources into a real supply.
Investment is flowing into regions such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arkansas. If even a portion of these reserves is converted into production, the U.S. could significantly reduce its reliance on imported lithium.
Active Resources and Future Potential
At present, U.S. lithium production remains relatively small. The only active large-scale operation is the Silver Peak Mine in Nevada, which produces between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes of LCE annually, depending on market conditions.
However, several projects are in development that could significantly expand capacity. The Thacker Pass project, for example, is expected to produce around 40,000 tonnes per year in its first phase once operational later in the decade.
In addition, brine-based developments in the Smackover region aim to produce tens of thousands of tonnes annually, with long-term plans exceeding 100,000 tonnes across multiple sites.
These projects indicate a shift from a niche domestic industry to a more substantial production base. Still, timelines remain uncertain due to regulatory and financial challenges.
Demand Surge: Batteries Drive the Lithium Boom
The urgency to expand lithium production is driven by rapid growth in battery demand. Electric vehicles, renewable energy storage, and grid modernization are all increasing lithium consumption.
According to S&P Global, U.S. lithium demand is expected to grow at an average rate of 40 percent annually between 2024 and 2029. Canada is projected to see even faster growth, albeit from a smaller base, with demand rising by around 74 percent per year over the same period.
Globally, battery capacity is forecast to approach 4 terawatt-hours by 2030. This expansion highlights lithium’s central role in the clean energy transition. Without sufficient supply, battery production—and by extension, EV adoption—could face constraints.
Why Progress Takes Time
Turning lithium reserves into operational mines and processing facilities is not straightforward. Projects often face long permitting timelines, environmental scrutiny, and legal challenges. Financing can also be difficult, especially in a volatile commodity market.
Local opposition can further complicate development, particularly in areas with high environmental concerns. These factors can delay projects by several years, slowing the pace of expansion.
To address these barriers, the U.S. government is increasing its involvement through funding, policy support, and efforts to streamline permitting. The Department of Energy’s backing of EnergyX reflects a broader strategy to accelerate domestic critical mineral development.
Conclusion: A Strategic Shift in Motion
Project Lonestar™ represents a meaningful step toward reshaping the U.S. lithium landscape. By proving the viability of direct lithium extraction at an industrial scale, EnergyX has laid the groundwork for larger, commercially viable operations.
The project also aligns with national priorities around energy security, supply chain resilience, and clean energy transition. While challenges remain, the combination of technological innovation, government support, and rising demand creates a strong foundation for growth.
As the world moves toward electrification, lithium will remain at the center of the transition. Projects like Lonestar™ show that the United States is beginning to close the gap between resource potential and real-world production—one facility at a time.
The post Texas-Based EnergyX’s Project Lonestar™ Signals a Turning Point for U.S. Lithium Supply appeared first on Carbon Credits.
What auditors actually test, where projects actually fail, and the contract clauses that protect you before signature.
The meeting happens about fourteen months after the contract was signed. Your assurance provider has reached the nature-based investment line in your Scope 3 file, and the partner across the table has exactly two questions. How do you know the reductions happened? And how do you know they would not have happened anyway?
The first question is MRV: measurement, reporting, and verification. The second is additionality. Between them, they decide whether your nature-based investment counts, in your inventory, in your disclosure, and in front of your board. Everything else in the project documentation is supporting material for these two answers.
This article walks through what each question actually tests, where projects most commonly fail, what digital MRV has changed (and what it has not), and the contract clauses that protect you. The goal is to give you the diligence framework before you sign, because after the credit issues is the wrong time to discover the answers were weak.
What MRV actually verifies
MRV is the machinery that turns a field intervention into a defensible number. Measurement covers the data: biomass surveys, soil sampling, remote sensing, activity records from participating farms. Reporting covers the translation of that data into claimed reductions under a recognised methodology. Verification covers the independent check: an accredited third party tests the reporting against the methodology and the evidence.
The methodologies live in registries. Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard are the two largest for nature-based projects, and each publishes the methodology documents, monitoring requirements, and verification protocols that a project must follow. The ICVCM Assessment Framework now sits above the registries, assessing whole methodologies against the Core Carbon Principles and granting the CCP label to those that pass.
For a buyer, the practical questions are concrete. What is the monitoring frequency, and is it specified in the project design document or left vague? Who is the verifier, how were they selected, and how often do they rotate? What raw data do you, the buyer, get access to, and in what format? A project that answers these in writing is a different procurement than one that answers them in a sales call.
What additionality actually proves
Additionality asks whether the intervention caused the reduction, or whether the reduction would have happened anyway. The test is a counterfactual: what would this landscape, this farm, this forest have done without the project’s money?
Three forms matter in practice. Financial additionality asks whether the project needed the carbon revenue to proceed. Regulatory additionality asks whether the activity was already required by law. Common-practice additionality asks whether the activity is already standard in the region, in which case paying for it buys you nothing the world was not getting for free.
The reason additionality dominates audit conversations is recent history. Research published in 2023, including the Science paper examined at length in our piece on conventional offsets and boardroom credibility, found that a large share of REDD+ credits failed the counterfactual test because baselines were inflated. The market response was a wave of methodology revisions at Verra and the arrival of independent ratings agencies whose entire business is re-testing additionality claims. The Carbon Credit Quality Initiative publishes transparent scoring of methodologies on exactly this dimension, and it is free to consult before you sign anything.
Where projects most commonly fail the test
Five failure modes account for most of the wreckage.
- Inflated baselines. The counterfactual assumes more deforestation, more degradation, or lower yields than the evidence supports. The claimed reduction is the gap between reality and the baseline, so an inflated baseline manufactures reductions from nothing.
- Unaccounted leakage. The project protects one forest and the logging moves to the next valley. The methodology is supposed to net this out; weak projects estimate it optimistically.
- Thin permanence protection. Nature-based carbon can reverse: fire, pest, drought, or a change of landowner. Buffer pools and insurance mechanisms exist for this, but their adequacy varies enormously between projects.
- Attribution and double counting. In supply chain settings, the same reduction can be claimed by the supplier, the buyer, and a credit purchaser unless contracts prevent it. Our Insetting vs Offsetting piece covers the inventory rules; the point here is that the auditor will ask who else is counting this tonne.
- Stale monitoring. Data collected at validation and never refreshed. The IPCC AR6 Working Group III land-sector chapter documents how quickly carbon stocks respond to disturbance; a three-year-old measurement is a historical artifact, not a current claim.
What digital MRV changes, and what it does not
Digital MRV is the genuine improvement in the field. Satellite remote sensing, including the free archives at NASA Earthdata, allows biomass and land-cover change to be monitored continuously rather than at multi-year verification intervals. Soil carbon models calibrated with physical sampling reduce the cost of agricultural measurement. The practical effect is more frequent data at lower cost, which compresses the window in which a problem can hide.
What digital MRV does not change is judgment. Baselines are still human decisions about counterfactuals. Additionality is still an argument, not a measurement. Research groups such as the Oxford Smith School have been clear on this point: better sensors improve the M in MRV, but the integrity questions live in the assumptions, and assumptions need governance, not gadgets.
For a buyer, the test is simple. Ask the provider what is measured by instrument, what is estimated by model, and what is assumed by methodology. A provider who can answer that question crisply understands their own evidence chain. A provider who cannot is selling you their confidence rather than their data.
What to require in your contract
The diligence above converts into five contract clauses.
- Monitoring cadence and buyer data access, specified by dataset and frequency.
- Verifier independence, named accreditation, and rotation terms.
- Baseline revision triggers, so the counterfactual updates when the methodology or the evidence changes.
- Reversal liability and buffer adequacy, with the mechanism named and sized.
- Documentation handover in audit-ready form, so the evidence file your assurance provider needs already exists.
None of these clauses is exotic. All of them are absent from weak contracts, and their absence is the most reliable early signal that the MRV and additionality answers will be weak too.
If you are evaluating a nature-based investment and want the MRV and additionality stress-tested before signature rather than after, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can run that review against any project on your shortlist, and design nature-based supply chain investments where the evidence chain is built audit-first. Schedule a consultation.
Sources and further reading
- ICVCM: Core Carbon Principles Assessment Framework
- Verra: Verified Carbon Standard
- Gold Standard for the Global Goals
- Carbon Credit Quality Initiative: Methodology quality scores
- University of Oxford Smith School: Sustainable finance research
- IPCC AR6 Working Group III, Chapter 7: AFOLU
- NASA Earthdata satellite remote sensing archive
EU Directive: Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT)
The EU Directive, Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT), takes effect on September 27, 2026.(1) The goal of ECGT is to protect consumers by ensuring that environmental claims are fair, understandable, and reliable. This regulation does create a new compliance requirement for businesses, but it also provides sustainability and marketing teams with important guidance that helps create consistency in sustainability communications.
Key takeaways
- ECGT takes effect September 27, 2026, and prohibits claims that a product or service has a neutral, reduced, or positive environmental impact based on offsetting alone.
- Named example phrases the regulation prohibits include climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint.
- ECGT does not want to deter investment in carbon credits. It wants companies to communicate the real benefits of the projects they support instead.
- SBTi’s guidance recommends framing carbon credits as taking responsibility for ongoing emissions, not as making a product or company neutral.
- Voluntary carbon projects deliver real climate progress: reducing super-pollutants, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and supporting communities.
Regarding carbon credits specifically, voluntary carbon projects deliver important climate progress and environmental benefits that provide many talking points for companies. They reduce climate super-pollutants by removing industrial emissions like methane, N2O, HFCs and others. They protect and restore valuable ecosystems and carbon sinks like forests, mangroves and grasslands. They help communities by reducing local pollution, creating employment opportunities, improving access to healthcare, and more.
The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a global leader in business climate action, concludes that alongside aggressive decarbonization, we should also use high quality carbon credits to take responsibility for our ongoing emissions. SBTi recognizes that carbon credits are important “to help limit temperature overshoot, mitigate transition risks, and support climate solutions.”(2)
ECGT language on carbon offsetting says that they do not want to deter investment in carbon credits. They just want companies to focus on communicating the benefits of the projects they support and avoid claims beyond the scope of carbon credits, which is good for everyone, companies and consumers alike.
The regulation reinforces that carbon credits do not change the sustainability of your products, so carbon credit buyers should not suggest that their products are more sustainable because of carbon credits. Instead, companies need to promote their climate contributions as a way to compensate or take responsibility for their carbon emissions by supporting projects that do great things like reducing global carbon emissions, reducing pollution, preventing deforestation, restoring forests, and more.
ECGT language related to carbon offsetting
The regulation is particularly focused on prohibiting claims, based on offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, that a product or service has a neutral, reduced, or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. These claims are prohibited in all circumstances because they mislead consumers into believing the claim relates to the product itself, or to how it was made and supplied, or into thinking that using the product carries no environmental impact at all.
Named examples of prohibited claims include:
- climate neutral
- CO2 neutral certified
- carbon positive
- climate net zero
- climate compensated
- reduced climate impact
- limited CO2 footprint
These claims are only allowed when they rest on a product’s actual lifecycle impact, not on offsetting emissions outside that product’s value chain, since the two are not equivalent. This prohibition does not stop companies from advertising their investments in environmental initiatives, including carbon credit projects, as long as they present that information in a way that is not misleading and that meets the other requirements of Union law.(1)
SBTi also provides guidance on climate contribution language in its Corporate Net Zero Standard Version 2.0 Draft for Second Public Consultation, November 2025. While the SBTi language is fairly technical, it has a good framework for crafting a climate contribution message.
SBTi Language for Carbon Credits(3)
- Take responsibility for ongoing emissions by delivering mitigation impact contributions
- Carbon credits certify the mitigation outcomes of projects that reduce, avoid, or remove carbon emissions
- Activities that reduce emissions from emission sources not located within the company’s value chain
- Activities that conserve, protect, and enhance natural carbon sinks
- Activities that capture and store carbon in storage pools
SBTi’s draft standard also walks through sample claim language for this kind of contribution. In general, the samples move from a simple percentage statement, to naming a specific verified tonnage tied to that percentage, to a fuller statement that breaks the tonnage into reductions versus removals. Across all three, the framing stays consistent: a company took responsibility for a defined share of its ongoing emissions over a set period, by funding a specific, verified amount of mitigation, achieved through emission reductions or removals.(3)
FAQ: ECGT and Carbon Credit Claims
When does the ECGT directive take effect?
The rules apply across the EU from September 27, 2026, after member states transposed the directive into national law by March 27, 2026.
Does ECGT ban carbon offsetting?
No. It bans specific marketing claims that a product or service is environmentally neutral, reduced impact, or positive based on offsetting. Advertising investment in carbon credit projects themselves is still allowed if it is not misleading.
What phrases does ECGT specifically prohibit?
Named examples include climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint, when those claims are based on offsetting rather than a product’s actual lifecycle impact.
How should a company describe its carbon credit purchases instead?
SBTi’s guidance recommends stating the specific verified tonnage of emissions reductions or removals funded and describing that as taking responsibility for a defined share of ongoing emissions, rather than claiming the company or product is neutral.
Does this rule apply to company level sustainability claims too?
ECGT is focused on claims about specific products and services in consumer marketing. Broader company level sustainability communication is a separate matter still governed by other existing rules.
While ECGT does add a new compliance burden for businesses, it helps create consistency in sustainability messaging that is important to building confidence in voluntary carbon projects and scaling the industry to help us achieve progress on global carbon emissions.
Disclaimer: Terrapass does not provide legal or regulatory advice. Any interpretation of regulation must be approved by your legal representative.
References:
(1) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj
(2) https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/Corporate-Net-Zero-Standard-version-2.pdf
(3) https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/CNZS-V2-Second-Consultation-Draft.pdf
The post The EU’s New Green Claims Rules and Carbon Credits appeared first on Terrapass.
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