C2ES is convening key stakeholders across the southeast region to develop approaches to accelerate the expansion of the critical battery materials supply chain through fostering supportive state and federal policies, creative partnerships, entrepreneurship and innovation, and capital investment.
The southeast United States is emerging as a national hub for manufacturing batteries, components, and critical materials, helping position the country as a globally competitive player in the battery industry. With continued private and public sector support, this industry will bolster the energy, mobility, and defense sectors crucial to U.S. global economic competitiveness, grid reliability, and national security.
Since 2021, companies have announced more than $84 billion in investments across Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama in batteries, minerals, stationary storage, and vehicle production. But work remains to ensure these investments are realized, promote the development of complementary infrastructure, and continue growing investment into minerals processing and refining, component production, and innovation.
C2ES hosted a regional roundtable in May 2025 to highlight regional leadership, identify focus areas for in-depth research and policy development, and kick off a series of convenings across the region to collaboratively develop a regional roadmap for the battery and critical mineral and material industry. This event brought together key stakeholders including: businesses of all sizes, state and local policymakers, academic experts and leading researchers, economic development organizations, nonprofits, and other public- and private-sector partners. Informed by this event, C2ES will host subsequent state-specific, issue-oriented events to convene focused workshops on policy solutions to supply chain gaps and opportunities.
Several key themes emerged from the conversation, including the interconnected nature of battery and electric vehicle supply chains, the challenge of achieving economies of scale for this new industry in the United States, and the importance of a whole of supply chain approach to policy support. Read more about outcomes from the event in the takeaways and blog listed below.
Explore conversation takeaways from our kickoff event in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Read TakeawaysIn this blog post, Director of Regional Clean Economies Stephanie Gagnon-Rodriguez discusses key themes of our Knoxville kickoff event and next steps for the regional battery industry.
Read BlogThe United States and the world are transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Communities across the country have an opportunity to leverage their existing advantages to lead the transition while supporting good-paying jobs, attracting investment, and improving quality of life. While the low-carbon economy offers new opportunities for many communities, capitalizing on those opportunities will require proactively developing new strategies to attract investment.
The private sector is leaning in, and supportive federal and state policies have proven crucial to supporting community efforts to attract investment and grow a secure, resilient, domestic advanced energy manufacturing base. Communities are best positioned to identify the opportunities they want to pursue, the challenges they will need to navigate, and which supports are most impactful. Local perspectives can offer unique nuance and grounding to federal climate policy conversations.
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions’ (C2ES) Regional Clean Economies (RCE) program elevates the perspectives of community stakeholders to inform state and federal policy needs and identify concrete next steps to bring home the economic opportunity of investing in the low-carbon transition. Through interactive group discussions, educational programming, and informative sessions—supplemented with research and analysis—C2ES’s RCE program brings together leaders of business, government, and communities to explore these opportunities and develop collaborative policy solutions.
