Forward in a World on Fire: Lithium Valley at a New Crossroads
This article was originally posted to the USC Equity Research Institute’s blog on April, 17 2026. Reprinted here with permission.
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When we published Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future in October 2024, we argued that the clean-energy transition was inevitable—but that whether it would be inclusive was very much in question.
While we knew that we were future-casting, we soon had some wind taken out of our predictive sails. The month after publication saw the election of Donald Trump. As 2025 dawned, the new administration began moving to dismantle federal clean-energy programs. Its “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed in July 2025, eliminated the tax credits that had propelled electric vehicle (EV) adoption. Suddenly, all that we thought was to pass was receding into the distance.
And then, the trajectory shifts again, bringing the once-promised future back into view. In late February 2026, the United States went to war with Iran. Within days, gas prices across the country surged past $4 a gallon, reaching well over $5 a gallon in California, Hawaii, and Washington. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz—through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil flows—sent global oil markets into their worst disruption in decades. Even if the conflict is resolved, analysts warn that meaningful relief at the pump is still months away.
Across the world, consumers have been responding to high gasoline prices with their feet—and their wallets. In the United Kingdom, EV sales hit a record high in March 2026, with 86,120 vehicles sold in a single month. South Korea saw EV registrations more than double year-over-year. In the U.S., Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1 2026—up from 336,681 the year before—a rebound that happened without the $7,500 federal tax credit the Trump administration eliminated. The used EV market set an all-time quarterly sales record, driven in part by the fact that the average used EV now costs the same as a comparable gas-powered car.
The market is sending a clear signal, one that federal policy over the past year has largely drowned out. With many now recognizing the volatility from our nation’s over-reliance on fossil fuels (and the unpredictability of the administration’s foreign policy), the questions at the heart of Charging Forward are once again salient: What is needed to accelerate the clean-energy transition? How do we balance the speed we need to save the planet with the pace needed to build trust in communities where minerals will be extracted? And why is the Imperial Valley, in one of the poorest counties in California, the place where it all comes together?
Stuck in the Past
The Trump Administration has prioritized “critical minerals” and energy security. The war in Iran would seem to be Exhibit A for why the United States needs to break its dependence on Middle Eastern oil—and why building domestic supply chains for the batteries that power electric vehicles matters enormously. Yet the administration’s actions tell a different story.
In practice, federal policy has curbed wind and solar projects and rolled back electric vehicle and lithium battery subsidies. In a rare nod to cleaner energy, it has backed hard-rock lithium mining at Thacker Pass in Nevada—going so far as to take a direct equity stake—even as Indigenous and environmental groups continue to sound the alarm about the project’s potential environmental impacts.
Meanwhile, direct lithium extraction—a potentially cleaner approach—is downplayed and the one serious renewable geothermal-based direct lithium extraction effort in the country, located in California’s Imperial Valley, remains pre-construction. There is still not a single commercial direct lithium extraction operation in the United States. If energy security is the actual goal, current policy choices are steering off course.
Some headway is still being made, despite these Trumpian headwinds. Globally, lithium prices have been rising after a brutal two-year slump, driven by growing demand from both EVs and a newer force: data centers with rising battery storage needs. Higher prices help the investment case for American lithium development. But market signals alone won’t build a just industry. That still requires deliberate choices.
Power to the People?
One of the important recent developments in Lithium Valley, the southeast corner of California that hosts the Salton Sea and enough lithium reserves in its underground geothermal brine to convert the entire U.S. auto fleet to EVs, is the announcement by Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) of a $4.7 billion agreement to take the company public on NASDAQ.
CTR aims eventually to produce up to 650 megawatts of renewable geothermal power and 100,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate (the refined form in which lithium is commercially traded) annually from the same Salton Sea brine resource. The NASDAQ listing is intended to complete funding for Stage 1 construction, which could begin later this year.
Notably, CTR’s current public pitch emphasizes geothermal energy—specifically, power for AI data centers—rather than lithium. CEO Rod Colwell has framed their project, located at a site eerily called Hell’s Kitchen, as a solution to one of the most significant infrastructure constraints of the moment: the demand for reliable, carbon-free baseload power to feed the AI boom.
Data center energy demand means real, near-term revenue. Lithium extraction from hot, chemically complex Salton Sea brines remains commercially unproven—especially compared to lower-temperature brines in Arkansas’s Smackover formation, where multiple projects are advancing with federal backing. But if geothermal energy for energy-hungry data centers becomes CTR’s primary revenue driver, who benefits?
Community Intelligence
The nearby communities of Niland, Westmoreland, Calipatria, and Imperial—all of whom were promised jobs, revenues, and more—are already answering that question themselves. A proposed hyperscale AI data center near the city of Imperial ignited sustained community opposition. Imperial County’s Board of Supervisors voted to advance the project anyway.
Artificial intelligence proposals are now meeting community intelligence realities. Residents are raising legitimate concerns about a 950,000-square-foot computing warehouse that will consume millions of gallons of water daily from a declining Colorado River water source. This is in a desert valley that already struggles with some of California’s worst air quality and the ongoing environmental crisis of the receding Salton Sea. Organizers are now mobilizing a recall of county supervisors supporting the project and a November ballot initiative to ban data centers from the county altogether.
The developer, Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing, frames the project as an economic lifeline—construction jobs, long-term employment, future tax revenue. Some labor voices agree. But as community members have made clear, the question isn’t just whether the project creates jobs; it’s whether residents get to shape an industry that will transform their landscape for decades, or merely absorb its costs. “We’re not saying it doesn’t have opportunities,” said Gina Snow, a resident near the proposed site. “Let’s have a discussion regarding what those opportunities are.”
That’s precisely the spirit that a number of community organizations, including Comité Cívico del Valle, Earthworks, and a coalition called Valle Unido por Beneficios Comunitarios has been bringing to the broader lithium question—pushing for Community Benefits Agreements that would guarantee tangible returns to frontline communities across all major lithium and energy projects in the region. The data center fight makes their argument more urgent, not less.
Steering Ahead
A year and a half after Charging Forward was published, the world has changed in ways both predictable and jarring. Gas prices above $4 a gallon have made the economic case for EVs self-evident to millions of drivers who weren’t (and probably still aren’t) thinking about climate at all. The AI boom has given geothermal power a new commercial rationale. Lithium prices are rising again, drawing investor interest back to the Salton Sea.
But the fundamental question remains. The clean-energy transition is not a question of whether. It is a question of where, how, and for whom. Will Imperial County’s communities get a genuine seat at the table as their landscape is again transformed by outside capital and national priorities? Will geothermal power for data centers deliver the broad community benefits that lithium was supposed to promise? Will California’s approach prove that energy development and environmental justice can coexist, or will it simply reproduce old extractive patterns in a new technological key?
The Iran war, with all its horror and disruption, has made the stakes of getting this right undeniable. The case for domestic clean energy has never been easier to make. The harder work—ensuring that this transition is built with communities rather than on top of them—remains exactly what it was when we wrote the book.
We’re still charging forward. But whether those most affected will be in the driver’s seat still remains an open question.