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Dow and New Energy Blue announced a long-term supply agreement in North America in which New Energy Blue will create bio-based ethylene from renewable agricultural residues. Dow expects to purchase this bio-based ethylene, reducing carbon emissions from plastic production, and using it in recyclable applications across transportation, footwear, and packaging. Dow is supporting the design of New Energy Freedom, a new facility in Mason City, Iowa, that is expected to process 275KT of corn stover per year and produce commercial quantities of second-generation ethanol and clean lignin. Nearly half of the ethanol will be turned into bio-based ethylene feedstock for Dow products. This agreement also gives Dow similar commercial supply options for the next four future New Energy Blue projects. The five projects are expected to displace over one million tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year. Dow's use of bio-based feedstocks from New Energy Blue is expected to be certified by ISCC Plus, an international sustainability certification program with a focus on traceability of raw materials within the supply chain. New Energy Blue's forthcoming Iowa processing facility would source corn stover directly from local farmers every year.

Shares of Arkansas-based lithium producer Standard Lithium (SLI) are up almost 4% or 15c per share to $4.01 per share in late day trading on Tuesday after after announcing earlier that, as part of the resource definition work at its South West Arkansas Project it has sampled, to the best of its knowledge, the highest confirmed lithium grade brine in Arkansas, with a grade of 581 mg/L. These sampling data follow similar high-grade results from the Company's resources in Texas. Dr. Andy Robinson, President and COO of Standard Lithium commented, "We continue to be very pleasantly surprised by the lithium grades sampled from our projects in Arkansas and Texas. We previously developed the Preliminary Economic Assessment PEA for the SWA Project using a conservative assessment of the lithium brine grades across the project area. Using that conservative resource basis still yielded a PEA with very attractive project economics, after-tax NPV US$1.97B and IRR of 32% at 8% discount rate; see news release dated 12th October 2021 . This recent infill drilling work to further define the lithium resource has resulted in a marked upside to the in-situ lithium grade. In our experience, the grade of lithium in brine used for Direct Lithium Extraction or DLE, has a meaningful impact on both capital expenditures and operating costs in connection with the extraction process, so a higher grade typically results in lower overall costs and should have a positive effect on project economics in the forthcoming Preliminary Feasibility Study PFS . We are delighted that sampling from this recent well has led us to find lithium brine with the highest confirmed grade in Arkansas, and we look forward to incorporating these into the forthcoming PFS." Other publicly traded companies in the lithium space include Livent (LTHM), Sigma Lithium (SGML), Lithium Americas (LAC) and Piedmont Lithium (PLL).