A Diversification Play for Lithium Valley: Rod Colwell on Geothermal Baseload, Critical Minerals & Data Power

In conversation with VX News, Chief Executive Officer Rod Colwell of Controlled Thermal Resources, traces the company’s evolution from a geothermal power developer into a vertically integrated energy and critical-minerals platform centered in California’s Imperial County. Despite geothermal’s baseload capacity and grid-stabilizing value, Colwell explains how historic tax and investment structures have steered capital toward intermittent resources, and how CTR’s Hell’s Kitchen project pairs firm geothermal power with lithium and other mineral recovery to hedge commodity volatility and reduce single-product off-take risk.

Looking ahead as AI-driven load growth and electrification pressures accelerate, Colwell positions Imperial Valley as one of the few U.S. regions capable of delivering both baseload clean power and domestically sourced critical minerals, provided capital formation and permitting certainty continue to improve.

“This [Imperial County] is one of the only truly shovel-ready sites in the United States. From our standpoint, we’re ready to go.” – Rod Colwell

Rod, for our readers, please introduce yourself and reflect on the journey that led you to serving as CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources.

Well, pleasure to be here, David. I’m Rod Colwell, CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources. I’ve been involved in developing CTR’s Hell’s Kitchen project in the Imperial Valley for close to 14 years. 

It has been an interesting journey. We started as a pure-play power project that has now evolved into one of the largest baseload power and critical minerals projects in the United States.

We recently completed a business combination, with a transaction value of approximately $4.7 billion and planned U.S. public listing. 

Let’s get into the challenges: California continues to set ambitious clean energy and firm power targets, yet geothermal still represents a small share of the state’s mix.

Where’s the disconnect between policy ambitions and project reality?

Over the years, what we’ve seen is a disconnect around tax incentives, and I’m not just talking about production or investment tax credits. I’m also referring to property tax treatment relative to solar and wind.

From an investor standpoint, there have been structurally more attractive opportunities in those sectors.

Technically speaking, geothermal has very strong fundamentals. We like to say the sun doesn’t set on geothermal. We can provide roughly 98% capacity versus about 30% for intermittent resources—24/7, 365 days a year. Geothermal also provides grid stabilization and inertia, similar to nuclear or hydro. It helps address intermittency challenges in the system.

Are there any recent state or federal actions that are making a positive difference for investing in Lithium Valley?

Absolutely. If there were ever a bipartisan opportunity, it would be Lithium Valley. 

On the California side, the state has invested heavily, and wisely in the programmatic planning framework from a land-use perspective. Beyond geothermal, the region now supports lithium, cathodes, battery manufacturing, data centers, and other co-location opportunities.

Historically, projects might fly over California and land in Texas or another more business-friendly jurisdiction. I think we’re moving beyond that dynamic.

At the federal level, much of this is driven by demand. This is a critical business both on the minerals side and the power side, whether that’s through supporting AI load growth or localizing critical mineral supply chains.

There’s limited value in tariffs if the United States cannot source these materials domestically.

Let’s turn to your Hell’s Kitchen Project: Elaborate on the several revenue streams being pursued and how they come together.

As I mentioned earlier, we evolved from geothermal power. There had already been significant work done historically on minerals recovery in the Salton Sea region—zinc, lithium, and others going back to the 1990s. What we also realized is that a single-play lithium strategy is a difficult business. If you just look at lithium pricing, the volatility is obvious. It’s all over the papers and across the market.

For CTR, particularly at Hell’s Kitchen, diversification is the key. Lithium is one critical mineral, but we actually have 36 of the federal-designated critical minerals in our brine. It’s a bit like your grandmother’s soup—everything’s in there.

In terms of volume, potash would actually be the next low-hanging fruit. The U.S. imports over 10 million tons per year, and we can produce roughly 3.2 million tons annually. Manganese is another example. The U.S. currently produces none domestically, and we can supply meaningful volumes to support proposed foundries and battery supply chains. We also see rare earths, zinc, silver, and others, so diversification helps us move away from being purely lithium exposed.

Our separate power business further diversifies the revenue stream. The strategy is to avoid reliance on a single take-or-pay contract and instead build a more resilient, multi-product platform.

You’ve launched American Data Power as hyperscalers prioritize access to powered sites. Speak to the opportunity and how are you positioning Imperial Valley’s baseload resource to compete?

We've heard this term being coined over the last 12 months: access to a powered site is the number-one driver. It doesn’t matter whether the generation source is gas, nuclear, coal, or something else. What hyperscalers are looking to procure first and foremost is power.

We have a very significant power resource in the Imperial Valley that we’ve developed carefully with Baker Hughes over eight years, and particularly aggressively over the last couple of years, through the formation of American Data Power. At scale, this is a 650-megawatt development made up of six 100-megawatt steam turbines providing high-capacity baseload, plus an additional 50 megawatts already staged.

We’re now actively engaging in the market. Co-locators are very interested, and as I mentioned earlier, many of the land-use issues have been or are being addressed. You can now come to California, put a stake in the ground, and hopefully build your facility without getting sued. So, access to baseload power, near low-latency data infrastructure, is absolutely critical. We’re on the right track. There’s more work to do, but we believe we have most of the necessary ingredients. 

Access to a powered site with roughly 4,000 acres is an attractive proposition.

Having earlier referenced China, what impact—if any—are China-related supply dynamics having on CTR’s strategy?

Look, the relationships have always been there. I won’t get into the political dimension, but what I will say is that some of the recent trade and tax dynamics have opened an opportunity for domestic production. Historically, with lithium, material is recovered globally but typically sent to China for processing.

At CTR, we’ve already crossed that bridge. We convert and process in the Imperial Valley, all the way through to lithium hydroxide. The real missed opportunity would be to bag that product, ship it overseas, and then import it back again. The discussion now needs to move downstream: to CAM, PCAM, cathode, and ultimately cells, whether for stationary storage or the EV market.

No disrespect to any other country, but our key opportunity is to build that full value chain here in the United States, and the same logic applies to potash and manganese. 

We can not only recover the raw material but also convert and upgrade the compounds domestically. That aligns well with what DOE is trying to accomplish through its funding programs, and with publicly known industry developments involving companies like Nippon Steel, Korea Zinc, and others now investing in U.S. capacity.

Obviously, given the economics of your market, what’s the strategy for managing commodity price volatility and sustaining investor capital?  

To be candid, if we were a single-play lithium company, and this is just our humble view, relying solely on take-or-pay lithium contracts would expose you to significant price swings. If you lock into lithium alone, you could easily take a 40% hit relative to LME pricing dynamics.

Our strategy is diversification. If we produce multiple minerals, three today, potentially many more over time, the need for rigid take-or-pay structures diminishes because the portfolio itself provides natural hedging. We know from direct investor conversations that the market is very comfortable with diversification. 

As we commercialize more of the approximately 30-plus minerals in the brine, we expect to rely less on long-term commodity contracts and to be less exposed to China-driven price volatility.

The reality is that lithium prices have never truly been $8,000 nor $80,000—despite how headlines sometimes frame it. There’s always been a mean reversion. So, for us, finance ability through diversification is the core strategy.

Pivoting to CEQA and community dynamics, how have you been navigating concerns around workforce development and environmental justice?

Yeah, look, it definitely has been a challenge, and we’re one of the companies that’s taken the brunt of a few of those punches, particularly with some of the litigation that’s going on and, frankly, with no real technical validation. That’s been an issue with CEQA all along.

But I think, as I said earlier, the Lithium Valley Specific Plan, which encompasses about 50,000 acres—covers everything from infrastructure, housing, and jobs. It has done a very good job on community outreach. There’s been significant investment under Governor Newsom’s leadership, and it really deals with the land-use framework. What that means is, you can come with more confidence that you can build your facility. You still have to go through CEQA, but what the plan does is limit the time periods for litigation and take some of the gray areas off the table, because the full environmental impact work has already been done across the area.

Five, tens—I don’t know how many millions of dollars have been invested by the government, and I think that’s a very clear signal that Lithium Valley can compete with parts of Texas and other regions on a like-for-like basis. Effectively, the zoning environment here, in layman’s terms, is not that different from what you would see in North Carolina or Texas or other business-friendly jurisdictions. So, I have to commend leadership for taking that on.

Rather than theorizing about how to get around CEQA—which you can’t—this approach creates more certainty. And we’re seeing that in the finance market.

Historically, most folks would say, “Hey Rod, we love the story, but we don’t believe you.” Now they’re actually engaging in discussion, so let’s see where it takes us.

Rod, as you move into Stage One construction, what should our readers be watching? And with hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently?

Hindsight is always helpful. When lithium prices were surging, the industry, ourselves included, focused heavily on lithium. Looking back, we probably would have advanced work on some of the other minerals earlier, which is exactly what we’re doing now.

From a project standpoint, we’ve invested heavily in long-lead equipment for the power plant. Most of that equipment is already staged and ready for construction. We have a fully permitted site, notwithstanding what we view as a frivolous legal appeal to that approval. We’re not overly concerned about that piece now.

At this point, it really comes down to access to capital—finishing the pre-FID capital stack and moving into full construction. We will start some work shortly, but we don’t want to do this in a piecemeal fashion. As you probably know, these are very large components. The long-lead items: transformers, steam turbines, and other equipment that now can take up to 45 months to procure, and we already have them.

I’d say it’s now really a matter of completing the capital stack. We’re in negotiations with power offtakers, which is critical from the bank financing perspective. Once that comes together, we can move forward.

As we close, the VerdeXchange Conference has conveyed Lithium Valley’s economic and energy potential for years, and CTR now emerges as a proof-of-concept for truly shovel-ready development. What, then, still stands in the way of regional transformation?

Look, I think what needs to stop is the false narrative. We don’t have the big budgets that some opposition groups have, and there has been a significant amount of investment into an anti-development narrative that, frankly, misrepresents what Lithium Valley can become.

Some of the groups that identify as environmental or social justice advocates are, in our view, hurting the local community. Unemployment in the region is still in the mid- to high-teens. The talent is here. The local sourcing is here. I think most of the community understands that.

What we really need now is momentum and confidence from the investment community. Once investors become comfortable, and CEQA certainty is a big part of that, the rest becomes fairly straightforward. 

This is one of the only truly shovel-ready sites in the United States. We can deliver an initial 50 megawatts of baseload power and then move downstream into critical minerals that the domestic supply chain clearly needs. It sounds like a small final step, but it’s actually one of the bigger back-end pieces that still needs to fall into place. 

From our standpoint, we’re ready to go.