In this episode, I chat with Johanna Wolfson, co-founder of Azolla Ventures, about their unique philanthropic-backed VC model tackling the tough problem of sustainable mining for the clean energy transition. We explore the promising tech Azolla is backing to reduce mining's impact, from using electrochemistry to refine copper without dirty smelting to advanced techniques for processing low-grade ores and even waste.
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David Roberts
Hey everybody, this is Volts for June 4, 2025, "How to reduce the impact of mining." I'm your host, David Roberts. When it comes to the subject of mining and the clean energy economy, it is important to keep two truths in mind at once: First, relative to the fossil-fueled status quo, a clean energy economy will involve vastly less disruption of the Earth's crust via digging, drilling, and mining.
The materials that compose clean energy technologies only need to be extracted once. When you build a fossil-fueled machine, you have to keep extracting fuel for it as long as it runs. There's no comparison.
That said, it is also the case that clean energy technologies involve much more of certain minerals and metals than fossil energy technologies, and will require much more of certain kinds of mining. As listeners surely know, that mining — of copper, lithium, rare earth metals, etc. — can have extremely damaging social and environmental consequences. Clean energy advocates shouldn't wave those consequences aside or ignore them. They should think about how to reduce them!
Obviously, a comprehensive approach to mining will involve social movements and public policy, not just technology, but it's still worth seeking out the technologies that could help. That is what Johanna Wolfson set out to do when she co-founded Azolla Ventures, a VC firm that is distinguished by deploying, in part, philanthropic money, for explicitly pro-social purposes. The mining industry is one of Azolla's main targets, so I thought it would be illuminating to talk with Wolfson about the kinds of promising mining tech she's funding and how it might help.
All right then, okay. With no further ado, Johanna Wolfson, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Johanna Wolfson
Thank you. It is awesome to be here.
David Roberts
So we are here to talk about mining, but what tell us your life story and how did you end up where you are and where are you? What is it that Azolla does?
Johanna Wolfson
So, I'm with Azolla Ventures. I'm a co-founder there and we are bringing a different way of investing forward in climate tech. What makes us unique is we are impact-first investors. That's not because we're such great people — though we like to believe that — it's really because we aggregate philanthropic tax-exempt capital as the heart and soul of our fund and that lets us take on outsized risk relative to what other venture funds can and really should do. And it requires that we're impact-first in our mindset and methodology and deployment of capital. And so, we're out after big swings in climate and taking on pretty meaningful risks.
Most often, that means science and engineering risks. That can also mean market and other sorts of risk. But we've gotten to do some interesting things along the way. And the way I got here was, I'm a scientist by training, physical chemistry, and came to think that all the amazing science getting done in lab benches around the world didn't have the right way out. That's not an original thought, but I really wanted to do something about that and wanted to spend my career on it. And so, found my way through working at initially an industry lab, then spent some time at the Department of Energy in D.C., getting to know what government can and can't do, and decided to work on the capital problem for early-stage companies and probably wouldn't have been that compelled to go to an investment firm for its own sake.
But the idea to build something different in terms of what types of things we could do and invest in, and bring a different model forward, was super compelling. So, we've been at it for coming up on eight years now.
David Roberts
This went by really quickly, but let me just pull it back up. You are deploying exclusively philanthropic capital?
Johanna Wolfson
Not exclusively. So, we have built a fund structure that pairs philanthropic capital with more typical impact-aligned but not tax-exempt capital. And by drawing on those two different pools side by side, first weighted toward the higher risk and then later when companies graduate from that especially high-risk zone, pulling on the more conventional capital, we're able to both kind of launch, catalyze, and then scale companies that we partner with.
David Roberts
You know, when I threw this out there online, a lot of people's questions were related in one way or another to "How does the VC model line up with this?" So there's sort of a broad discussion in our space. I'm sure you've followed it, that like the limitations of the VC model. The VC, they're looking for unicorns, they're looking for 10x, you know, etc. And they're looking for relatively quick payouts. Whereas lots of infrastructure-type things, you know, that type of capital doesn't work well in this type of business. And I would think intuitively that mining is sort of paradigmatically conservative, slow, doing investments that are multi-decadal.
You know what I mean? It's like big and conservative and slow. So, the match between the VC model and mining is not obvious to me. So, maybe talk through a little bit about how you think about that.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, how long do we have here? Okay, so lots to say there. For one, climate tech generally, yes, absolutely, all of those critiques about venture are true and make a lot of sense. And yet, over the last five plus years, a great deal of climate tech capital, as I'm sure you've known, covered extensively, has shown up. And some of those sources of capital have more patient structures associated with them. We're the only one I know of that has this tax-exempt philanthropic angle, but lots of them have longer timelines, so that helps somewhat.
David Roberts
So as far as you know, you're the only fund that is doing this blending of philanthropic and private capital?
Johanna Wolfson
As far as I know, we're the only fund doing this blending in climate tech at this scale. So, there's a couple of other kind of smaller, earlier efforts. But yeah, we're a $250 million fund and we'd like to see more, but as of now, not yet. So, we do see increasingly more patient capital coming into heavy infrastructure technologies, which you could say about a lot of climate tech, not just mining. On the mining front, all of those challenges are super real. So, I could speak from experience with many of our portfolio companies starting to pilot with mining majors or starting to get out in the field.
I mean, it is slow. The challenges are real. Not a sector historically known for quick innovation. You can imagine all of the things that make it hard. So those are all true. Over the last couple of years, I've actually seen more of our peer investors start to make mining investments and that is probably driven by a recognition of both the extraordinary need for securing critical materials in light of a coming clean energy transition, which I'm sure we'll talk more about, coupled with, you know, mining is a pretty stable and reliable sector. And so if you were canvassing across all the different things in cleantech, it's actually, I would argue, one of the more reliable places you could invest.
Now that said, it doesn't make any of the challenges around integrating with existing legacy infrastructure or selling to mining majors that might be fine with the way things are going now. It doesn't make any of those problems go away. But in across all the areas that we invest in, some of which are more challenging for VC to engage in, I wouldn't say mining is among the most challenging. Now, the other thing I'll say — just in terms of where we're seeing other capital show up — this is kind of my bugbear issue about clean tech investing in general. Where I really wholeheartedly agree with those questions and maybe the critique that's coming behind them is that just because you can find technologies or companies to invest in with a venture mindset doesn't mean that you're going after the biggest set of problems that we need for achieving a clean energy transition.
These are two totally different mindsets. And I think the venture community can get caught up in a story that, "Oh, because I'm able to put together this company markup or this narrative, therefore look, venture is working!" It's like, well, we're not looking across the broad swath of emission sources.
David Roberts
The worry, I think, is that the set of things that are receiving investment, that set is being shaped more by the sort of character of the investors than the shape of the problem. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's the VC susceptible problems that are getting invested in.
Johanna Wolfson
I'm like raising my hands in cheer right now that you said that. And this is a whole separate area that I'm looking into and working on with some like-minded colleagues at other places. It's just, you said it so well. The places where money is going are being shaped by the venture mindset and we're leaving a lot of impact on the table. And by the way, I'm not supposed to say that as an investor.
David Roberts
Well, I guess my follow-up question is the answer then to broaden the types of things that VCs are comfortable investing in or is the right answer to bring in other types of funding that aren't VC?
Johanna Wolfson
I fall into Camp B. I think that you can only push the VC model so far, and that's not because of closed-mindedness or anything. It's because of the type of capital that's being aggregated, the expectations that sit behind that capital, and the nature of running a conventional VC fund which is, you know, I'm going to go ask these folks for more capital in a few years and they're going to want to see what I've done with it. And you know, so it's very all natural in terms of the incentives and there are some things that we can do that I think we're experimenting with at Azolla successfully about changing that model or pushing it or prodding it or making it extend in a different direction.
But can that get at the whole of the impact that's being left on the table? I don't think so, unless you come at it with a new set of capital constraints.
David Roberts
Yeah, someday I want to do a pod on what those alternative investing vehicles are.
Johanna Wolfson
Because everyone says venture is not the only path and then you say "Great, what are the other paths?"
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah, that's right. There's a lot of hand-waving around that.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, yeah, I have more thoughts on that. We can keep talking about it. I kind of am assembling a group of people who want to figure this out, and I'm happy to keep in touch about it.
David Roberts
I mean, it comes up on this pod again and again and again. We just need capital that will hang out longer and accept lower returns over longer periods of time, basically. Like that comes up over and over again.
Johanna Wolfson
Right. And as excited as I am about our model, and I think it's extraordinary, the premise is not quite that it's, we're taking higher risks. But we don't think it's practical at this point, where there aren't other pools to draw from, to go after lower returns. There could be other capital that is suited for that. But we're saying, "Let us take on the highest risk right now, the risk that something might fail is higher." But the potential that it has extraordinary impact is higher too. So let us underwrite that risk where other funds aren't able to go, and we'll get something ready for more mainstream VC.
David Roberts
Right. It would be nice, I mean, in some bright future, to have a funding ecosystem where there's a smoother sort of like, "We'll help you on this bit, hand you off to these people who will help you through this bit." It's a little scattershot right now and every company is sort of wandering in the wilderness trying to assemble its own contract. But anyway, let's not get too diverted. Let's talk about mining.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, we should do that.
David Roberts
So share, as you see it, an overview of the mining challenge and in particular, sort of which materials you have your eye on, either sort of as problems or as opportunities?
Johanna Wolfson
So, at the highest level, the mining challenge stems from the fact that we're going to need a lot more of certain materials to enable the clean energy transition that we are striving for. And in terms of which materials, I will tell you top, top, top of that list are copper and lithium, and I would probably say copper even higher, because copper is the backbone of electricity. So whether you're talking about the grid, wind, solar motors, batteries, electric vehicles, everything requires copper. And that is set against a background where to meet clean energy demands that are forecast — you know, demand will double, which means we need to, some estimates say, double mining production and triple recycling, something like that.
Ore grades are declining, so we're, we've gotten the easy stuff already. The harder stuff is what's left. Permitting is really hard and takes forever. And that's for some not-so-good reasons and some very good reasons, which is that the backdrop, as you know, of the mining industry, is in many ways incredibly problematic in terms of environmental justice issues. Not a great record. And so, and then you add, there are other things bound up in the copper ball.
Like, because copper smelting, which is the majority of how we process copper today, is incredibly hazardous to the environment using traditional techniques, we actually have closed down most of the copper smelters in the US, which is a good thing for people who breathe that air. But it also means that we are taking, you know, copper mined in Arizona and we're offshoring it for refining and then sending it back, you know, as refined copper ore in products. And so that is challenging from a global supply chain risk standpoint, not to mention emissions associated with that transport. And so there's just a ton bound up with, "Okay, we need more copper, but..." And then there's a long list of buts for why getting more copper is hard.
David Roberts
And more lithium. Just briefly, because I want to talk about copper a little bit more, but briefly, it's striking that you don't include, I think, what a lot of people think about when this comes up, which is these allegedly rare earth minerals. The word "rare" is so unfortunate in that term because people think that those are kind of the linchpin.
Johanna Wolfson
Well, rare earths are interesting, and we haven't invested in that area yet. We may, but you're right that they didn't top my list. So we're talking about things like neodymium. Right. And the materials that go into magnets. And then, depending on your definition, you may or may not be including nickel, cobalt, manganese, and other things that go into battery chemistries, which I put those in the second tier only because, you know, I think we have more tunability and flexibility in battery chemistries on the margins. But rare earth elements, to your point on the word "rare", we are actually not at a global deficit on those, but 80% of the materials are in China.
And so, until recently, there was a risk and now, recently, a reality that, you know, China might withhold rare earth exports into the US, and that is what we're now seeing. And that, you know, probably will upscale domestic efforts. But on the other hand, then there's always the possibility that China will flood the market and disrupt the pricing, and it's just incredibly fraught. That's why they didn't top my list.
David Roberts
For instance, China might withhold them if we slap them with 100% tariffs.
Johanna Wolfson
Just as a forensics.
David Roberts
I always think it's hilarious. We're like, "What's China going to do?" And then we just go like, punch China in the nose, "Well yeah, they're going to do it."
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, absolutely.
David Roberts
Our worst fears will come true if we go force them to come true. In the larger sort of policy community, there's all this concern about reshoring and all this concern about China dominating supply chains. Those are, though, economic security, political security, national security concerns. Do you adopt those? Is reshoring and securing supply chains part of something you think of as a goal of yours?
Johanna Wolfson
Not explicitly for that reason. I mean, we see geopolitical constraints and risks as something that could hold back the clean energy industry as a whole. So, in that sense, yes. But it is not a principal goal of our fund to specifically have a US mineral supply, although we think it's a good idea for a lot of reasons in terms of having optionality. So, I guess that's how I would thread that needle.
David Roberts
Yeah, let's talk about copper then. And taking a kind of step back, I'm just sort of curious, as a VC, when you approach something like copper, you know, you get these stats, "We're going to need twice the copper," "Copper ore quality is declining," etc. Copper is a problem. How do you go about approaching that sector? Because I'm sort of like all my training and the way I think about it is from a policy perspective, like that's sort of how I think, but that's not your angle. So when you approach something like copper, are you going and looking for companies that are just getting started, are you going to an area where you think there needs to be a company and sort of planting a flag and looking around saying, "Hey, somebody come start a company here." — like what is a VC methodology when you approach something like copper?
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, that's a great question because it is so wide open. So, I'll say a couple of things. One is that we tend to, just as a firm, seek opportunities both ways, both opportunistically, "come one, come all," we kind of want to look at everything. And then we also do a lot of thesis-driven work and, in particular, an associate on our team, Cass Vickers, put together a pretty comprehensive look at copper over the last couple of years in terms of "Where should we be looking?" Because of our unique vantage point in the venture investment scene, that also means we're looking, where are others funding already? We don't need to go there, but let's go where others are not funding.
So, to take one example of that, there's a process called heap leaching where mining companies take degraded ores that are uneconomic assets, put them in a heap, it's called a heap, and they leach, you know, an acid through it. And there are companies like Jetti and Ceibo who have been very well funded. It's very exciting, actually, for the sector that these companies have been well funded by climate tech VC, not us. And those are kind of novel leachates that they're putting into solution to get more out.
We looked at that and we said, "We're not really needed there." But guess what, this whole idea of a heap leach process is really a data-starved process overall. They're not distributing those assets correctly.
David Roberts
It's extremely analog; one might even say, kind of gross.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, absolutely, yes. They don't even try. Right, with the word. It's heap leaching.
David Roberts
Yeah, they don't even try to disguise how gross it is.
Johanna Wolfson
So, we invested in a company, you know, just very, very pre-seed stage that, you know, in many ways we partnered with hand in hand to just get a narrative together around, you know, instrumenting that heap and being able to — I know I'm trying to make it sound more glamorous and it's just not going to happen. And being able to, you know, actually achieve the yield enhancements that should be possible if you're treating that like an instrumented asset, which it's traditionally not done. It's like an 18th-century technique.
David Roberts
What was that one? It's called Muon, right?
Johanna Wolfson
It's Muon Vision.
David Roberts
They're shooting muons, which are what? Subatomic particles? What the heck are muons?
Johanna Wolfson
The universe is shooting muons. We don't have to do anything to get them. We just need to bury a scintillator under the heap and watch the muons come in and see how the liquid density is varying as a result.
David Roberts
So, what it's telling you is like, where is the liquid in the heap coming down through? Like, where is it coming faster and slower? Where do you need more liquid? Basically, it's like telling you a little bit about what's happening inside.
Johanna Wolfson
Exactly, yes, exactly. And to put this in the broader context of the copper industry, you've got pyrometallurgy, which is the traditional way of mining copper, hard rock mining, and you put it in a smelter and you go, there's more work to do there. And I mentioned earlier that smelters are pretty bad, so there's more to do there. And we've actually made another investment on that side into a company called Still Bright. But the industry as a whole is actually wanting to shift more to what's called hydrometallurgical processing, which is how they might be able to get at some of these lower-grade ores that aren't as much using the traditional methods, but they're going to need help to do that.
And that's part of why we see, you know, a lot of opportunity here.
David Roberts
And just broadly, we don't have to get too deep into it. But pyrometallurgy is basically like, you burn things to separate them. Basically, you're trying to get something out of the material and you burn it off, burn it with the presence of various chemicals that separates it.
Johanna Wolfson
You got it.
David Roberts
Super dirty, super energy intensive — just like the iconic, unpleasant industrial process.
Johanna Wolfson
It is the iconic, unpleasant industrial process. It is the reason we barely have any smelters left in the US. Like, that is a good thing. But, we need alternatives.
David Roberts
But hydrometallurgy, just to orient people, is basically, you are immersing the stuff in a solution of liquids that contain various chemicals that leach the materials apart. So, you don't require heat. I mean, basically, it's like a room temperature process. Is that one of the big advantages?
Johanna Wolfson
You don't require heat, although it's interesting that you get more out if you do heat it. And so, some companies are looking at, you know, siting geothermal alongside heap leaching to, you know, make it even better. But it kind of needs to be geothermal to make it worth it. You can imagine it's always, you know, a spreadsheet exercise. But that's right, that's a good description. And you know, it should be said, just because I'm so focused on the environmental justice aspect of all this stuff, is that heap leaching is not, you know, it's not some glorious alternative that doesn't touch people either.
You know, it takes up a lot of space and, you know, it leaves behind an asset.
David Roberts
It's a giant pile of waste with acid running through it.
Johanna Wolfson
It's exactly, yeah. Look, none of this stuff is what we might choose to do just for fun. It's all about what, you know, what are the cost-benefit trade-offs that we have to make if we decide we are prioritizing and how do we minimize damage in doing that? And I want to, if I can just go to one other thought on, you had asked me how do we think about scoping the space and how do we think about making investments? And as I was reflecting on the investments we've made, I realized something, which is that while the high-level point to do any of this is what we started our conversation around, which is to enable the energy transition because we're going to need all these materials.
That almost ignores this big thing underneath, which is how emissions intensive all these processes are. And you went there on the smelting side. But we've actually, because when we make an investment, we underwrite not just to an eventual financial outcome that we know the financing sector will pay attention to, but we underwrite to a gigaton scale of impact. And we've decided to, when we do that underwriting, focus on the process emissions, not whatever downstream enablement and unlocking of a clean energy industry might occur. And I think that's important because it keeps us focused on making sure whatever we do, it has to be better than what's been done before.
David Roberts
Right. Although, it is worth saying, just as a bit of information, that the emissions of the copper-making process are relatively modest in the grand global scheme of things, especially compared to all the clean energy, you know, technology that it enables. Like, if you're going to spend emissions, you know, getting copper is pretty good.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah. They are certainly modest in the scheme of what could be avoided and unlocked by the industries they are enabling. Otherwise, I hope we wouldn't be even doing this. But they're not tiny. They're meaningful enough to clear our bar, which is the gigaton scale bar on process emissions alone, which in some cases I was surprised by.
David Roberts
Let me get into a few of the nooks and crannies of copper here. First, I want to talk about electrochemistry because here at Volts, we love ourselves some electrochemistry. You mentioned a company that is using electrochemistry.
Johanna Wolfson
Still Bright.
David Roberts
Still Bright, yes. Talk a little bit about what they're doing and what it is substituting for.
Johanna Wolfson
Great. So, we talked a little bit about the traditional pyrometallurgy and the smelting process. And so, Still Bright is essentially taking out the smelting process, which is really awesome. So, they are going after what's called chalcopyrite, which is part of the universe of sulfide ores that pyrometallurgy traditionally goes after, although chalcopyrite is generally considered a lower-grade ore. So, there's a lot of it lying around. And it's been challenging for smelters to extract copper from, not least because it's a dirtier, lower-grade ore. And so, when you put it through a smelter, it emits all sorts of nasty stuff, notably arsenic, which is like, could you think of a worse thing to be, you know, gasifying and spreading into a community?
And that is one reason why it's just not done. But again, if we're going to meet this demand, we need to find clean ways to go after the ores that we do have. And so, Still Bright has — this is a spin-out from Columbia University, tremendous technology — they essentially react copper concentrate through a vanadium redox flow battery and they're able to produce solid copper through that electrochemical process and have demonstrated pretty extraordinary efficiency. And they're going to market with the case that we can do processing of sulfide ores right here in the US and we don't have to smelt them and we're not going to emit anything.
David Roberts
So this is an alternative to smelting?
Johanna Wolfson
This is an alternative to smelting, which makes it pretty powerful.
David Roberts
Yeah, we can take these ores and produce copper with them on site. So, you don't have to ship anything away for processing. And this is just a gleam in someone's eye, what's the state of it?
Johanna Wolfson
This is excitingly, you know, a few steps beyond that. So a couple of years ago it was. And Jon Vardner, who's the founder of this company, was kind of working on it after his PhD postdoc at Columbia University and realized he had a pretty powerful concept here. And so, in the last couple of years, he spun that into a company. He got some preliminary funding from us and others, and he recently, I don't think it's been announced yet, but closed a pretty meaningful series seed round and is going to be building the first demonstration of this at a demonstration but still meaningful non-lab scale.
And that's going to be for the world to see within about 18 months from now. So, a lot of exciting things to watch there. And they've seen really promising results in the lab. Of course, new engineering challenges do emerge when you take it up the next level, but the numbers that we're seeing are pretty promising and we're excited to be able to see that at the next scale.
David Roberts
Yeah, I'm so excited about electrochemistry. It seems like the solution to all the most difficult problems. I've had someone who's making steel with electrochemistry on the pod, someone who's making concrete with electrochemistry, basically substituting electrons for carbon molecules. What a beautiful thing. You just need a lot of cheap electrons.
Johanna Wolfson
To me, it is the most exciting way to interpret "electrify everything" because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
David Roberts
For all the "difficult to abate" sectors, electrochemistry is the answer. Almost every one of those, I think, in the long term, we'll see.
Johanna Wolfson
And we've made a number of electrochemistry-focused investments and the challenges are hard. Like the engineering, it really, truly is very hard and I don't want to dismiss that. But they are tractable. It's not an intractable set of challenges.
David Roberts
Interesting. And what about something I sometimes hear about mining in situ, mining underground? Are you invested in that? And how the heck does that work?
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, so we have not invested in that. I've sometimes heard that term applied to heap leaching, but I don't think that's what you mean. I think you might be referring to an electrostimulation approach that we've seen, it's called ISR mining. Where you can sort of stimulate to the surface the ore that you're after. But I don't know a ton about it. We haven't made an investment in that area.
David Roberts
And what about these two different methods of basically mining waste? One is mining what are called tailings. Are you getting involved in that and how much promise is there in that? Because there's a lot of mining tailings lying around the world.
Johanna Wolfson
It is a huge opportunity. It is a tricky one to crack because typically the tailings are what's left behind. And sometimes those are, you know, inactive sites. And there's a question of who owns it and how do you get access. But putting that aside and just thinking about an active mining operation with tailings, we think about separations there. So another one of our portfolio companies, SiTration, which has developed a silicon-based membrane that shows really tremendous selectivity for multiple of these elements that we care about, copper, lithium and others, it can be tuned and be highly selective to not only size but valence of the ion you're after.
So, some of these technologies that were actually, they have flexibility in how they can go to market in mining. You could think about them as technologies to deploy in the secondary recovery market, which we didn't talk about yet. But we need to, we should do just a ton more of because it is maybe the one way we avoid some of these most thorny community and justice issues. And then secondly, they could go to market on the tailings front, you have these waste streams on site at mines and you should be able to valorize them.
And that's, you know, kind of, it's in many ways it's a variation of the heap leach concept. I have now what I have designated as uneconomic or what previously, according to my prior technology toolkit, was uneconomic and it's just a calculation of what's my ROI on bringing this new tool on board and whether I can reliably valorize what was previously written off as a waste stream. So there's quite a lot happening there. And also on the, we talked briefly up top about the rare earth elements. I've seen a lot of companies going after mining tailings to find the little stuff.
This might be a copper, a silver, a gold, or a lithium mine, but there's other stuff in there. You know, the earth's crust is very interesting that way. And so, if you can find cheap enough ways to go get after it and recover, you know, smaller amounts of still valuable materials, if you haven't invested all the upfront, you know, CapEx to mine those, the mining company did that for its main thing, but it can have secondary revenue streams. That's where we're seeing a lot of activity and there's quite a bit of innovation on that front from, you know, materials innovation like the one I mentioned to biological leaching microbes that secrete kind of an especially effective leachate for some of these rare earth minerals.
So there's quite a lot happening there.
David Roberts
And the other waste stream to mine that gets discussed, which I've always thought seems promising, is just landfills. Like, people throw away a lot of metal. A lot of processed pure metal in devices and so little of that gets separated, so little of that gets recaptured. I just feel like we're in a world with tons of landfills with tons of valuable materials in them. But then I also think, what is the cost structure of schlepping through a landfill picking out good stuff? Is that a reasonable thing that we are ever going to be able to do?
Johanna Wolfson
Well, I love that you went there. I was just on the phone yesterday with an entrepreneur who I was asking some of these questions to, not for the metal waste reason but because she's working on — to keep it the heap topics — instrumenting landfills to find where RNG pipes might need to be rerouted to capture methane. But anyway, so I was asking some of these questions about landfill economics and operations and probably not a shock, but it's not like the most innovative sector. And so, you can imagine sets of drone-based scanning or, you know, AI-driven imagery deduction that's saying, "Well, look here, you know, there's something promising and you know, go send a robotic arm to pick it up and then send it through, send it through a line that can do some visual analysis" and we have seen companies by the way doing that visual analysis of waste not from landfills but just online and recycling facilities.
And so, that technology is developing. And so, I can certainly invent in my mind a future where what you describe is real, but it's probably not an especially soon thing. Although, I will say that this is an area where I think in the US, we're pretty far behind Europe as an example. People just, I think, care more about separating and the landfill setup, and actually, the innovation landscape in Europe is quite a bit more evolved from what I understand. So, maybe we need to go over there first and see what our future looks like.
David Roberts
One thing I thought was interesting in your sort of investment thesis document about copper was that you are going to steer clear for now of the seafloor stuff, which is a hot topic now because Trump, I don't know exactly what he did, it's just all these executive orders. I think he, at one point, it was either an executive order or a Truth Social post. It's hard to keep them distinct where he's like, "Yeah, go mine the seafloor." But you for now are staying away from that. What's the thinking there?
Johanna Wolfson
Well, and we haven't made any definitive, "we will never" kind of statement about it. I will say we do talk to companies doing that. We find it interesting. As of yet, we haven't made an investment in that area. My thinking is maybe twofold. One is that there is, we were talking earlier about how mining is a data-starved industry and we were just talking about landfills where the same is true. And I think if you think about low-hanging fruit, there is quite a lot of it on land or I guess out of the sea.
And so, in terms of just like where to focus time and energy in dollars, it hasn't been our focus. It would be reasonable for someone to make a different decision. But that's true as of now. And then secondly, we do a fair amount of active investing in ocean tech. It has tended toward shipping and carbon removal. And so, we know a little bit about, and I emphasize a little, about maritime regulation and international waters and the complexities associated with that and I think are under no illusions about, you know, what would need to be sorted to responsibly and reliably do deep sea mining.
And it's not to say that it's an intractable problem. It's just again, like we're, you know, I'm always staring down the clock, I feel at 2050, and thinking about what this trade-off between we're, we're a risk-embracing fund that can do really big swings, but we're increasingly hurtling toward some points of no return here. And so we have to make tough trade-offs about what is likely to come to fruition in time. Oof, that got dark.
David Roberts
Yeah, let's talk about a more pleasant topic, which is recycling. I think everybody holds out hope when they think about the far future, you know, that we can get to a place — I mean, this is the idea, right — eventually we get to a place where we've mined enough and we are recycling and we've created something close to a closed loop. I mean, this is sort of like the dream. It's pretty far off. I noticed a note of caution about recycling in the document. So, how are you thinking about recycling?
Just, I mean, physically and environmentally, obviously, it's a dire need. But in terms of like VC, you know, targets, where do you find in there?
Johanna Wolfson
Well, we actually see a lot of activity. So, I don't know if that note might have been referring to less critical need for catalytic capital. I would have to look back to see if that's maybe what it was referring to. But because there are a number of companies that are out there and doing a lot and, you know, looking successful. Redwood Materials and lithium would be the prototypical example — Glencore. But there are others. And then we see emerging companies and Cycle is a good example that I think are going to maybe give some of those a run for their money.
And so, there's some promising activity. And I think the revenue model is tough. It's a tough nut to crack, but again, probably a tractable one. And I think some of those founders and entrepreneurs are really paving the way to figure some of that out.
David Roberts
There's some cool electrochemistry.
Johanna Wolfson
There's electrochemistry everywhere.
David Roberts
I know once you start, once you start seeing it.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, and I mentioned earlier, SiTration, who plays in that space. But I think recycling is so interesting because, you know, keep in mind for these mining and materials calls to action, it's still a little bit future looking. It's, you know, over the next 10 years or out to 2030 or 2040, copper demand will double and lithium will quadruple or whatever it is.
David Roberts
But copper demand has not. I mean, you make a note of this in the document. Copper demand has not gone up yet. So, this is all "probably."
Johanna Wolfson
It's all predicated on predictions, which are just that. Right. So, well, I'll come back to that. But to finish the recycling, I think it's interesting. Let's assume for a moment that those predictions do come true. It's actually very hard to see, see permitting and the ores in the quality that they are, really meeting that. And so, the demand for secondary materials will probably skyrocket in a way that we don't yet feel today. And so, I love those companies that are kind of getting ready for it because I think they're going to be really well positioned. It's just we're not feeling it yet.
But to your point, this is all predictive and they're just that. And so, it's kind of this strange thing that we're doing when we invest in this space. We're sort of warding off a future what could be a lock in the future, but it's not an active unlock. And so, one of the things I think about while this space is really important to me, and I think there's a lot that can be done especially to clean up the mining industry in the scheme of climate tech investing. It's just one prong. And when it's an indirect prong that is predicated on a future thing, we're always weighing — when you compare that to, you know, taking a molecule of methane right out of the atmosphere, you know, how should we be weighing that?
Which is, you know, that doesn't have a simple answer. But it's an interesting question.
David Roberts
Yeah, a certain amount of skating to where you think the puck is going. You talk to the people in the long-duration storage crowd, those poor people who are hearing simultaneously, "There's no current demand for your product. But yeah, don't you worry, in 10 years there's going to be so much." It's sketchy. Tell us about lithium. So, copper is the big one. I don't really feel people get that the need for more copper. So, I'm glad we're highlighting that. But also lithium. And as a background to this question, this is also a general question about materials.
So, I frequently, I've been doing this for 20 years now. You frequently hear like, "This or that material is rare." You know, "There's going to be exploding demand and there's not enough supply. There's going to be a giant choke point. It's going to stop everything." And like, it just inevitably never happens. Like, somehow or other, we innovate or substitute around materials challenges and so like this, all these projections of like in 10 years, you know, "X material is going to be $2 billion a pound," they just never come true. Which seems to me, it makes it tricky to invest in this area.
And so, this brings us to lithium. Like you undoubtedly recall, it was not that long ago that people were saying, "Lithium's price is skyrocketing. Everybody wants lithium. We're heading up to a giant, a giant lithium shortage that's going to grind the whole industry to a halt." And now, lithium's like dirt cheap again.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, it's dirt cheap. But will it go back up?
David Roberts
Yes, well, again, who knows? So how do you think about that in terms of investing? Are we going to need a ton of lithium? Is it going to be cheap? Is it going to get scarce? How do you begin to approach that?
Johanna Wolfson
So, that is totally true, that deep and staggering uncertainty. But that's no different than anything else we should be looking at as good venture investors in terms of whether we're talking about carbon markets or something even further afield. So I guess, you know, there's comfort in that discomfort. But I think your point is right and the, you know, the way we've thought about this and you know, we actually made our first lithium investment back in 2018, which is a long time ago and not many people were talking about it. That was in Lilac Solutions, which is, you know, doing direct lithium extraction from brines.
And then, more recently, we invested in a company called Rock Zero, which is doing hard rock mining of lithium, which is sort of a different part of the landscape. But we think that there will be, even if you don't get into the game of what exactly will the demand curve look like and when, what you can be pretty sure of, or at least I think so, is that if you have an extraordinarily better way of doing something, then you're going to be able to unlock value in that. And the market projections that may or may not come to pass are kind of unbounded upside on that. So that's a little bit about how we think of it.
And we have to remember that this is a long game. So, lithium prices crashing are unhelpful for a lithium company out raising money during that time. But it's not probably a statement about yes or no on the long-term target. But I do value your point that we tend to find a way, and that's probably what is behind my statement about in the grand portfolio of technologies to be supporting, I think this has a role. I think it's a role that needs to be kept in balance to all the other problems we're chasing after for those of us who care about achieving this transition.
David Roberts
So then, mining-wise, you guys are all over copper. You're in several early stages, sort of improving copper mining. You're in a couple of lithium. Are there other mining... is it just copper and lithium? Mostly like those are the big buckets. Are there others in this general area that you are excited about?
Johanna Wolfson
So, in terms of investments that we've made, it's copper and lithium and the company that's going after secondary extraction, SiTration, that can be deployed across many materials. We've also looked at others. We may make other investments, but it's no accident that we focused in on copper and lithium. And I displayed my bias upfront that those are the two that are really most critical. I would say there are others that we'll continue to look at. There are other companies though in our portfolio that touch on mining, even though they're not part of this critical or rare material conversation.
And those interestingly tend to fall into the carbon removal space where we're talking about, you know, doing some form of enhanced rock weathering or accelerated weathering of limestone, where if those approaches are successful, and I'm thinking, you know, in our case companies, Calcarea going after decarbonizing shipping and Vesta, which is doing coastal carbon capture. But there are many others, you know, going after different iterations of that carbonate chemistry. Basically, if those types of approaches are successful, there are some meaningful mining implications there too, in terms of where those materials are being sourced from, how they're transported, grinding costs, grinding emissions and so forth. So it really does, I think, underline how foundational the mining industry is to a lot of what we care about, even if we don't always look directly at it.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. And I should make my point that I always make when mining comes up. It is true that clean energy technologies require more per unit of generation of these materials than fossil fuel generating energy generation technologies require. But what you don't have to do is mine a continuous supply of fossil fuels to dump into those machines. So, you just need the materials once and then you're done. As opposed to needing fewer materials to build the machine, but then needing a continuous stream of fossil fuel to put in the machine, which does more landscape, social, whatever damage you want, whatever kind of damage you want to talk about, lots more being done by fossil fuel, you know, digging up than there is by materials mining.
So, yes, more mining of these materials, but less overall disruption of the Earth's crust, let's say.
Johanna Wolfson
Right, but I'm so glad you brought up that point because just the truth that there is more of these materials in the renewable energy and electric energy sector, you know, it just, it drives home the point that we have to do mining better. And I know we've said it, but I just, I do worry about sometimes the conversation in climate tech around mining seems to be, you know, just, "Let's get more." And it's like, no, that's not it. "Just get more" hasn't served us that well as a human race, so we have to do it better.
David Roberts
Yeah, there's like, there's two unproductive sides of that conversation, which I saw online when I threw this out there. One is just like, "Why are we worrying about these relatively modest impacts when the whole fate of the planet is on the line? Blah, blah, just mine what you need to mine, et cetera." That's that attitude. And then there's the sort of like, "Mines are bad, they ruin communities, they ruin landscapes. Let's get rid of them. Just recycle." Yeah, I got, I got that one thrown at me several times. And it's worth saying that, like, if you're gonna need 2x the copper, even if you recycle 100x of the copper that you currently have, you're not gonna turn it into 200x. So, like, just reinforcing your point, like, there's a lot of mining needed, no matter which direction you face, no matter what you want to do. So you might as well do it better.
Johanna Wolfson
You might as well do it better, and you might as well kind of throw yourself into the learning of that. So, if there's one thing that I would say that I've really benefited from, it's kind of throwing myself headlong into what is hard about mining and not looking away from it, and, you know, talking to folks in the communities affected and visiting them. And that's what I advise portfolio companies to do when we make an investment: go there, feel it, and talk to people. So, this is not academic for you, because if it's academic, you're going to make the wrong choice.
You're not going to be able to fully value the complexity of what you're engaging in. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Like, let's grapple with it, but let's grapple with it for real.
David Roberts
Yeah, final-ish question. I think maybe energy, in a way that is unlike sort of digital tech, which is the tech that everybody's kind of more familiar with, kind of what they think of when they think about tech. Like if you're developing apps, it's kind of a wild west, you can kind of do what you want. But in energy, everywhere you turn, there's policy, there's politics and policy that are incredibly relevant and germane to a lot of these industries. You know, depending on which way the policy winds blow, entire industries in this area can be sort of like created out of whole cloth or shut down.
Johanna Wolfson
Totally. I mean, I saw the announcement yesterday, "Coal designated as a critical material." No, I'm serious. Because of metallurgical steel.
David Roberts
Hilarious.
Johanna Wolfson
Metallurgical coal for steel. So yeah, there you go.
David Roberts
Yes, yes, I know. So, but just like my impression is from the tech and investor community that they're super informed on tech and tech risk and business risk, but maybe aren't super savvy when it comes to politics. Of course, I think that about everyone, I yell at everyone about that. But like, how do you think about policy risk? Is that a big column in your spreadsheet or is that, do you just sort of treat that like, you know, acts of God that you can't, that you have no control over?
Johanna Wolfson
Are you asking for mining in particular or for our investing practice in general?
David Roberts
Well, let's start with mining in particular, but I'm interested in the general answer too.
Johanna Wolfson
It's probably different between the two. So for mining in particular, I think by and large, in terms of the march of history and mining, hopefully getting better over time, currently lax regulations notwithstanding, I think that in general, policy forces will be tailwinds for most companies innovating in this sector because they're doing things better, cleaner, more efficiently. And that's where all the pressures over time are going to point things. So there will be differences in terms of which geographies is that true in first? And by the way, there's a cautionary tale there because startup companies need to, we often say everyone needs to go fast. But in areas where there's kind of really heady, fraught issues, you sometimes need to go slower now in order to go faster later.
And so, don't go necessarily to the place to deploy where you have the most lax regulations. Right. So, either apply more strict regulations to yourself elsewhere or actually start in a place with stricter regulations so that you have kind of a squeaky clean reputation from the start. So, that's just kind of a side note of the playbook. But, I think in general, the policy factors will be tailwinds for startup companies in the sector generally.
And I guess that does map to how we think about policy risk more generally at Azolla, which is, we both eschew and totally welcome policy risk on different timescales. So, on the near-term timescale, what we probably will never do is underwrite an investment that requires a subsidy of any kind to be economic because it's not reliable, it's not durable, and it's not the way we think people are incentivized, and it's just not the political system that we've seen. But in the longer term, we have made a declaration that in certain cases policy will land.
We may not know the specifics, but we know that in the arc of time, mining regulations will tighten or regulatory carbon markets will grow. That kind of macro confidence we do sometimes have about the policy environment and —
David Roberts
The arc of history bends towards justice?
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, there we go. Absolutely.
David Roberts
Yeah, well, let's hope so. I mean, and in a certain sense, like if it isn't, we have bigger problems, we're all screwed anyways. Might as well fill your time with something. Mining, as you say, as I think everyone acknowledges, globally, mining is a grim, not just grim physically, but like the industry has a terrible record. It's been rapacious, it's destroyed a lot of landscapes, destroyed a lot of communities and has a sort of established a history of "We're gonna do the cheapest thing, come what may." So, I guess just like an actual final question which is just like until and unless these things you're investing in become cheaper than the alternatives, do we have any reason to believe that the mining industry is going to make sort of good faith efforts that they will spend extra money to clean themselves up or they're just going to...
In some sense, you almost need policy to force them to clean up to make these things you're investing in viable. Do you know what I'm saying?
Johanna Wolfson
So, I mean, look, good faith efforts, probably. I mean, I think that there are good people who work on the community engagement sides of mining companies that are kind of trying to do the right thing. Like, I really believe that. And you know, you look and you learn about the programs going on at say, the Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona, which has met with a lot of challenges and they're not doing negative things in the community alongside the mine, they're doing positive things. How does that weigh? Well, the community should decide. But just to say that there are good faith efforts, but I would say good faith efforts are probably not enough.
And so, I just agree with your actual conclusion that you probably need policy to force it. And that's because every incentive, by the way, for a mining company is to kind of promise the world and then it's actually very, very hard to deliver the world because reality intervenes. And so, you're just like setting up for this huge disparate outcome in terms of what the vision was and what the reality was. But I do think that policy and regulation is totally critical here because I don't think mining companies really have the incentive to go as far as absolutely possible, which is what's necessary.
You know, it's not necessary to do a little bit more here or there. And then, maybe a final thought here, and this is where I'm going to start to sound like an optimist, which is that these companies that we support and others support and that are bringing in many ways the new front of mining technology, whether that's cleaner or more efficient or more intelligent, they actually have an extraordinary opportunity to sort of demand a different set of behaviors from the mining companies that will be their customers if their technologies prove successful. And so, if you have the most, you know, the most promising electrochemical approach to refining copper and you are licensing that out or deciding where to site your facility, you are going to call the shots. Now, the startup companies that are developing those technologies today, they're not yet in a position to call the shots, but if they are successful, they will be.
And that's why, to me, it's so important to kind of, from the start, think about what kind of business you are trying to build and what is the change you're trying that you might be able to demand just by dint of having a better solution.
David Roberts
Yeah, the landscape looks different when there's no other way of doing it but the bad way. Like the minute there's a different way of doing it, even if the new way is more expensive, the whole sort of social and political landscape shifts.
Johanna Wolfson
That's right. But I think, I mean, for a lot of these companies, the new way of doing it won't be more expensive. It's actually a win on many levels.
David Roberts
Well, your lips to God's ears. All right, well, Johanna, thank you so much. It's really fascinating. I'm glad you've dived into this, you know, sometimes unpleasant area. I appreciate it.
Johanna Wolfson
Absolutely, I had a lot of fun. Thanks for the discussion.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
Data collected in part by the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission shows a decrease in manoomin — a wild rice plant important to Ojibwe lifeways.
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Some Wisconsin lawmakers are proposing a bill that would create a $10,000 tax credit for people who moved to Wisconsin from Los Angeles County and North Carolina following disasters there.
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On Sunday, Luke Prokop of the Milwaukee Admirals will serve as the Grand Marshal in Milwaukee's 2025 Pride Parade.
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The union says it has turned down two contract offers from Indiana-based Cummins Inc. The two sides are scheduled to meet again June 26.
The post UAW strike in Oshkosh nears 3-month mark after 2 contracts have been rejected appeared first on WPR.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans who run the Wisconsin Legislature say they’re done negotiating over the state budget, leaving GOP lawmakers to write the document themselves.
The post State budget talks called off as Gov. Tony Evers, Republican lawmakers hit impasse appeared first on WPR.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson remains opposed to a massive budget bill in Congress, telling WPR he wants to see larger spending cuts and an extension of federal tax cuts.
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Wisconsin Democrats on Wednesday announced legislation aimed at proactively responding to measures out of Washington that they say will hurt Wisconsinites, including potential changes to federal funding for state programs.
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Southern Wisconsin has been seeing some of the worst air quality in the nation Wednesday as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to blanket much of the state.
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Many organizations, like the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, were notified of abrupt grant terminations in an email on May 2.
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Kristina Amelong explores her brother's legacy in a new memoir about family, continuing through tragedy and the mystery surrounding what happened.
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Children at the Growing Tree child care in New Glarus. Wisconsin is one of only six states that doesn't put any money into early childhood education. (Photo by Kate Rindy)
Children are born into this world innocent. They did not choose their parents. They did not choose to be born into poverty. They do not get to choose if a parent is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Children do not get a choice to be born into an environment of neglect. Children do not choose to grow up in a home with violence. Children do not get a choice to be abused or assaulted. Children do not choose to be born with a disability. Children do not get to choose if they can access medical care. Children do not get a choice on whether they are even wanted or loved.
Adults do have choices. In Wisconsin, we have chosen to have a state where children are the largest demographic living in poverty. We have chosen to allow some children to live with constant hunger. We have chosen not to support children with disabilities. We are still choosing not to create systems to support children who have experienced adversity like abuse and neglect. We made the choice to create an education system based on the income of the people living in the community. We choose to allow children to be uncared for. We as a community have made these choices deliberately and without shame.
Consequently, we have chosen for those children to be less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to fail at a job, have poor health (which is connected to stress in the early years) and to be statistically more likely to be placed in the prison system.
We, as a state, have chosen to prioritize funding for prisons and spend nothing on early care and education, one of only six states that don’t invest a penny in early childhood programs, even though we know that when children have access to quality early education that they are more likely to graduate high school, have higher incomes, be healthier, and are less likely to enter the prison system. We have chosen to remove health care options for children by not expanding Badgercare. We are soon to be the only state that does not provide postpartum Medicaid, risking the lives of new mothers and increasing the likelihood that children will have to grow up without them. We have decided that children with disabilities will receive services not based on their actual needs, but based on the budget for special education, which our state keeps at the barest minimum.
We have chosen to make the word “welfare” into a bad word. Welfare by definition is the health, happiness and fortunes of a person or group. And we have chosen to deny the health, happiness and fortune of children in our state. Referring to a bipartisan push for Medicaid expansion to cover postpartum care, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said he “cannot imagine supporting an expansion of welfare.” Why is providing welfare to support the health and wellbeing of children or anyone for that matter a negative concept? Why are we so afraid that if we support people in need that it somehow takes away from us? For example, why would providing children with free lunches at school be a bad thing to do? Why would ensuring that children have access to medical care regardless of whether their parents can afford it or not be bad to do? Why would ensuring that children have access to quality care and education in their early years, regardless of their parents’ income, be a bad thing? Why would ensuring that children with disabilities have access to the services they need be bad? Why is it wrong to have systems in our state that ensure we are doing everything we can to give all children the best opportunities to grow, thrive and become productive members of our communities?
Rep. Vos and Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Sen.Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) all disagree with creating and funding policies that support our children. Time and time again, they have voted down policies that would have provided support to children. They have continued to forgo our future by not investing in our children. Instead, they invest in the wealthiest in our state and invest in our punitive prison systems. They invest in large businesses with expensive lobbyists who demand tax breaks and deregulation. They invest in those most likely to donate to their campaigns. These grown-up white men cannot stand the idea of anyone, even a child, getting help from the state. If they had to pay for school lunch, they figure, so should everyone else. If they had to pay for their child’s medical visit, then so should everyone else. If they had to pay for child care, then so should everyone else. They are incapable of seeing past their privileges. They cannot appreciate what it is like to be a child born into an environment that causes harm and the trajectory that puts the child on. However, they will certainly be there when that child becomes an adult and enters the prison system. They are more than willing to pay for incarceration and punishment.
That’s not just financially irresponsible — we spend about four times as much to keep someone in prison as we spend on education — it’s inhumane, and it impoverishes our state and condemns children to unnecessary suffering and a bleak future.
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Negotiations on the state budget between Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers broke down on Wednesday. Evers delivers his 2025 state budget address. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Republican lawmakers are planning to move forward on writing the two-year state budget without input from across the aisle after negotiations with Gov. Tony Evers broke down on Wednesday.
Senate and Assembly leaders and Evers each released statements on Wednesday in the early evening saying that while negotiations have been in good faith, they are ending for now after meetings late on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning. Evers said Republicans were walking away from the talks after being unwilling to compromise, while Republicans said Evers’ requests weren’t reasonable.
“Both sides of these negotiations worked to find compromise and do what is best for the state of Wisconsin,” Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Joint Finance Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a statement. “However, we have reached a point where Governor Evers’ spending priorities have extended beyond what taxpayers can afford.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) left the possibility of future negotiations open in a separate statement.
“Assembly Republicans remain open to discussions with Governor Evers in hopes of finding areas of agreement, however after meeting until late last night and again this morning, it appears the two sides remain far apart,” the lawmakers said.
Vos and Born said JFC will continue “using our long-established practices to craft a state budget that contains meaningful tax relief and responsible spending levels with the goal of finishing on time.”
In previous sessions this has meant that the Republican committee throws out all of Evers’ proposals, writes the budget itself, passes it with minimal Democratic support and sends the bill to Evers — who has often signed it with many (sometimes controversial) partial vetoes.
LeMahieu and Marklein noted that the Republican-led committee has created budgets in the last three legislative sessions that Evers has signed and they are “confident” lawmakers will pass a “responsible budget” this session that Evers will sign.
Lawmakers have less than a month before the state’s June 30 budget deadline. If a new budget isn’t approved and signed into law by then, the state will continue to operate under the current budget.
Evers said in a statement that he is disappointed Republicans are deciding to write the budget without Democratic support.
“The concept of compromise is simple — everyone gets something they want, and no one gets everything they want,” Evers said. He added that he told lawmakers that he would support their half of priorities, including their top tax cut proposals, even though they were similar to ones he previously vetoed, but he wanted agreements from them as well.
“Unfortunately, Republicans couldn’t agree to support the top priorities in my half of the deal, which included meaningful investments for K-12 schools, to continue Child Care Counts to help lower the cost of child care for working families and to prevent further campus closures and layoffs at our UW System,” Evers said.
“We’ve spent months trying to have real, productive conversations with Republican lawmakers in hopes of finding compromise and passing a state budget that everyone could support — and that, most importantly, delivers for the people of Wisconsin. I am admittedly disappointed that Republican lawmakers aren’t willing to reach consensus and common ground and have decided to move forward without bipartisan support instead.”
Democratic leaders said that Republicans are refusing to make investments in the areas that Wisconsinites want.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said in a joint statement that it’s disappointing Republicans are walking away from negotiations.
“The people of Wisconsin have a reasonable expectation that their elected leaders will work together to produce a state budget that prioritizes what matters most: lowering costs for families and investing in public education,” the lawmakers said. “This decision creates yet more uncertainty in a difficult time. Democrats will continue to stand up for all Wisconsinites and work to move Wisconsin forward through the budget process.”
Democrats on the budget committee accused Republicans of giving in to the “extremist wing of their party” by walking away from the negotiations and not committing to “fully funding our public schools, preventing the closure of child care centers, or meeting the healthcare needs of Wisconsinites.”
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