Grunge Meets Grid: How Pearl Jam’s Carbon Price Led Me to Battery ETFs

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The world is electrifying at an accelerating pace, and while solar panels and wind turbines grab most of the headlines, the real power behind the transition lies buried in rocks and embedded in chemistry. Batteries and the critical minerals that go into them are the plumbing of the clean energy transition. They’re not the shiny bits on rooftops or the turbines on hills, but the essential connective tissue that makes decarbonized transport and renewable-powered grids work. And in a world where governments, automakers, and utilities are all betting big on electrification, long-term investors are asking the right question: How can we get meaningful, diversified, fossil-free exposure to the core of this transformation?

At least, that’s the question I’m asking as I rebalance my personal portfolio, and a question I was recently asked by Pearl Jam. That’s right, the grunge rock heavy hitter recently reached out to me to ask how they could invest their personal carbon pricing of their concert travels at $200 per ton. They’ve been doing that for a long time, with guitarist Stone Gossard leading that focus. Their efforts have included supporting projects like Amazon rainforest reforestation, sustainable fuels, and photovoltaic technology. For instance, during their 2018 US and European tours, they offset approximately 3,500 tons of CO₂ emissions through conservation work on Afognak Island in Alaska, home to old-growth coastal temperate rainforests.

But when they reached out, they were pivoting a bit. Like pretty much everyone, they’ve realized that it’s possible to invest in the future and get a financial return. A mutual contact knew of my work assessing startups, dissecting portfolios like those of Breakthrough Energy Ventures (far too many obvious thumbs down investments) and advising investment funds, and connected us.

One answer I’ve been looking at is exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that focus on batteries and critical minerals. Unlike individual mining stocks or battery startups, these ETFs package multiple exposures into one instrument, spreading risk across geography, company maturity, and position in the supply chain. For investors with a buy-and-hold mindset who want to back the structural drivers of electrification without dancing in and out of speculative trades like me, these ETFs can be strategic anchors. But not all ETFs are created equal, and even fewer tick the boxes of global diversification, clean tech purity, and meaningful exposure to China’s dominant players.

Note a couple of things. I’m not a registered financial advisor and this isn’t me telling you to invest in something. That’s for you to decide with your advisers. This is me as an informed person doing my own quixotic research for my own portfolio and sharing the results.

Let’s start with equity ETFs, because for most investors they are the most accessible and straightforward path to long-term thematic exposure. Three ETFs stand out: Global X Lithium & Battery Tech (LIT), VanEck Rare Earth/Strategic Metals (REMX), and Amplify Lithium & Battery Tech (BATT). Each covers a different segment of the battery value chain, and each comes with its own risk profile.

LIT is the flagship lithium and battery tech ETF, with about 47% of its portfolio in Chinese companies like CATL, BYD, and Ganfeng Lithium. It provides exposure across the full lithium cycle, from mining to refining to battery production. Its five-year annualized return clocks in at an impressive 13.1%, albeit with serious volatility—a peak in late 2021 followed by a sharp pullback that wiped out more than half its gains. Still, for long-term holders, it’s been a rewarding ride. The fund charges a 0.75% expense ratio, higher than average but justified by its targeted exposure and deep liquidity. It’s a core holding for anyone serious about lithium and battery technologies.

REMX, by contrast, is a deep dive into critical minerals, especially rare earth elements. It has roughly 29% exposure to Chinese firms and focuses on miners and refiners of strategic metals like neodymium, praseodymium, and tungsten—essential for EV motors, wind turbine magnets, and defense technologies. It’s not a battery ETF per se, but a pure play on the raw material scarcity that underpins clean tech. Its five-year annualized return sits at around 9.4%, and its expense ratio is a modest 0.56%. Volatility is high, with a 60% drawdown from its 2021 peak, but the thesis is strong: these metals are rare, geopolitically sensitive, and increasingly valuable.

BATT takes a broader approach. With about 33% of its portfolio in Chinese companies, it includes not just lithium miners and battery manufacturers, but also EV automakers, charging networks, and next-gen battery startups. Its five-year annualized return is around 7.1%, and it charges a 0.59% fee. BATT is a bit more diluted in focus, and its inclusion of pre-profit EV firms introduces speculative risk, but it offers breadth that the other two lack. For those wanting diversified exposure across the EV value chain, it serves a useful role.

As a note on the focus on China exposure, frankly I’d like it to be higher, but these are the ETFs available to western investors. China is heavily dominating the battery industry globally and is investing far more in battery innovation than the rest of the world. They own the battery minerals industry as well. I’d rather have higher exposures to them, but without getting into picking individual stocks, this is what I have. And further, Europe and North America are attempting, with fits, starts, setbacks and some wrong-headed plays like Northvolt, to reshore at least some battery manufacturing.

Here’s how the equity ETFs compare:

Equity ETFs are only half the story. The other half is commodity ETFs—those tracking the prices of metals themselves, rather than the companies that extract or refine them. Here the proposition is more complex. Commodity ETFs typically use futures contracts, which means they face roll costs and contango, and they don’t generate earnings or dividends. Their performance depends entirely on the price trajectory of the underlying metals. Still, they offer direct exposure to scarcity dynamics and supply shocks that even the best-managed mining stocks can’t fully replicate.

Now, of course, you are wondering, as I was, what the heck roll price and contango are. I could have asked my Redefining Energy collaborator Gerard Reid, who has spent a lot of time and personal money investing in commodities successfully, but thankfully there’s the internet. In commodity markets, traders often buy and sell futures contracts, which are agreements to purchase a product like oil or wheat at a set price on a future date. Sometimes, the price for future delivery is higher than the current price—this is called contango. It usually happens when there are costs involved in storing or insuring the commodity until delivery. The opposite situation, when future prices are lower than today’s, is called backwardation, and it often signals strong demand or low supply in the short term. Because futures contracts have expiration dates, traders who want to stay invested must regularly sell their expiring contracts and buy new ones—a process called rolling. The roll price is the difference between the price of the contract they’re selling and the one they’re buying. If the new contract is more expensive, it costs money to stay in the market, and those small losses can add up over time.

Two commodity ETFs stand out: Invesco Electric Vehicle Metals (EVMT) and the WisdomTree Battery Metals ETC. EVMT tracks a basket of EV-related metals including nickel, copper, aluminum, cobalt, and iron ore. It does not include lithium due to the lack of a liquid futures market, which is a notable omission. The fund is small, with around $7 million in assets, and charges a 0.59% fee. Its three-year return is roughly -17% due to a commodity downturn, but its YTD return in 2025 is up 8.6%, reflecting a bounce in nickel and copper.

WisdomTree’s ETC is a European-listed product that includes a similar basket and recently began incorporating lithium and cobalt futures. It’s cheaper at 0.45% and UCITS-compliant, but extremely thinly traded, with under €2 million in assets. For non-U.S. investors with access to European exchanges, it offers an interesting option, but it’s more of a tactical tool than a foundational asset.

Commodity ETFs are inherently harder to hold long-term. Their volatility is extreme, they suffer from structural costs, and they lack income. Still, in a world where demand for nickel and cobalt might outpace supply, they can serve as high-beta hedges against battery material scarcity.

Here’s the commodity ETF summary:

For most long-term investors, the equity ETFs offer the best balance of purity, performance, and scalability. LIT remains the top pick for lithium-focused exposure, while REMX is the right call for rare earth believers. BATT rounds out the picture for those who want a broader EV play. Commodity ETFs like EVMT can serve as tactical overlays or small diversifiers, but their structural drag and volatility make them unsuitable as core holdings.

Ultimately, batteries aren’t just a technology story. They’re a materials story. And as the world moves from combustion to electrons, those who control the inputs—and those who invest in them wisely—stand to shape the next industrial age. For investors willing to do the work, ETFs offer a way to not just observe that shift, but to own a piece of it.

Personally, I divested the last of my TSLA after the US election bump. I’d bought in three or four times years ago at an average of $19 at the current split level, so my investments were heavily multiplied. I’d divested three or four times and rebalanced my portfolio away from TSLA over the years, so didn’t have an overwhelming amount left. While Musk helping Trump buy the Presidency didn’t help, Tesla has lost the plot because Musk has lost the plot. He’s pitching mediocre humanoid robots that can’t operate by themselves, robotaxis and bad pickup trucks instead of delivering Tesla Semis and affordable EVs. While the original Tesla vision of electrifying road transportation was one I was fully behind technically, economically and environmentally (and still am), that’s not what Tesla has become. TSLA had become a meme stock, and I was late recognizing it.

Regardless, I have a sizeable stack of cash in my portfolio as I’ve been pondering where to put it. I knew it would be in the economy of the future, not the economy of the past, but where, how much and when was the question. The when is resolving itself quite nicely, as many of these ETF’s ticket price has gone down from their earlier valuation while their fundamentals remain strong. As I said to Laurent Segalen and Gerard in our year end assessment of predictions and predictions for 2025, it’s a great time to invest in cleantech because the stupid SPAC money is out of the way, and the value is good after the correction. And Trump’s antics along with the strong fundamentals of the Canadian economy have caused the Canadian dollar to rise in the past while, so my cash will go further too.

This article is part of the answer to the how much and what. An upcoming article is on biofuels, another part of the answer.