The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a funding of $32m from President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for a programme to advance the domestic supply chain for critical minerals.
The initiative will support front-end engineering design (FEED) studies for producing rare earth elements and other highly important minerals and materials from coal-based resources in the US.
According to the DOE, rare earth elements and other highly important minerals are important to domestically manufacturing clean energy technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, and electric vehicles.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said: “The President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is delivering an important opportunity for American leadership to produce critical minerals and materials—the very components needed to develop clean energy technologies.
“By producing rare earth elements and critical minerals here at home, we’ll create good-paying jobs while enhancing national security and securing the supply chains we need to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
Presently, the US is importing over 80% of its rare earth elements from offshore suppliers for the production of clean energy technologies and other essential products like computers, smartphones, and medical equipment, said the DOE.
The funding will help produce FEED studies that will expedite the application of extraction and processing technologies to extract valuable rare earth elements and other critical minerals from billions of tons of coal waste and ash, discharged water, and acid mine drainage.
FEED studies will help understand the plans, risks, and costs for projects to develop technologies that produce rare earth elements and other critical minerals.
Recently, the Biden administration announced a funding of $156m to establish the country’s first-of-a-kind critical minerals refinery.
