Biden Has a $3 Billion Plan to Supercharge America’s EV Battery Production

On Monday, the Department of Energy announced $3.1 billion in funding to assist enhance U.S. manufacturing of high-capacity batteries and battery elements, plus one other $60 million in funds to assist battery recycling. The U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, formally launched the Biden Administration’s battery plans in a 2pm statement in Detroit, Michigan—the place Granholm was governor from 2003 to 2011—and in a video she tweeted out Monday afternoon.

“Batteries are essential to fueling the transportation sector with clean energy and providing renewable resources around the clock. Improving battery technology and storage capabilities will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions,” mentioned Granholm within the video assertion.

Though batteries would possibly assist up lean much less on international oil, it’s vital to notice that the minerals and rare earth metals utilized in batteries are concentrated in just a few locations globally. And a lot of the U.S. sourcing of those supplies at the moment comes from exterior of the nation. Right now, about 80% of our lithium-ion battery imports come from China, which has mining contracts and operations arrange in most of the mineral rich areas of the global south. China can be chargeable for processing and refining 80% of the rare-earth metals that the U.S. imports, in response to 2020 USGS knowledge.

The new DOE funding comes amid hovering fossil gas costs prompting renewed requires the U.S. to spice up its home power capability, and an ongoing federal push for automobile electrification—beginning with the federal government’s own fleet. The Biden administration beforehand set a objective for electrical automobiles to make up half of all automobile gross sales by 2030, through an govt order. To meet that objective alone, we’ll want a a lot bigger battery provide, and thus the entire minerals (like cobalt, nickel, graphite, lithium, and uncommon earth metals) wanted to construct these batteries.

There is little doubt that we have to transfer away from fossil fuels, as rapidly as attainable to keep away from the ever-worsening penalties of local weather change. But transferring in direction of all electrical automobiles or extra battery storage throughout the electrical grid, although attainable, is fraught with potential political, environmental, and human issues.

Money for the brand new DOE battery funding comes from Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, and can be used for “battery research, manufacturing, processing, and [battery] recycling,” in response to Granholm. The bulk of the funding is particularly centered on grants to assist “the creation of new, retrofitted, and expanded commercial facilities as well as manufacturing demonstrations and battery recycling,” mentioned the DOE in its assertion.

Notably, the funding isn’t earmarked for brand spanking new mining initiatives, however quite boosting U.S. processing and reclamation of the uncooked supplies wanted for battery manufacturing. “The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law directs more than $7 billion to strengthen the U.S. battery supply chain, which includes producing and recycling critical minerals without new extraction or mining and sourcing materials for domestic manufacturing,” mentioned the assertion.

But, extra supplies must be extracted one way or the other. One 2021 analysis by the International Energy Agency concluded that we’ll want to extend the general mineral provide six-fold to meet rising international battery demand over the following few a long time. And for some minerals, that quantity is means, means greater. The report predicted that demand for graphite will enhance 25x over the following 20 years, and that lithium demand will go up by an element of 70.

Recycling in all probability can’t remedy the the entire shortage points, because the U.S. authorities is nicely conscious. At the top of March, Biden invoked a Cold War-era regulation to attempt to boost domestic mineral and metals mining

Though persevering with to burn fossil fuels poses an enormous menace to only about each species on earth. Moving to broaden battery manufacturing carries the danger of damaging species and habitats on a smaller scale. For instance, lithium mining lowered populations of two flamingo species in Chile’s salt flats, in response to one 2022 study printed within the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. And, in Nevada, a proposed lithium mining website may destroy a lot of the identified vary of a uncommon wildflower known as Tiehm’s buckwheat.

And the present mineral mining growth has exacerbated present international inequities, as in Chile the place lithium mines are threatening native peoples’ water supply and Indigenous communities. Or, within the Democratic Republic of the Congo the place harmful cobalt mining operations have killed children working within the mines and led to lawsuits towards tech corporations together with Tesla, Apple, and Google.

With this new funding announcement, although, the DOE is aiming to maneuver in direction of a greater battery provide chain enacting “responsible and sustainable domestic sourcing of the critical materials used to make lithium-ion batteries,” in response to the division’s Monday statement. Hopefully, that imaginative and prescient is realized.