Overview

• On August 13 the Department of Energy released five notices of funding opportunities totaling $1 billion to reshore U.S. critical mineral processing under President Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order.
• The Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office has up to $50 million to bolster the domestic rare-earth magnet supply chain, refine semiconductor materials such as gallium, gallium nitride, germanium and silicon carbide, and fund direct lithium extraction and separation technologies.
• The Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office will offer $250 million for extracting valuable mineral byproducts from existing industrial operations and the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains will allocate $135 million to increase domestic rare-earth output.
• A separate $500 million fund will expand processing, battery manufacturing and recycling for lithium, graphite, nickel, copper and aluminum, and $40 million will support recovery of critical minerals from industrial wastewater.
• These funding rounds build on the Pentagon’s recent equity investment in MP Materials and multilateral partnerships aimed at reducing U.S. reliance on China’s near-monopoly of midstream refining capacity.