Two of the 20 companies awarded a slice of the $2.8 billion in federal funding for domestic critical minerals projects that President Joe Biden announced Oct. 19 are US-based lithium producers, Albemarle and Piedmont Lithium.
The federal funds, which are coming from US laws passed under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will be awarded to 20 US manufacturing and processing enterprises that want to play a role in the battery supply chain.
The White House figures the federal spending, when paralleled with funds from recipients, will generate over $9 billion in investments related to domestic electric vehicle battery production and will help produce enough lithium to supply 2 million EVs per year.
“Together these companies are going to build new commercial scale battery production and processing facilities all across America,” Biden said in a speech.
The Biden administration wants half of all new car sales in the US to be EVs by 2030.
Those allocated the funding were quick to voice their enthusiasm.
“Winning the grant awarded by the [Department of Energy] reinforces Albemarle's leadership globally in the lithium market and one of just a few lithium companies presently producing battery-grade lithium from U.S. resources,” Albemarle Chief Executive Kent Masters said in a statement.
“The expansion of our US footprint also accelerates the speed of lithium processing and reduces greenhouse gas emissions associated with long-distance transportation of raw minerals,” he continued. “We hope this project has a spurring effect on further investments by others on the domestic EV battery supply chain level, like the materials makers for cathodes, battery makers, and auto makers.”
Albemarle said it will invest its nearly $150 million grant, awarded via a Department of Energy grant program, to help build a new, commercial-scale lithium concentrator plant in North Carolina, near its Kings Mountain spodumene mining site. The plant will produce 350,000 mt/year of spodumene concentrate to feed its proposed 100,000 mt/year battery-grade lithium conversion facility in an as-yet-undisclosed US location.
Piedmont announced a $141.7 million grant that will contribute to funding its proposed 30,000 mt/year lithium hydroxide plant in Tennessee.
“This grant will hasten the advancement of the Tennessee Lithium project as a world-class lithium hydroxide operation that is expected to more than double battery-grade lithium hydroxide production in the U.S.,” Piedmont CEO Keith Phillips said in a separate statement.
Other recipients
This includes the largest single award the administration announced — $316 million to battery recycler Ascend Elements, to help expand US production capacity of precursor cathode materials for batteries produced using both recycled cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries and metal salts.
The funding will go toward US expansion of the first commercial-scale facility for making large-scale commercial lithium electrolyte salt, the first commercial-scale lithium-iron-phosphate cathode facility, and the first commercial-scale production facilities for making silicon oxide, the White House said in a press release.
“But if this continues to go in the right direction, we’re going to be supplying the rest of the world as well for a lot of things,” Biden said Oct. 19.
Graphite producer Syrah Technologies also secured funding for expanding its Vidalia graphite plant in Louisiana. The company is a subsidiary of Syrah Resources, which is based in Australia.
In addition, the administration announced that it would establish the American Battery Materials Initiative, which will “coordinate ongoing work on critical mineral supply chains, align community and industry engagement efforts, help inform research, grants and loans that support environmentally responsible critical minerals extraction, processing and recycling, and support diplomatic efforts to build reliable and sustainable global supply chains.”
The effort will operate through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, an initiative launched by the United States and other member nations of the Group of 7 to finance international infrastructure, and will be overseen by a White House steering committee and coordinated by the Energy Department, with assistance from the Interior Department.
