WASHINGTON, D.C. — As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced nearly $10 million for two projects that will help lower the costs and reduce the environmental impact of producing rare earth elements and other critical minerals and materials from coal, coal wastes, and coal by-products. Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the selected projects will help meet the growing demand for critical minerals and materials in the United States, while reducing our reliance on foreign supply chains. Rare earth elements and other critical minerals and materials are incorporated into many products, including U.S.-manufactured clean energy technologies—such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells.
“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign supply chains by reimagining the use of coal waste and by-products as a domestic source of the critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The investments announced today will not only increase our national security and ensure a cleaner environment but will also help deliver high-quality jobs throughout the country.”
The United States currently imports more than 80% of its rare earth elements, but rare earth elements naturally occur all around us, including in our domestic coal, coal wastes, and coal by-products, which comprise more than 250 billion tons of coal reserves, over 4 billion tons of waste coal, and about 2 billion tons of coal ash. DOE seeks to harness secondary and unconventional resources to help build a sustainable domestic supply chain to support U.S. economic growth, clean energy deployment, and national security.
Advanced Processing of Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals for Industrial and Manufacturing Applications
The two projects selected for negotiation are designed to conduct advanced laboratory and bench-scale testing to improve the economic viability of rare earth element and critical minerals and materials separation and refining technologies. The projects will use secondary and unconventional coal-based resources to produce rare earths and critical minerals and materials for use in clean energy, national defense, and/or commercial commodity products and equipment:
- California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California) plans to integrate both traditional and innovative rare earth separation methods to obtain individual rare earth elements in a highly pure form while simultaneously generating critical minerals and materials.
- University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah) plans to produce individually separated high-purity rare earth oxides, rare earth salts, rare earth metals, and critical minerals and materials from abundant, low-grade coal by-products using innovative mineral and chemical separation technologies.
DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), will manage the selected projects. A detailed list of the selected projects and funding amounts can be found here.
The selected project teams were required, as part of their applications, to submit Community Benefits Plans to demonstrate meaningful engagement with and tangible benefits to the communities in which these projects will be located. These plans provide details on their commitments to quality job creation, diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and benefits to disadvantaged communities as part of the Justice40 Initiative.
DOE’s Broader Advancements in Critical Minerals and Materials
In addition to the announcement, FECM has committed an estimated $151 million since January 2021 for projects that support critical minerals and materials exploration, resource identification, production, and processing in traditional mining and fossil fuel-producing communities across the country. This total includes $17.5 million under the first round of selections under this funding opportunity, and $33.4 million in additional Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for detailed front-end engineering and design studies that focus on the design of domestic, intermediate-to-demonstration-scale rare earth production facilities that utilize unconventional, coal-based feedstock materials.
FECM minimizes environmental and climate impacts of fossil fuels and industrial processes while working to achieve net-zero emissions across the U.S. economy. Priority areas of technology work include carbon capture, carbon conversion, carbon dioxide removal, carbon dioxide transport and storage, hydrogen production with carbon management, methane emissions reduction, and critical minerals production. To learn more, visit the FECM website, sign up for FECM news announcements, and visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory website.