A top Energy Department official at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) expects a significant rise in the processing of critical minerals, such as lithium and graphite.
“By 2030 we’ll have 85 times the amount of processing of lithium in our country … going forward, on the graphite front, it’s a 25 times increase”, Energy Department Deputy Secretary David Turk said at the Council on Foreign Relations summit in Washington. This expansion is supported by recent grants, loans, and tax incentives under the Biden administration, including the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure laws. These initiatives aim to reduce reliance on foreign supply chains.
While the U.S. is aggressively moving forward with large-scale initiatives to process critical minerals domestically, the European Union (EU) is also addressing the same challenge, albeit through a different framework. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, introduced in 2023, seeks to build up its own capacities in mining, refining, processing, and recycling critical raw materials used in clean energy technologies, including EV batteries. By 2030, the EU aims to meet 40% of its own processing needs domestically and reduce reliance on non-European suppliers.
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