Biden invokes DPA for minerals needed for EV batteries

President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to ensure greater domestic production of rare earth minerals used for electric vehicle batteries.

“It is the policy of my administration that ensuring a robust, resilient, sustainable and environmentally responsible domestic industrial base to meet the requirements of the clean energy economy, such as the production of large-capacity batteries, is essential to our national security and the development and preservation of domestic critical infrastructure,” according to a new memo from Biden.

At present, Biden wrote, the United States is overly dependent on “unreliable foreign sources for many of the strategic and critical materials necessary for the clean energy transition -- such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese for large-capacity batteries.”

Biden’s new DPA Title III order covering those minerals would allow mining companies to seek federal funding to bolster their output.

The available funding would, among other things, cover companies’ feasibility studies and modernization efforts.