The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Washington, announced $30 million in funding for 13 national lab and university-led research projects to develop new technologies that will help secure the supply of critical materials that build clean energy technologies.
The selected research projects aim to diversify the supply of, develop substitutes for, and improve the reuse and recycling of rare earth and platinum group elements that are critical for many clean energy and high-tech applications. These materials include cobalt for electric vehicles batteries, neodymium for windmills and electronics, and platinum for emissions control and fuel production technologies.
“Expanding electric vehicle infrastructure, hardening our nation’s electrical grid, and powering our economy with millions of clean energy jobs all rely on securing supply chains of critical materials like cobalt and platinum,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The key to our carbon-free future lies in ramping up clean American industries, building strong supply chain systems of American-made critical materials, and aggressively deploying the resulting climate technologies here and abroad.”
Rare-earth elements (REE) and platinum group elements (PGE) are key components of many clean energy and high-tech applications, including emissions control technologies and rechargeable batteries for energy storage. The limited domestic supply of critical materials and reliance on imports from other nations present a significant risk to clean energy technology production.
Research funded in this announcement will advance our understanding of how REE and PGE give materials and molecules the unique properties that are valuable for modern technologies. This research can enable new approaches to the atomic-level design of key materials and potentially reduce or even eliminate the need for these critical elements in clean energy and high-tech applications. It will also widen the range of sources of these critical elements by potentially identifying new mineral sources or facilitating reuse and recycling of existing materials.
For more information:
U.S. Department of Energy
https://www.energy.gov/
