WASHINGTON -The Biden administration said on Wednesday it is awarding $2.8 billion in grants to boost U.S. production of electric vehicle batteries and the minerals used to build them, part of a bid to wean the country off supplies from China.
"As the world transitions from a fossil fuel to a clean energy powered economy, we cannot trade dependence on oil from autocrats like Putin to dependence on critical minerals from China," said a senior administration official briefing reporters on the program. Albemarle is set to receive $149.7 million to build a facility in North Carolina to lightly process rock containing lithium from a mine it is trying to reopen. That facility would then feed a separate plant somewhere in the U.S. Southeast that the company said in June would produce as much lithium for EV batteries as the entire company produces today.
Shares of Piedmont rose 7.5 per cent after Reuters broke the news of its funding award earlier on Wednesday. Piedmont did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Other grants include $316.2 million to privately-held Ascend Elements to build a battery parts plant, $50 million to privately-held Lilac Solutions Inc for a demonstration plant for so-called direct lithium extraction technologies, $75 million to privately-held Cirba Solutions to expand an Ohio battery recycling plant, and $219.8 million to Syrah Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Syrah Resources Ltd , to expand a graphite processing plant in Louisiana.
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