President Biden $6 Billion infrastructure bill could be a meaningful boost for efforts to create a battery supply chain in the U.S.
President Biden finally signed his $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law last week, and among the goodies was $6 billion in federal grants for companies making batteries or processing materials for the components they use.
For the next five years, the Energy Department will dole out $50 million or $100 million matching grants to applicants, giving priority to companies that are owned and operated in the U.S., with North American intellectual property. If you create jobs in low-income areas, or reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, that earns you points too.
The provisions are meant to address America’s Achilles heel when it comes to building EVs: we largely don’t produce the materials needed to make batteries, nor do we have the capacity to process them.
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President Biden $6 Billion infrastructure bill could be a meaningful boost for efforts to create a battery supply chain in the U.S.
China, which has been planning for this since the days of Deng Xiaoping, controls more than half the global capacity to refine battery metals, and 80% of cell manufacturing, according to BloombergNEF.
While $6 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed to close that gap, battery startups are, unsurprisingly, excited.
The government grants will make it less risky to invest in the EV supply chain, and help ease the chicken-and-egg problem many suppliers face – they need customers to justify adding capacity, but customers want to see financing first to make sure they can deliver, said Rick Luebbe, CEO of Group14 Technologies, a battery materials upstart in Washington state.
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Supply Chain, US, Infrastructure Bill,, November 23, 2021
