Funding for U.s.-produced batteries
Administration pushes sale of electric vehicles
WASHINGTON — Continuing its push to boost sales of electric vehicles, the Biden administration on Monday announced $3.1 billion in funding to U.S. companies that make and recycle lithium-ion batteries.
The investments from last year’s $1 trillion infrastructure law are separate from an executive order President Joe Biden issued this spring, invoking the Defense Production
Act boost production of lithium and other critical minerals used to power electric vehicles.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the new program will offer grants to companies that process or recycle battery components to increase domestic supplies of a market now dominated by China and other countries. The grants will help strengthen U.S. energy independence and support Biden’s goal to have electric vehicles make up half of all vehicles sales in America by 2030, she said.
Electric vehicles accounted for
4.2 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales in the first quarter of this year, according to Edmunds.com.
“Positioning the United States front and center in meeting the growing demand for advanced batteries is how we boost our competitiveness and electrify our transportation system,” Granholm said in a statement.
Granholm, a former Michigan governor, announced the battery initiative during a visit to her home state to highlight clean-energy provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure law Biden signed in November.
The grant program “will give our domestic supply chain the jolt it needs to become more secure and less reliant on other nations,” while creating good-paying jobs and reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, she said.
“We need a lot of batteries. And we want American workers making those batteries right here in America,” added Gina Mccarthy, Biden’s climate adviser, at a separate briefing Monday at the White House.