Federal Initiative Spotlights Minerals in Energy

In a push to cut national oil imports by one-third by 2025, the Obama administration is taking steps to secure supplies of minerals critical to advanced energy technologies such as hybrid car batteries and wind turbine components. Reuters reported that the administration’s initiative involves the Department of Energy, Office of Science and Technology Policy, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense, and seeks to avoid replacing the United States’ reliance on foreign oil with dependence on imported minerals. The hope of this initiative is to diversify the U.S. rare earth supply chain by encouraging domestic extraction, processing and manufacturing. The Department of Energy encourages research and development into more efficient use of materials located in right here in the U.S.

“To carry out this strategy, the United States needs a growing supply of the rare earth elements and other critical metals essential to the manufacture of alternative energy equipment such as florescent lamps, magnets, rechargeable batteries, state of the-art electric motors, and wind turbine components.”

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