DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation Announces Over $45 Million To Support Reliable and Affordable Domestic Critical Mineral and Material Supply Chains

WASHINGTON-The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation today announced $45.7 million for 19 projects that will unleash American energy innovation by addressing and filling domestic critical minerals and materials supply chain gaps. This funding supports the development of novel technologies that will be used in the production of critical materials by developing pilot-scale facilities for processing magnesium and rare earth elements.

"Reshoring minerals production and processing will strengthen our domestic rare earth supply chains from end to end," said Assistant Secretary of Energy (EERE) Audrey Robertson. "By ensuring the minerals that are mined in America can be processed in America and manufactured into American technologies, these investments will bolster America's national security and energy independence."

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 95% of the U.S. supply for rare earth elements comes from foreign sources, over 50% of most critical minerals come from foreign sources, and at least 14 critical minerals come exclusively from foreign sources.

Critical Material Innovation, Efficiency, and Alternatives

DOE's Critical Material Innovation, Efficiency, and Alternatives funding opportunity provides federal funding to build a secure domestic supply of critical minerals from sources across the United States, including ore deposits, mine and industrial waste, and recycled materials.

These projects build on an unprecedented surge in federal support for domestic critical minerals supply chains under the Trump Administration. In August 2025, DOE announced a series of funding opportunities totaling nearly $1 billion to advance and scale mining, processing, and manufacturing technologies across key stages of the critical minerals and materials supply chains.

The following two projects have been selected for pilot-scale processing from a continuous bench-scale to kick-start pre-commercial/commercial production.

• USA Rare Earth

  USA Rare Earth (Stillwater, Oklahoma) will build, demonstrate, and operate a pilot-scale continuous ion exchange rare earth element production plant with the objective of building a first-of-its-kind bench-scale continuous ion exchange separations process into a viable pre-commercial unit that demonstrates a solvent extraction technology. Successfully demonstrating this process will pave the way for the operation of the nation's first mine-to-magnet supply chain.

• Big Blue Technologies

  Big Blue Technologies (Cheyenne, Wyoming) will scale a magnesium metal production process from pilot to commercial, using a modular smelter. This project will use ore and aluminum scrap as primary feedstocks to produce magnesium metal and calcium aluminate slag and will demonstrate 2,000 hours of continuous unmanned operation of a single 2-MW modular smelter. Following a recent closure, the U.S. currently produces only small quantities of primary magnesium metal. This project will kick off plant expansion to restart commercial production of American magnesium, a necessary material for advanced mobility and defense applications.

The following 17 projects will develop innovative technologies and practices to diversify commercially viable and sustainable domestic sources of critical materials. These technologies focus on optimizing affordability, environmental emissions, and resource usage or intensity within extraction, production, separation, processing, refining, alloying, manufacturing, or recycling technologies.

• List of projects
  • Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, TX) will develop a sustainable domestic supply of graphite by converting waste or captured carbon dioxide into graphite and oxygen gas. The project will also develop a novel plasma reactor system to convert carbon dioxide into graphite.
    
  • Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) will develop a prototype of the novel string crystallization technology to produce lithium concentrates from a variety of saline water sources.
    
  • Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, OH) will pursue the development of a novel disruptive technology to dissociate small, saturated hydrocarbons found in natural gas to produce graphite and hydrogen.
    
  • National Laboratory of the Rockies (Golden, CO) will explore a new chemical vapor deposition system that grows a polycrystalline silicon boule inside a float-zone crystal puller.
    
  • Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, ID) will develop a novel electrochemically driven cobalt-nickel separation process for lithium-ion battery leachates by eliminating solvent extraction.
    
  • Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, IL) will develop and scale its novel integrated biohydrometallurgy process at pilot-scale under a continuous-operation mode, which will achieve >80% key recovery of critical minerals and materials from recycled batteries.
    
  • Columbia University (New York, NY) will develop a method based on a novel chemistry to extract nickel and cobalt from sulfidic ores.
    
  • Ohio University (Athens, OH) will develop coal- and waste coal-based lithium-selective electrodes for direct lithium extraction (DLE) from domestic waste streams like produced water and acid mine drainage with concurrent upgrading to battery-grade lithium products.
    
  • The University of North Dakota (Grand Forks, ND) will develop a critical mineral processing technology that will produce high-quality graphite materials from domestic carbon ore and carbon ore waste resources.
    
  • Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, ID) will develop a sustainable pathway for recovery of rare earth elements and graphite precursors from unconventional sources.
    
  • Savannah River National Laboratory (Aiken, SC) will enable rare earth production in the United States by developing a next-generation, industrially viable process to convert separated rare earth feedstock into highly pure metallic form.
    
  • Ames National Laboratory (Ames, IA) will establish an efficient and sustainable Laser-Assisted Separation of Rare Earth Metals (LAS-REM) technology designed for processing end-of-life magnets.
    
  • Michigan Technological University (Houghton, MI) will demonstrate a newly developed breakthrough technology for extraction of manganese from a variety of sources that can be applied on a larger scale in a real environment.
    
  • The University of Idaho (Idaho Falls, ID) will advance the exploration and extraction of Idaho-sourced rare earth elements for potential commercialization of rare earth metals (REMs), using innovative and efficient manufacturing pathways.
    
  • Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) will create efficient processes for recovering lithium from seawater using multi-responsive micro/nanorobots.
    
  • Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN) will develop a new process called Selective and Continuous Electrochemical Lithium Pump (SCELiP) for DLE from various brine sources.
    
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, CA) will manufacture a bench-scale filtration system capable of critical minerals and materials extraction, concentration, and separation from dilute secondary and unconventional domestic waste sources.

A detailed description of the selected projects and funding amounts is available on the project selections page. Information on projects selected in previous rounds is available on the funding opportunity page. DOE plans to make additional selections under the FOA's remaining area of interest at a later date.

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicant will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time. DOE award amounts are subject to change pending negotiations.