Three projects that will advance coal-derived rare earths and critical minerals.

Further attempting to strengthen America's critical mineral supply chain and by proxy its national security, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $17 million in funding for three projects focused on establishing a domestic supply of rare earth elements and critical minerals from coal-based resources.

Funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of President Biden's Investing in America agenda, while new mineral development sites wade through years of permitting and red tape, DOE is pursuing any means at its disposal to establish a domestic supply of the materials needed to reduce dependence on unreliable foreign sources, as well as to accelerate the manufacture of clean energy technologies in the United States.

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Ash left behind from burning of coal offers a potentially significant source of gallium, germanium, rare earths, and other minerals critical to US clean energy and tech sectors.

According to DOE, the U.S. currently imports more than 80% of its rare earth elements. But rare earth elements naturally occur all around us, including in domestic coal and coal wastes, which comprise more than 250 billion tons of coal reserves, over four billion tons of waste coal, and about 2 billion tons of coal ash.

The federal agency hopes to tap into this unconventional resource to help build a domestic supply chain critical to the U.S. economy, clean energy, and national security.

"President Biden's Investing in America agenda is helping narrow the nation's dependence on foreign supply chains, by reimagining the use of coal waste and byproducts as a domestic source of the critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. "The investments announced today will not only increase our national security and ensure a cleaner environment but will also help deliver high-quality jobs in all pockets of the country."

Funding Selectees

Three projects were selected for negotiation to support the development of front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies for potential future intermediate- and/or demonstration-scale facilities for the extraction, separation, and production of REEs and other critical minerals and materials from unconventional sources.

The FEED studies will establish and define technical requirements focused on project scope, schedule, and costs, and reduce risk during the construction and operation of future rare earth element and critical minerals and materials production facilities:

• The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Champaign, Illinois) will perform a FEED study needed to establish a fully integrated, vertical supply chain that would be located entirely within the State of Illinois for production of select critical minerals from coal-based sources.

• Winner Water Services, Inc. (Sharon, Pennsylvania) will build on prior technology development to complete a FEED study located in Georgia on recovering rare earths from coal ash while preparing the coal ash for the concrete market.

• Tetra Tech, Inc. (Houston, Texas) will build on prior technology development to complete a FEED study located in Pennsylvania on recovering rare earths and potentially other critical minerals from coal byproducts (underclay) while processing the clays to a salable grade.

DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of the department's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), will manage the selected projects. Additional details about the selected projects can be read here.

DOE progress

Since January 2021, DOE's FECM has announced roughly $58 million in projects that support critical minerals and materials exploration, resource identification, production, and processing in traditional mining and fossil fuel-producing communities across the country.

This total includes $16 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for detailed engineering and cost FEED studies that are focused on design, construction, and operation of a first-of-its-kind domestic, demonstration-scale rare earth production facility that will extract, separate, and refine rare earth elements from unconventional sources like acid mine drainage and mining waste.

Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress

Front loader at the open-pit Wyodak coal mine in the coal-rich Powder Basin outside Gillette, Wyoming, the oldest operating surface coal mine in the United States.

The $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is something that DOE has been taking full advantage of. And with this latest round of funding, it hopes to create more new opportunities to remediate land and water while generating rare earth elements necessary for a clean energy economy.