By ISABELLA O’MALLEY
Associated Press

The Energy Department is making a push to strengthen the U.S. battery supply chain, announcing up to $3.5 billion for companies that produce batteries and the critical minerals that go into them.

Batteries are seen as an important climate solution because they can power cars, which are a major cause of climate change when they burn gasoline. They are also a solution when they store clean electricity made from solar panels or wind turbines, allowing gas or coal power plants that cause climate change to turn off.

Lithium ion is currently the dominant battery type both for electric vehicles and clean electricity storage. The DOE wants to strengthen the supply because even though there is plenty of work underway to develop alternatives, it estimates demand for lithium batteries will increase up to ten times by 2030.

The Biden-Harris administration has a goal of lowering the pollution that causes climate change to zero by 2050 and for half of all new cars sales to be electric in 2030.

Some officials, industry experts and others concerned about climate change uneasy supply of battery materials will not keep pace with demand. Others worry that too much of the industry is anchored in Asia.

Jodie Lutkenhaus, professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, said she is closely watching U.S. battery production and manufacturing. “I’m worried that we may not catch up and end up in the same situation we’re in now with the semiconductor industry,” she said. When assembly lines stopped during the pandemic, it stalled manufacturing in Asia, resulting in a global microchip shortage that affected the availability of vehicles and electronics.

“The same thing can happen with batteries if we don’t diversify where batteries are made and where materials are sourced,” Lutkenhaus said. “It is essential that the U.S. participates in battery production and manufacturing so that we can avoid global shortages of batteries, should that ever happen.”

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law assigned $6 billion in total funding for battery material processing and manufacturing. An initial round went to 15 projects including companies that mine critical minerals like graphite and nickel, used in lithium batteries. This second round will fund similar companies but also those that rely on alternative chemistries, such as flow and sodium batteries.

Here’s how it works: A company might want to build a factory to make cathode materials for electric cars. It determines the cost of building the facility, commits to covering half of the cost, and the government grant would cover the other half, if the company is selected.

Albemarle, a major lithium producer, received funding in the first round for a facility in Kings Mountain, North Carolina that processes lithium from ore collected around the world.

The company said that in addition to EVs, demand for lithium also comes electronics like medical devices and smartphones. Without the DOE funding, the project “would have likely progressed along a different time scale,” it said in an email.

While the funding may not have been make-or-break for them, Matthew McDowell, associate professor of engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act have “dramatically” transformed the U.S. battery manufacturing sector in the past three years. He is excited, he said, about the next generation of batteries for clean energy storage, including solid state batteries, which could potentially hold more energy than lithium ion.

Tom Moerenhout, a professor at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it will be a big challenge to ramp up the global supply of critical minerals for the projected battery demand in 2030. “It’s pretty huge, it’s almost scary,” he said, noting that a new mine on average takes 16 years to begin commercial production.

But with the price of lithium rising, Moerenhout said, alternative battery types become more attractive. One he hopes to see scale up is sodium ion batteries to help bolster the electrical grid. “The potential is quite huge,” he said, because they are safe and affordable.

Companies can apply for funding through mid-March.

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By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal judge in Nevada has dealt another legal setback to Native American tribes trying to halt construction of one of the biggest lithium mines in the world.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du granted the government’s motion to dismiss their claims the mine is being built illegally near the sacred site of an 1865 massacre along the Nevada-Oregon line.

But she said in last week’s order the three tribes suing the Bureau of Land Management deserve another chance to amend their complaint to try to prove the agency failed to adequately consult with them as required by the National Historic Preservation Act.

“Given that the court has now twice agreed with federal defendants (and) plaintiffs did not vary their argument … the court is skeptical that plaintiffs could successfully amend it. But skeptical does not mean futile,” Du wrote Nov. 9.

She also noted part of their case is still pending on appeal at the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, which indicated last month it likely will hear oral arguments in February as construction continues at Lithium Nevada’s mine at Thacker Pass about 230 miles northeast of Reno.

Du said in an earlier ruling the tribes had failed to prove the project site is where more than two dozen of their ancestors were killed by the U.S. Cavalry Sept. 12, 1865.

Her new ruling is the latest in a series that have turned back legal challenges to the mine on a variety of fronts, including environmentalists’ claims it would violate the 1872 Mining Law and destroy key habitat for sage grouse, cutthroat trout and pronghorn antelope.

All have argued the bureau violated numerous laws in a rush to approve the mine to help meet sky-rocketing demand for lithium used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.

Lithium Nevada officials said the $2.3 billion project remains on schedule to begin production in late 2026. They say it’s essential to carrying out President Joe Biden’s clean energy agenda aimed at combating climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

“We’ve dedicated more than a decade to community engagement and hard work in order to get this project right, and the courts have again validated the efforts by Lithium Americas and the administrative agencies,” company spokesman Tim Crowley said in an email to The Associated Press.

Du agreed with the government’s argument that the consultation is ongoing and therefore not ripe for legal challenge.

The tribes argued it had to be completed before construction began.

“If agencies are left to define when consultation is ongoing and when consultation is finished … then agencies will hold consultation open forever — even as construction destroys the very objects of consultation — so that agencies can never be sued,” the tribal lawyers wrote in recent briefs filed with the 9th Circuit.

Will Falk, representing the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, said they’re still considering whether to amend the complaint by the Dec. 9 deadline Du set, or focus on the appeal.

“Despite this project being billed as `green,’ it perpetrates the same harm to Native peoples that mines always have,” Falk told AP. “While climate change is a very real, existential threat, if government agencies are allowed to rush through permitting processes to fast-track destructing mining projects like the one at Thacker Pass, more of the natural world and more Native American culture will be destroyed.”

The Paiutes call Thacker Pass “Pee hee mu’huh,” which means “rotten moon.” They describe in oral histories how Paiute hunters returned home in 1865 to find the “elders, women, and children” slain and “unburied and rotting.”

The Oregon-based Burns Paiute Tribe joined the Nevada tribes in the appeal. They say BLM’s consultation efforts with the tribes “were rife with withheld information, misrepresentations, and downright lies.”

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By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Conservationists are seeking an emergency court order to block construction of a Nevada lithium mine after a U.S. judge directed a federal agency to revisit part of its approval of the plans but allowed construction to go forward in the meantime.

Four environmental groups want U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno to temporarily halt any work at a subsidiary of Lithium Americas’ mine near the Oregon border until they can appeal her ruling earlier this month to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

They filed on Tuesday a formal notice of their intent to appeal to the San Francisco-based circuit court and an emergency motion for injunction in Reno pending the appeal. An Oregon tribe that filed a new, separate lawsuit to block the mine last week joined the notice of appeal.

“This mine should not be allowed to destroy public land unless and until the Ninth Circuit has determined whether it was legally approved,” said Talasi Brooks, a lawyer for the Western Watersheds Project.

Du gave the U.S. Bureau of Land Management until the end of Wednesday to respond to the motion or reach an agreement with the conservation groups to postpone any construction until she rules on their request for an emergency injunction.

“Based on the urgency implied by environmental plaintiffs’ representation that Lithium Nevada intends to start construction on February 27 … the court sets an expedited briefing schedule,” she wrote in a brief order late Tuesday.

The company said last week that construction at the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine was “imminent” after Du ruled Feb. 6 the bureau had acted legally — with one possible exception — when it approved plans for the mine in January 2021.

A spokesperson for Lithium Americas said Tuesday they were confident the appellate court would uphold the project’s approval.

“Since we began this project more than a decade ago, we have been committed to doing things right,” Tim Crowley, the company spokesperson, said in an email to The Associated Press. “The recent U.S. District Court ruling definitively supported BLM’s consultation process, and we are confident the ruling will be upheld.”

Du’s earlier ruling was the latest in a series of high-stakes legal battles pitting environmentalists against so-called “green energy” projects the Biden administration is pushing over the objections of conservation groups, tribes and others.

The White House says the mine planned by Lithium Nevada Corp., a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, is critical to ramped-up efforts to produce raw materials for electric vehicle batteries.

Opponents say it would harm wildlife habitats, degrade groundwater and pollute the air.

“It symbolizes BLM’s wrecking ball approach to ‘green’ energy on public lands,” Katie Fite of WildLands Defense said Tuesday.

Du ordered the bureau Feb. 6 to go back and determine whether the company had established valid mining rights on 1,300 acres (526 hectares) of neighboring land, where it plans to bury millions of tons of waste rock that would be removed from the open pit mine deeper than the length of a football field.

But she stopped short of granting the opponents’ request at that time to block any work at the site until the validity of the claim was established under the Mining Law of 1872 on the adjacent lands about 200 miles northeast of Reno.

“There’s no evidence that Lithium Nevada will be able to establish valid mining claims to lands it plans to bury in waste rock and tailings, but the damage will be done regardless,” Brooks said in a statement Tuesday announcing the filing of the emergency request for an injunction.

Du said in her Feb. 6 ruling it was a rare instance where it was proper to stop short of vacating an agency’s approval of an overall project to allow the bureau to re-examine the adequacy of one element of the plan — the disposal of the waste rock.

She made clear her ruling incorporates part of a recent ruling by the 9th Circuit in a fight over the 1872 law in an Arizona case that could prove more onerous to mining companies that want to dispose of their waste on neighboring federal lands.

In that case, the San Francisco-based appellate court upheld an Arizona ruling that the Forest Service lacked authority to approve Rosemont Copper’s plans to dispose of waste rock on land adjacent to the mine it wanted to dig on a national forest southeast of Tucson. The service and the Bureau of Land Management long have interpreted the mining law to convey the same mineral rights to such lands.

General Motors Co. announced Jan. 31 it had conditionally agreed to invest $650 million in Lithium Americas in a deal that will give the company exclusive access to the first phase of the Thacker Pass mine. The equity investment in two phases was contingent on the project clearing legal challenges in court in Reno.

Lithium Americas said last week that Du’s Feb. 6 ruling satisfied the completion of the first phase and that as a result, GM had purchased 15 million common shares of Lithium Americas at $21.24 per share on Feb. 16 for a total of $320 million.

Lithium Americas estimates that the mine can support production of up to 1 million electric vehicles annually. The company expects production to begin in the second half of 2026.

In the Feb. 6 ruling, Du also denied for the third time relief sought by Native American tribes who argued it could destroy a sacred site where their ancestors were massacred in 1865. Last week, three tribes filed a separate lawsuit claiming that the bureau has misrepresented its claims that it’s met its legal obligation to consult with tribes about potential impacts to historical and cultural values near the mine site.

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By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Conservationists suing a federal agency over approval of a mine at the largest known U.S. deposit of lithium will go before a judge Wednesday in search of an emergency court order to block excavations they say would disturb sacred tribal burial grounds near the Nevada-Oregon line.

Overshadowed by conflict at a lithium mine planned north of Las Vegas where the government intends to declare a rare wildflower threatened or endangered, Lithium Nevada Corp.’s proposed Thacker Pass mine is emerging as a potentially bigger battleground in the debate over environmental trade-offs tied to President Joe Biden’s push for renewable energy.

Lithium is a key component in electric vehicle batteries.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno will hear arguments from lawyers for the mine, the Bureau of Land Management and four conservation groups.

Critics say the federal agency violated environmental laws in a December rush to approve the mine in the final days of the Trump administration.

The project recently won an unexpected endorsement from a respected, longtime environmental watchdog of mining operations in Nevada who concluded “the impacts from this mine are relatively benign.”

“The environmental value of this lithium producing mine, however, is enormous,” said Glenn Miller, a retired professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

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