The Electric: Inside the White House Plan to Speed Battery Metals Mining

U.S. auto and battery makers are racing to build battery assembly plants for the transition to electric vehicles. But mining companies and metals processors have moved excruciatingly slowly to establish a domestic supply chain of raw materials and finished electrodes for those batteries. They blame regulators who stretch out permit approvals, activist groups that sue to keep mines from going ahead, and local residents hostile to having hard industry near their homes. The result is a paradox: The U.S. may have more battery plants than it needs later this decade, but a crucial shortage of the materials they require.

In a bid to reduce U.S. reliance on China’s dominant battery industry, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month hammered out minor changes to the permitting process, including time limits on how long regulators can take to assess the environmental impact of a mining project. 

Now the administration is preparing to overhaul the federal mine-permitting process entirely: Behind the scenes, the administration, led by the Department of the Interior, is nearing completion of a road map that, among other things, will recommend updates to the nation’s central mining law, which dates from 1872.