Critical Minerals and Materials

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Clean Energy Supply Chain Reports & Fact Sheets

The Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Office's (AMMTO) Critical Minerals and Materials portfolio addresses high-impact opportunities and challenges across the entire life cycle of high priority critical minerals and materials for energy technologies.

What Are Critical Minerals and Materials?

The United States lacks a strong domestic supply of many minerals and materials that will be critical to a decarbonized energy infrastructure as well as current manufacturing technologies. These include:

Rare earth elements, used in offshore wind turbine generators and electric vehicle motors;
Lithium, cobalt, and high-purity nickel, used in energy storage technologies;
Platinum group metals used in catalysts for automotive, chemical, fuel cell, and green hydrogen products; and
Gallium and germanium used in semiconductors.

Critical Materials 101

Welcome to Critical Materials 101, a video series breaking down the building blocks of our clean energy future. First up, the U.S. Department of Energy’s list of "electric 18" critical materials, why they're so important to clean energy technologies, and what we’re doing across the Department to meet their growing demand.

Video by the U.S. Department of Energy

Welcome back to Critical Materials 101, a video series breaking down the building blocks of our clean energy future. In this second installment, we investigate what it takes to turn these foundational elements and components into the clean energy technologies needed to reach our goal of achieving a net zero emissions economy by 2050. Looking for more on this topic? Check out Why Clean Energy Matters here: https://www.energy.gov/eere/why-clean-energy-matters Read the text version: https://www.energy.gov/cmm/critical-materials-101-what-americas-most-critical-material-text-version

Video by the U.S. Department of Energy

Strategy

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) critical minerals & materials strategy is based on the following pillars:

Diversifying supplies of critical minerals and materials.
Developing alternatives to critical minerals and materials.
Improving materials and manufacturing efficiency.
Investing in circular-economy approaches.

DOE supports these strategy pillars by enabling activities, cross-cutting functions to enable and enhance research, development, demonstration, and deployment efforts across four areas: