Explore the critical minerals and materials project database and map.
Learn more about critical minerals and materials projects around the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its offices:
Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) catalyzes transformational technologies to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States. ARPA-E funds high-potential, high-impact projects that are too risky to attract private sector investment but could significantly advance the ways to generate, store, distribute and use energy.
The Loan Programs Office (LPO) finances next-generation U.S. energy infrastructure, serving as a bridge to bankability for breakthrough projects and technologies and de-risking them at early stages of investment.
The Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) monitors the industrial base that supports nuclear weapons components, subsystems, and materials. This office also works to identify potential risks or gaps in the industrial base and mitigate such actions. This office closely monitors critical mineral and material supply chains, DOE’s RD&D portfolio, and current events to assess threats or concerns to the nuclear security enterprise.
The Office of Electricity (OE) works with industry to efficiently use critical materials for both energy storage and transformer applications. Innovations help alleviate supply chain challenges for materials, including lithium, sodium, vanadium, iron, zinc, organic electrolytes, and electrical steel.
The Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) works across three sectors: buildings and industry, renewable energy, and sustainable transportation. In the area of critical minerals, the Technology Offices in these three sectors work to mitigate supply chain risk through research and development to diversify supply, develop alternatives, improve materials and manufacturing efficiency, and recover and reuse key materials. These Technology Offices include: Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Office, Geothermal Technologies Office, Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Technologies Office, Solar Energy Technologies Office, Vehicle Technologies Office, and Wind Energy Technologies Office. Jump below to learn more about these EERE offices.
The Division of Minerals Sustainability in the Office of Fossil Energy (FE) is focused on accelerating the domestic production of critical minerals and materials from unconventional and secondary sources. This includes legacy byproducts from fossil energy use (e.g., coal ash and refuse), acid mine drainage, and produced waters from oil and gas operations.
The Office of International Affairs (IA) identifies and facilitates opportunities with key foreign and ally partners and serves as a key bridge to other U.S. Government efforts in global supply chains.
The Office of Manufacturing & Energy Supply Chains (MESC) works to strengthen and scale America’s energy supply through transformative manufacturing capacity initiatives, targeted workforce activities to build up the energy workforce of the future, and cutting-edge energy supply chain vulnerability and innovation analysis.
The Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) focuses on the development and demonstration of advanced reactor designs that will rely on a variety of critical minerals and materials, such as graphite structures and moderators, advanced moderators using zirconium and yttrium hydrides, and molten salt coolants using beryllium and lithium.
The Office of Science (SC) supports the nation’s best minds, using the world’s best facilities, to keep America at the forefront of discovery. To address critical material and mineral concerns, SC supports foundational theoretical and experimental science to understand the role of critical elements, including platinum group and rare earth elements, in determining material properties and to advance geoscience and separation science to enhance the extraction and chemical processing of critical elements.
The Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), in coordination with other DOE offices, analyzes, identifies, and supports technology commercialization pathways and partnership opportunities.
The Secure Material Supply Chain Program in the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO) includes an applied RD&D portfolio that addresses high-impact opportunities and challenges across the life cycle of critical minerals and materials for energy. Public-private consortia including the Critical Materials Innovation Hub (CMI Hub) and the Lithium RD&D Virtual Center provide the foundation of the RD&D portfolio.
The Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) is researches and develops projects that directly extract lithium from the hot water used to produce geothermal energy, known as geothermal brines. These brines often have high concentrations of minerals like lithium, salt, and zinc. Finding cost-effective ways to extract lithium and other minerals from those brines before reinjecting them would provide the country with an abundant domestic resource of this critical mineral.
The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) leads research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) activities to enable the commercial viability of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Efforts address the challenges associated with the use of critical materials and their impact on the domestic supply chain. Emphasis is placed on alleviating the use of platinum group metals (PGMs) in electrolyzers and fuel cells to enable lower cost technologies by developing materials that require fewer PGMs and PGM-free alternatives. HFTO’s portfolio also includes manufacturing and RD&D to strengthen the supply chain and facilitate the domestic availability of critical materials.
The Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is focused on strengthening the domestic supply chains and reducing critical material usage through both minimizing the content contained in solar modules and extending their operational lifetime. SETO is also investigating technologies that recover and reuse high-value critical materials from decomissioned solar modules for photovoltaics.
The Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) is fully engaged in mitigating domestic supply chain risks by lessening dependence on critical materials in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
VTO coordinates across its program areas to identify critical material needs for light-and heavy-duty vehicles. Its EV battery RD&D includes eliminating or reducing dependence on critical materials such as cobalt, nickel, and graphite in EV batteries by developing cobalt- and nickel-free cathode alternatives and substitute anodes. VTO also supports the development of novel recycling of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries to enable extraction of critical materials for re-use in new batteries through the ReCell Advanced Battery Recycling Center. VTO funds RD&D on “behind-the-meter” storage activities focusing on developing novel critical-material free battery technologies to facilitate integration of EV charging, solar power generation technologies, and energy-efficient buildings.
The Wind Energy Technologies Office works on applied RD&D activities for wind turbine components that use high-priority critical materials, including rare earth elements used in generators. These projects are aimed at reducing supply risk and increasing efficiency in the wind energy industry.