Policy and Legal

To secure the stable, diversified critical materials supply chains that the U.S. needs to remain globally competitive and achieve energy dominance, changes must be made to the 2026 Energy Critical Materials Assessment, the NAM said today.

What’s going on: “Manufacturers in America utilize critical materials and minerals extensively, deploying them in a wide array of manufactured products throughout the U.S. economy,” NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Chris Phalen told the Department of Energy in response to a request for information seeking public input on the assessment.

• The NAM recommended the DOE take certain steps regarding the assessment, including adding certain materials to its list and ensuring others remain on it. It also urged the DOE to collaborate with other agencies and Congress to “streamline permitting processes to ensure greater domestic access to these materials.”

Other actions: The NAM also urged the DOE to:

• Maintain “the critical materials that are currently listed within the DOE’s Energy Critical Materials Assessment,” including aluminum, cobalt, copper, electrical steel, lithium and graphite;
• Add iron nitride and zirconium to the assessment;
• Remove permitting barriers that are “restricting the United States from being able to mine, process and access domestic resources, modernize infrastructure and shore up supply chains”;
• Offer financial tools—including investment tax credits, production tax credits and grants—to help “de-risk technological advancement”;
• Align the DOE’s critical materials list with the U.S. Geological Survey’s separate critical minerals list; and
• Add fluorine to the USGS list.

The final say: These recommendations will “ensure [that] manufacturers of all sizes and in all segments of the industry have access to the materials necessary for modern, innovative manufactured products,” Phalen continued.

• They will also allow manufacturers to do what they “do best—put more Americans to work, more factories into motion, more innovation into the marketplace and more investments into our communities while strengthening the hand of the United States on the world stage.”