Transportation and Infrastructure

The Biden administration is “very concerned” about U.S. reliance on China for critical minerals, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday, according to CNBC.

What’s going on: China’s dominance in the world’s critical minerals supply chain is “one of the pieces of the supply chain that we’re very concerned about in the United States,” Granholm told the news outlet on the sidelines of the International Energy Agency’s 2024 Ministerial Meeting in Paris.

• China produces approximately 60% of all rare earth elements, which are critical to alternative-energy technologies, such as electric vehicles.

Why it’s important: “As part of a rapid uptick in demand for critical minerals, the IEA has warned that today’s supply falls short of what is needed to transform the energy sector,” according to the article.

What the administration is doing: Both production and processing of critical minerals “have to be addressed,” Granholm said.

• “And that’s why we are working very closely to ensure that we have identified which raw materials [or] critical minerals we need to be able to do our transition to a clean energy economy.”

The NAM says: “Other countries are taking all possible measures to develop domestic sources of critical minerals, and it should be a wake-up call to the U.S. that we need to be doing the same,” said NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Brandon Farris. “We also need to reform our broken permitting system to get these projects operational as soon as possible.”