Biden-Harris Administration 100-Day Battery Supply Chain Review

On February 25, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14017, which directed the Administration to immediately launch a 100-day review to develop a strategic process to address vulnerabilities and opportunities in the supply chains of four key products, including advanced batteries. The report on advanced batteries, led by the Department of Energy (DOE), and its recommendations have been submitted to the President, and today the Biden Administration is announcing a set of immediate actions it will take to make the U.S. more competitive in the battery market. The Administration is also recommending Congress make critical investments to grow America’s ability to produce high-capacity batteries and products that use batteries, like EVs and stationary storage.

Advanced, high-capacity batteries play an integral role in 21st-century technologies that are critical to the clean energy transition and national security capabilities around the world—from electric vehicles, to stationary energy storage, to defense applications. Demand for these products is set to grow as supply chain constraints, geopolitical and economic competition, and other vulnerabilities are increasing as well.

Today, America relies heavily on importing the inputs for fabricated advanced battery packs from abroad, exposing the nation to supply chain vulnerabilities that threaten to disrupt the availability and cost of the critical technologies that rely on them and the workforce that manufactures them. With the global lithium battery market expected to grow by a factor of five to ten by 2030, it is imperative that the United States invests immediately in scaling up a secure, diversified supply chain for high-capacity batteries here at home. That means seizing a critical opportunity to increase domestic battery manufacturing while investing to scale the full lithium battery supply chain, including the sustainable sourcing and processing of the critical minerals used in battery production all the way through to end-of-life battery collection and recycling.

Through strong collaboration across the federal government, with U.S. industrial stakeholders, the research community, and international allies, the U.S. must develop a durable strategy that invests and scales our potential industrial strengths to meet this challenge. Success will secure the nation’s economic competitiveness, spur domestic manufacturing jobs for American workers, and position America to lead an emerging market developing products that will be crucial to our national security and clean energy future.