President Joe Biden reportedly plans to invoke wartime powers to increase domestic production of critical minerals needed to build batteries for electric vehicles and other types of energy technologies.
Biden is responding to outside pressure, most notably from Democratic lawmakers and green energy interest groups, and will invoke the Defense Production Act to produce more minerals, thereby enabling the development and construction of more green technologies, Bloomberg reported. Batteries and renewable energy technologies require metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel to operate, and the Biden administration had already been exploring ways to increase domestic production of such materials before Russia invaded Ukraine.
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A range of interests has urged Biden to use the Defense Production Act to accelerate battery, wind turbine, and solar panel building as a means of easing the strain on consumers and shifting the economy away from fossil fuels, so as to avoid the rising energy prices now straining households.
Republicans have also urged him to use the Defense Production Act.
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Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, and Jim Risch joined Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in urging Biden to use the act to improve mineral production and reduce foreign imports.
