Biden to use wartime powers to produce minerals needed for green energy

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.