She asserts that putting a "Made in America" stamp on Mozambique graphite due to it being processed in Louisiana comes at the expense of developing graphite mines on Amer- ican soil. Murkowski is especially troubled by DOE's lack of support for Graph- ite Creek, which the U.S. Geolog- ical Survey has deemed to host the largest known graphite deposit on American soil and "among the larg- est in the world." Graphite One, which is advanc- ing the project, has received a $37.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to support the company's plans to establish a domestic graphite supply chain that includes a mine at Graphite Creek along with an advanced graphite materials processing and recycling plant in the U.S. Even though graphite has not been mined in the U.S. for more than 60 years, DOE has yet to invest in Graphite Creek or any other domes- tic graphite mine projects. Murkowski says that with DOE's Vidalia loan guarantees, along with the loans directly in support of Bal- ama, 10 to 20 times more taxpayer
dollars are going into supporting graphite coming out of Mozambique than into Graphite Creek in Alaska. "How can you tell me that the ad- ministration is really committed to domestic sourcing when we are not putting our resources there?" she said of the nearly $500 million fed- eral agencies have invested in Bala- ma and the Louisiana plant. Trying to get creative While Turk agrees that more should be done to support domestic battery materials mining, the Dep- uty Energy Secretary contends that processing and manufacturing are important segments of America's EV battery supply chains that often pose the greater risk. "Right now, China absolutely dominates the graphite processing market," he said in response to Mur- kowski's questioning. Turk, however, agrees that the most secure place we can source bat- tery materials such as graphite "is here in the United States." The Deputy Energy Secretary, who visited Graphite One's Alaska mine project last summer, said he "came away quite impressed with what they
are doing." "We are particularly excited, and we are trying to connect the dots with our loan program. We've got a second round of funding coming through our battery manufacturing grant program," he told the Alaska senator. Turk said that the $700 million loan DOE committed to ioneer Ltd. for the development of a mine and processing facility at the Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project in Ne- vada is an example of how the de- partment could connect the dots of Graphite One's proposed domes- tic graphite anode material supply chain. "We are trying to be creative, a lot of times it's the mining and the processing piece — Rhyolite Ridge is an example of what we are trying to do, using our authorities," he added. Both Murkowski and Manchin, however, believe that such creativity would not be necessary if the White House interpreted the Bipartisan In- frastructure Law and Inflation Re- duction Act the way they were writ- ten by Congress.
— Shane Lasley
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