§13344 Rare earth elements

Summary

The Secretary of Energy, through the Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, must run a research and development program to develop and test ways to pull rare earth elements and other critical materials out of coal and coal waste, and to find and reduce any environmental or public health harms from doing that. Congress authorized funding of $23,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2021 and 2022; $24,200,000 for 2023; $25,400,000 for 2024; $26,600,000 for 2025; and $27,800,000 for 2026. Within one year after December 27, 2020, and then every year while the demonstration plant operates, the Secretary must send a report to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House Committees on Science, Space, and Technology and on Energy and Commerce, evaluating the technology work, including acid mine drainage. The Secretary must also fund, with a university partner, the design and building of a demonstration plant to show a full-scale, integrated extraction, separation, and refining operation can work commercially. The plant must use harmful coal wastes like acid mine drainage as feedstock, separate mixed rare earth oxides into pure oxides, refine oxides into metals, and do both separation and refining at one site. Congress authorized $140,000,000 for fiscal year 2022 for this facility, to remain available until spent. The term "critical material" uses the definition in section 1606 of title 30.