The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has selected nine projects to receive $162 million (C$225 million) in potential funding to recover critical minerals from mine waste and industrial feedstocks, part of a broader effort to strengthen domestic supplies for energy.

The award was reported by The Northern Miner. Details of the nine selected projects were not included in the publicly available portion of the report, which is partly behind the outlet's paywall.

The funding is directed at two unconventional sources of raw materials: waste from mining operations, such as tailings and waste rock accumulated at historical and active mines, and industrial byproduct streams. These materials can retain residual concentrations of minerals that the U.S. government classifies as critical, a designation applied to non-fuel minerals considered essential to the nation's economy and national security and vulnerable to supply-chain disruption. The U.S. critical minerals list includes rare earth elements, a family of 17 chemically similar metals used in magnets and other high-performance components, along with lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and graphite, among others. These materials are used in batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, consumer electronics and defense applications. U.S. Geological Survey commodity data show the country is fully or largely import-reliant for several of them, including rare earths and graphite.

The initiative continues a sustained U.S. government effort to reduce import dependence for these commodities. The United States relies on imports for a significant share of many critical minerals, and China accounts for the largest share of global mining and processing capacity for rare earths. Since the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Congress has directed billions of dollars toward DOE programs that expand domestic battery and critical mineral supply chains, including efforts to extract minerals from coal waste and other unconventional feedstocks. DOE has previously funded pilot projects recovering rare earth elements from coal ash and acid mine drainage, and the new selections extend that approach to a wider set of mine-waste and industrial byproduct streams. The funding is framed as potential rather than committed, which in DOE grant programs typically means selected applicants must complete award negotiations before federal funds are finalized and obligated.

Recovering minerals from tailings and waste rock can also reduce the volume of legacy mine waste, a longstanding environmental challenge at historic mining sites across North America. Federal estimates place the number of abandoned hardrock mine features across the western United States in the hundreds of thousands, underscoring the scale of the material available for potential reprocessing.