The US Energy Department has made a conditional commitment to Redwood Materials for a $2 billion low-interest loan to assist in the construction of a $3.5 billion recycling and remanufacturing complex for battery materials in Nevada.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm stated that if the loan is finalized, it will assist the project in the production of essential materials for electric vehicle batteries.
“It’s going to be a slam dunk for our domestic burgeoning electric vehicle industry,” said Granholm, adding that Redwood will play a “outsized role in bringing the battery supply chain home — because you are focused on the pieces that we don’t have in the United States.”
Redwood Materials anticipates drawing down the first loan tranche later this year, according to CEO JB Straubel.
Straubel stated that the initial loan draw “will help accelerate (production) and compress the time for us to get to full scale” at the northern Nevada complex, which has begun producing copper foil for battery anodes.
Since August, when President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to Straubel, electric vehicle and battery producers have been “a frenzy of activity” The IRA restrictions are intended to diversify the US battery supply chain away from China, which currently manufactures 70 percent of batteries for electric vehicles.
Redwood Materials, which was created in 2017 by former Tesla CEO Straubel, is on track to become one of the world’s largest recyclers and remanufacturers of battery materials such as copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel.
In addition to the location in Nevada near Reno, Redwood Materials said in December that it would develop a similar factory north of Charleston, South Carolina, at a cost of approximately $3.5 billion.