The U.S. Energy Department on Monday said it will lend Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. $375 million as it builds a battery recycling facility in New York set to become one of the country’s largest sources of lithium by next year.
The loan is the latest move by Washington to spur development of a domestic electric vehicle supply chain, with greater battery recycling capacity seen as crucial to meeting President Joe Biden’s goal for half of new U.S. vehicles to be electric by 2030.
“One of the benefits of recycling is it can bring metals to market more confidently than some of the mining companies that take a bit longer to go from the identification of the resource to full production,” Jigar Shah, head of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, told Reuters….