RE:Alliance the whole article I was trying to link Darn not even Monday
A group of North American graphite producers asked the Biden administration to classify battery-grade graphite as a "traceable" critical mineral in an attempt to block Chinese graphite from getting into US-made electric vehicles.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law in August 2022, provides EV buyers with a tax credit of up to $7,500 if the vehicle's battery has a certain amount of its raw materials and components sourced domestically or from free trade agreement partners. In addition, the federal government proposed new rules Dec. 1, 2023, that would bar EVs using materials sourced from "foreign entities of concern" (FEOC) from being eligible for the credits.
The new rules would exempt a tentative list of certain low-value critical materials considered "non-traceable" from the FEOC requirements through Jan. 1, 2027, due to the complexity of the materials' value chains.
The North American Graphite Alliance sent a letter to the US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and the US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm requesting that graphite not be included in that list.
"Without this protection in place, the federal government is providing mixed signals to the market by supporting investments in the domestic graphite industry through grants, loans, and tax credits, but by also potentially allowing Chinese material companies to benefit from IRA tax credits," the alliance said in a news release.
The alliance consists of Anovion LLC, Epsilon Advanced Materials Pvt. Ltd., Northern Graphite Corp., Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. and NOVONIX Ltd.
China supplied about 70% of the world's natural flake graphite in 2022 and is also the main producer of synthetic graphite, according the International Energy Agency. Both forms of graphite are used in EV battery anodes.
The alliance reiterated claims by other industry participants that China has flooded the export market with graphite at artificially low prices, meaning "domestic graphite manufacturers have difficulty securing the investments necessary to bolster production capacity to the levels needed to meet domestic demand."