TANGIBLE IMPACTS OF THE IRA

By Charles Morris

Westwater Resources is building a facility in Alabama to process graphite from one of the largest deposits in the US.

Everyone in the EV industry is talking about the IRA and the BIL, two sets of federal regulations that include strong incentives for automakers to establish domestic supply chains for EV raw materials and components. Not everyone is happy about the requirements, and there are a number of issues that need to be considered as the new regulations are nalized. However, bringing mining and processing raw materials closer to the sites of vehicle production is necessary both for reasons of sustainability and national security.

For certain key raw materials, much of the mining and almost all of the processing currently takes place in China, and in other countries that are geographically distant, have environmental or human rights issues, or all three. One of these materials is graphite, which is the main ingredient in EV battery anodes. e few companies that have access to graphite mines in North America are the belles of the EV ball at the moment. One of these is Westwater Resources, which controls what it says is the second-biggest graphite deposit in the US (the biggest is in a remote region of Alaska).

Westwater holds mineral rights to the Coosa graphite deposit, which is located across 42,000 acres in Alabama. e company is currently building a graphite processing plant in Kellyton, Alabama. e rst phase of plant construction will produce 7,500 metric tons of re ned graphite each year.

We rst met Jon Jacobs back in 2013, when he was working at Wildcat Discovery Technologies, a battery research rm that developed an innovative process to rapidly synthesize and evaluate energy storage materials. Now Jacobs is Chief Commercial O cer at Westwater Resources, and he spoke to Charged about his company’s plans to start supplying graphite anode material in the heart of the Battery Belt.