The US Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation has selected nine mining projects for a combined $162m in federal funding.
The funds aim to support the recovery of critical minerals, materials and other valuable by-products from industrial feedstocks at both bench and pilot-scale sites.
Selected projects are expected to recover materials such as scandium, copper, antimony and rare earth elements (REEs).
The initiative forms part of a broader set of DoE investments totalling nearly $1bn, announced in August 2025, for advancing mining, processing and manufacturing technologies along the critical minerals and materials supply chains.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory will oversee the management of these nine projects, which fall under Topic Area 2 of the Mines & Metals Capacity Expansion, Piloting Byproduct Critical Minerals and Materials at Domestic Industrial Facilities funding opportunity.
Four projects have been chosen under Topic Area 2a, focused on advancing technologies from laboratory to prototype scale.
The recipients are Anactisis (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Still Bright (Newark, New Jersey), Nusano (West Valley City, Utah) and SiTration (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
The remaining five projects fall under Topic Area 2b and are aimed at progressing technologies from prototype to pre-commercial demonstration.
These awardees are Thompson Creek Metals (Langeloth, Pennsylvania), Felix Gold Alaska Treasure Creek (Fairbanks, Alaska), DISA Technologies (Mills, Wyoming), Alcoa (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and Trigg Minerals (Jersey City, New Jersey).
US Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said: “Leveraging existing bench-scale and pilot-scale facilities is a vital opportunity to produce critical materials necessary for our energy, defence and economic security.
“By investing in these facilities, we can de-risk commercial-scale production technologies to grow new economic and manufacturing opportunities.”
The funding follows directives set out in President Donald Trump’s Executive Order focused on securing US critical mineral supply chains and national security.
In June 2026, the DoE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation announced $134m in funding for two projects geared towards strengthening domestic supply chains for REEs.
These projects will demonstrate the potential for recovering and refining REEs including praseodymium, neodymium, terbium and dysprosium from unconventional feedstocks such as mine tailings and electronic waste.
