For Securing the Nation’s Energy Supply, North Carolina Is Critical

North Carolina plays a vital role in the country’s transition to sustainable energy. Lithium, for example, is crucial for manufacturing batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy generated by wind turbines, and North Carolina is one of only a few states with substantial deposits. It’s so important that the U.S. government has placed lithium on a list of critical minerals that are essential for the country’s economic and national security.

“North Carolina is becoming known as the Battery Belt,” said Sharlini Sankaran, director of external partnerships in Duke’s Office for External Partnerships. “There are so many battery manufacturing and advanced manufacturing companies relocating or expanding to North Carolina.”

Global demand for lithium and other critical minerals is increasing, and only a few countries outside the U.S. are producing and processing them. This limited availability causes shortages in the supply chain and threatens the stability of industries that rely on critical minerals — from energy, transportation and telecommunications to commercial and defense manufacturing. To reduce reliance on imports, the U.S. government has encouraged strengthening the domestic supply of critical minerals.

“It’s a very complex issue that requires experts from different areas,” Sankaran noted.

Addressing this vital area, a group of Duke faculty came together to form the Critical Minerals Intellectual Community.

“We’re working at the intersection of the core dimensions of the critical mineral system and across traditional disciplinary silos,” said Leanne Gilbertson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “The challenges are complex and interconnected; building a resilient critical mineral system demands a research culture that bridges schools and disciplines — and forges partnerships beyond academia.”

For help getting this effort off the ground, Gilbertson reached out to the Office for External Partnerships.

“We’re here to coordinate and make things faster, simpler and more efficient, and take a lot of the administrative work off faculty,” said Sankaran, who contributed to a successful proposal for an Intellectual Community Planning Grant from the Office of the Provost and organized a symposium with current and prospective partners.

“The idea for a symposium came out of an initial roundtable conversation with the DOD [Department of Defense] partners, and they also invited along partners at the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] who are interested in this,” Sankaran said. “We were anticipating a small meeting of the minds, but it turned into an opportunity for Duke to be a leader in convening and connecting.”

The Symposium on Critical Resources, Minerals, and Materials Joint Efforts was held in Duke’s Gross Hall for Interdisciplinary Innovation as part of Energy Week at Duke.

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Gilbertson and fellow Duke faculty members Miaofang Chi, Helen Hsu-Kim, Dalia Patiño-Echeverri, Dan Richter, Avner Vengosh and Erika Weinthal gave lightning talks, industry and government representatives served as panelists, and students from Duke and other schools presented posters.

“We are extremely proud of the leadership on this topic across the university, including in the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Pratt School of Engineering,” said Provost Alec Gallimore. “This field has been identified as a top national economic security priority, and the institutions represented here are among the leaders.”

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Following the symposium, a planning session helped Duke and its partners identify concrete areas to pursue, including capstone projects, student internships and data sharing.

“There were even new partnerships that were born out of that,” Sankaran said. “I’m continuing to build external partnerships for the group and see where there are opportunities to collaborate.”

New Multiyear Interdisciplinary Hub

The Office of the Provost announced that the Duke Critical Minerals Hub was one of three faculty collaborations selected for three years of support through a new internal funding opportunity. This project, led by Gilbertson and Vengosh with Hsu-Kim, Weinthal, Sankaran and Ginger Sigmon, will build on the foundational work that was supported by the Intellectual Community Planning Grant.

The Critical Minerals Hub brings together experts from engineering and the natural and social sciences to establish an interdisciplinary platform for research and education of critical minerals. Experts from different fields will come together to work on different angles of critical minerals and examine their full life cycle — from extraction and mining to processing, use and reuse — to develop a framework for managing demand and supply in the short term and reducing critical minerals dependence over the long term.

A key element of the group’s work will be developing partnerships with industry as well as local communities impacted by mineral extraction processes. Other focal points include strategies to strengthen domestic supply chains, techniques to recover minerals from unconventional sources, development of environmental and geochemical methods to ensure the sustainability of critical mining exploration, and innovations that support the development of alternative materials.

Main image: Lithium mine in the North Carolina piedmont (Photo: Gordon Williams)