Instead of hitching the nation’s climate goals to exploitative, vulnerable, and polluting production overseas, the United States has the means to build durable, equitable, top-to-bottom domestic supply chains for our clean energy future.
The Challenge
Right now, global production of clean energy goods and their raw materials is highly concentrated in a tiny handful of countries. This is not a recipe for long-term price stability. Just like a corporate monopoly, when one country controls most of the supply of a critical clean energy good, they gain the power to increase the price of that good. This would force all other countries, including the United States, to endure higher costs for clean energy. Instead, growth in clean energy manufacturing in multiple countries, including the United States, helps to promote the global competition and innovation that are needed to continue driving down clean energy costs.
The BlueGreen Alliance has developed a map and spreadsheet to assess current clean energy supply chains and illustrate how the United States can use new investments in the Inflation Reduction Act to bridge supply chain gaps and build a stronger, cleaner, and fairer industrial base for the clean economy. Instead of hitching the nation’s climate goals to exploitative, vulnerable, and polluting production overseas, the United States has the means to build durable, equitable, top-to-bottom domestic supply chains for our clean energy future.
The Opportunity
One key tool available to support the build out of a robust domestic supply chain is through strong domestic procurement policy. Infrastructure projects, for example, are massive undertakings requiring huge amounts of building materials like iron, steel, and concrete. These are materials that have been proudly manufactured in the United States for decades and longer, but—due in part to misguided trade policy and a lack of adequate industrial policy—these industries have taken a hit as global competition has grown. “Buy America” is a domestic procurement policy requiring certain materials for public infrastructure projects to be produced in the United States.
Buy America has a long track record of supporting U.S. manufacturing, but got an update in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes a new provision titled “Build America, Buy America” (BABA), which expands, harmonizes, and modernizes longstanding Buy America domestic content preferences to more infrastructure programs and projects. BABA expands the application of commonsense Buy America preferences to all relevant programs and projects.
Critical Minerals
The critical minerals needed to produce the batteries and technology needed to grow the clean economy include lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, graphite, and aluminum, among many others. The processes and labor practices with which these minerals are extracted have attracted the attention of labor advocates and humanitarian watchdogs globally—revealing the use of child and forced labor in many of the major countries supplying critical minerals. The clean economy cannot be built on the backs of exploited workers overseas.
Today, the United States lacks strategies for responsibly mining these materials at home, for developing secure and sustainable supply chains for their incorporation into the clean energy economy, and for leading through example—in cooperation with other nations that seek to mine and develop these resources in safe, environmentally responsible, and socially inclusive ways. In its Manufacturing Agenda, BGA calls for the development of “a comprehensive national critical minerals strategy guided by a commitment to environmentally, economically, and socially responsible production, reclamation, and recycling domestically and worldwide.”
Key Facts
30% The decline in the U.S. manufacturing supply chain contributes to income inequality, with Black manufacturing employment falling 30% since the 1990s.. (Source)
560,000 Jobs The Inflation Reduction Act establishes a new manufacturing production tax credit worth more than $30 billion to support the expansion of solar, wind, and battery manufacturing and critical minerals processing. This credit is expected to create 560,000 jobs over the next decade. (Source)
80% A June 2021 report noted that China refines 80% of the world’s cobalt, a staggering vulnerability for the U.S. auto industry supply chain. (Source)