Syrah Resources gets $107M US Load for Louisiana EV Battery Plant, page-16

There are so many different levels over the significance of the loan. It isn't all about the dollar value.

The DOE doesn't want the first to fail. There are hurdles still for SYR to get the loan but because SYR were already going it alone anyway, they'll be easily overcome. Also their ambition is bigger than 11.25kt but they need an early success story and make a statement about the future as well.

In my opinion SYR will build the 11.25kt plant first. They have already ordered the plant and equipment which have a long lead time. The loan will allow it to start ordering equipment for the 45kt plant earlier than envisaged.

The $107 million loan for the Vidalia plant doesn’t target a novel technology, Shah said in an interview. Syrah Technologies is “using very established ways of refining graphite ore,” he said. Rather, the loan is meant to jump-start a domestic industry to produce a key component of lithium-ion battery anodes that’s in increasingly short supply, he said.

This caught my eye. It looks like the DOE intends to work with SYR or continue to work with SYR.

But as Shah pointed out, many of the technological advances in lithium-ion batteries over the past decades have come from U.S. research and development efforts that were forced to turn to China for cost-competitive manufacturing. The Biden administration hopes to avoid that fate for advanced batteries, Shah added. “The battery manufacturing plants we’re building here will be a substantial leap in technology, and the materials used in those plants will be a substantial leap forward,” he said. “Now that we have a business case for these sectors, it’s time for the U.S. and the private markets to start scaling this up.”

Supporting domestic production of the materials going into advanced batteries is a part of that strategy, according to Shah. “You start to allow the experts in the United States who work on graphite to work here, not to fly around the world,” he said. “A lot of the research we do at the Department of Energy can be put to work here.”