[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 118 (Tuesday, July 11, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2302-S2304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Graphite and Graphite One

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, more is happening with minerals around 
the world than ever before. We are seeing global demand driven by 
growth and technology, legislation and regulation. Everything is just 
skyrocketing. Yet the global supply is often tenuous. Really, it is 
very thoroughly dominated by China, and there are clear warning signs 
that we here in the United States urgently need to reduce our foreign 
dependence by rebuilding our domestic supply chains.
  As we stand here today, our Nation's lack of mineral security is a 
glaring vulnerability. It is a threat to our security. It is a threat 
to our competitiveness. It is a threat to our geopolitical power and 
our ability to lead on industries of the future. The obvious solution 
is to do a lot more in this space, which makes sense, but it starts 
with mining, and until we have achieved stable, affordable supplies of 
as many minerals as possible here at home, that vulnerability will 
continue.
  We have begun to put a framework in place to do that. We did this 
through the legislation that I had introduced, the American Mineral and 
Security Act. We also did some with the bipartisan infrastructure law 
and with the provisions that Chairman Manchin added to the Inflation 
Reduction Act. These are a good start, but there is no shortage of 
minerals where meaningful action is still needed.
  So we could talk about copper--the ``metal of electrification'' as my 
friend Dr. Daniel Yergin puts it--where forecasts of shortages in the 
twenties and thirties are becoming commonplace. Now, I would be the 
first one to acknowledge that we cannot produce copper everywhere it is 
found--I think there are just a few places that are too, too 
sensitive--but we need to make up for this by approving projects in 
locations where it does make sense, and that is simply not happening 
right now.
  We could also talk about gallium and germanium. Just before the 
Fourth of July, our Independence Day, China announced export controls 
for both of these critical minerals as part of their escalating war 
over semiconductors. So what is our domestic reaction to that? Well, it 
is not independence. It has really become more of a scramble. We have 
seen with the Department of the Interior that they have repeatedly 
delayed a good project in Alaska--this is the Ambler Access Project--
that would provide access to long-term supplies of both germanium and 
gallium.
  What we are doing here is giving China leverage. They have certainly 
seized on it in what could well become a pattern across dozens of 
minerals and materials. In a very real sense, in many ways, we are 
giving them bullets for the gun that they will hold us hostage to. And 
it is not just here in the United States. We saw it just few years back 
when China cut off supplies of rare earths to Japan in an effort to 
utilize that leverage.
  Today, I have come to the floor to discuss a different type of 
critical mineral, and that is graphite.
  Graphite is described by the U.S. Geological Survey as a ``soft, 
crystalline form of carbon'' that ``occurs naturally in metamorphic 
rocks such as marble, schist, and gneiss.'' Graphite ``exhibits the 
properties of a metal and a nonmetal,'' which include ``thermal and 
electrical conductivity'' as well as ``inertness, high thermal 
resistance, and lubricity.'' Graphite is valued because it is 
relatively lightweight. Yet it is very dense. It is a good 
semiconductor, a good conductor, and more stable than many of the 
alternatives.
  Now, most of us are most familiar with the graphite that we know in 
pencils. Pencils don't contain lead; they contain graphite. It is also 
used in things like brake linings, steelmaking, headphones, and today, 
perhaps most crucially, advanced rechargeable batteries and fuel cells. 
So if you care about smartphones, if you care about EVs, if you care 
about climate change and the energy transition, there is really no way 
around it--you will need to care a lot more about graphite than you 
probably currently do.

  Lithium-ion batteries typically require far more graphite than 
lithium--up to 15 times more. Graphite can account for more than a 
quarter of those

[[Page S2303]]

batteries' weight and up to 95 percent of their anode materials. That 
makes graphite both fundamental to our mineral security and really very 
irreplaceable for many technologies.
  I am not a materials scientist, and I think most aren't, but for 
those who aren't, Bloomberg's Liam Denning recently summarized 
graphite's use in EVs as follows. He said:

       Graphite is the main material for the battery's anode, 
     which takes in and holds lithium ions during charging and 
     releases them when energy is needed. . . . [G]raphite's 
     combination of high thermal and electrical conductivity with 
     chemical inertness makes it very useful when you want to 
     cycle through lots of energy flows without stuff degrading or 
     blowing up. A typical 60 kilowatt-hour EV battery might hold 
     160 pounds of graphite compared with perhaps 20 pounds of 
     lithium. And while the exact mix of other metals such as 
     cobalt and nickel in the other electrode--the cathode--may 
     change, graphite's place in the anode is more or less fixed.

  So more technical than most of us would want, but just to put it in 
very simple terms, if we want more smartphones and we want more EVs on 
the roads, we are going to need a lot more graphite for them. That is 
one of the main reasons that Chairman Manchin and I, along with 
Senators Risch and Cassidy, urged President Biden back in March of last 
year to declare graphite and other key battery minerals as ``essential 
to the national defense'' under the Defense Production Act of 1950. I 
appreciate and I thank the President for doing just that and then 
working with us to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal 
appropriations for projects to produce them.
  My view is, we don't have any more time to waste here. One rough 
estimate is that every additional 1 million EVs will require 80,000 
tons of graphite. That is why Benchmark Minerals projects the world 
will need 97 new graphite mines by 2035 compared to just over 70 that 
are operating today. It is why the International Energy Agency, the 
IEA, projects that demand for graphite for clean energy technologies 
could increase 25-fold--that is 2,500 percent--by the year 2040.
  So you have to ask the question, are we on track to produce any of 
that? The answer is no--not even remotely. A consultancy by the name of 
Project Blue has projected an annual deficit of about 856,000 tons of 
graphite by the year 2030.
  Some of the anticipated demand can be filled by synthetic graphite, 
which is made from fossil fuels such as petroleum coke, but a large 
portion will need to come from newly mined natural graphite. Here is 
the problem with that: The United States has not produced natural 
graphite for about three decades now--since at least 1990 and perhaps 
as far back as 1950, depending on your source. Instead, the United 
States is entirely import-dependent, bringing in 100 percent of our 
supply each year. Last year, that amounted to 82,000 metric tons of 
natural graphite. And where did we get it from? China was the No. 1 
source of our imports--at least 100 percent foreign dependence.
  You might think it can't get any worse than that, but trust me, it 
can, and it is. We can always import more volume, and that is exactly 
what is happening. According to USGS, after a few down years in 2019 
and 2020, our natural graphite imports rose by 48 percent in 2021 and 
by 55 percent in 2022. So we are just--we need the stuff. Where are we 
getting it? We are getting it imported. Where are we importing it from? 
China.
  Another part of the problem is that even if the United States begins 
to produce graphite again, we won't know exactly what to do with it. 
That is because we also lack the processing capabilities to turn 
natural graphite into useful advanced material for batteries and other 
products. This is, again, another area where China leads, and we are 
paying very little attention here.
  It will take a sustained effort to catch up on graphite processing, 
so the question is, How long is this going to take? What will it cost 
us? Who will our partners in these efforts be?
  There has been some speculation that China's warning shot on gallium 
might be a precursor for something that really hurts us, like 
restrictions on graphite. According to Benchmark Minerals, China is 
responsible for 61 percent of global graphite production and 98 percent 
of processed graphite materials. EVs previously failed because the 
technology just wasn't there. Yet it isn't hard to imagine them failing 
again because the minerals and the materials aren't there.
  If you are thinking ``OK, this is bad,'' you are right. It is bad. 
But there is hope. There is hope on the horizon in the form of Graphite 
One. This is a project in northwest Alaska. This is about 37 miles 
outside of the community of Nome, AK.
  This is not a picture of Nome, AK, although in the wintertime, it 
could be just about that white. But what I want to demonstrate here is 
what could be considered a crude writing utensil. I will just write my 
name there. This is a hunk of graphite. This is solid graphite. It gets 
your fingers a little bit dirty. This is a piece of graphite that I 
picked up at the mine site in Nome. If I were to give you this piece of 
graphite and you were to hold it in one hand and you were to hold your 
cell phone in the other hand, you would be holding two pieces of 
graphite. This is graphite. This is graphite. But this graphite from 
Alaska would probably be the first piece of American graphite, of 
domestic graphite that you have ever held in your life, because there 
is nothing domestic about the graphite that goes into our cell phones 
today.
  This is just a small part, a small sample of what we can glean from 
the Graphite One project, which USGS reports is North America's largest 
natural graphite deposit. It is a world-class deposit. It is absolutely 
massive compared to others around the world.
  I mentioned that I was out there in Nome 3 days ago. On Saturday, I 
was on the Graphite One property. It consists of well over 100 mining 
claims on non-Federal land. This mine project is not new. They actually 
mined this back in the early 1900s and then stopped production some 
time ago. But I was able to visit the base camp there in Nome, the 
Graphite Creek field camp, as well as a drill pad where the core 
samples are being taken as part of the summer season. Of course, summer 
in Alaska out in that region just means that is when the mosquitoes are 
the most intense.
  It was eye-opening to see how Graphite One is moving forward as they 
are doing further exploration with this absolutely critical resource. I 
have always supported Graphite One and what they are doing in Alaska, 
but really, after my site visit there on Saturday, I am convinced that 
this is a project that every one of us--those of us here in Congress, 
the Biden administration, all of us--needs to support.
  Graphite One's vision is to build a complete domestic supply chain 
for natural graphite. Their project would be anchored by responsible 
mining of the Graphite Creek deposit, producing tens of thousands of 
metric tons a year. But it would also extend to a battery anode 
manufacturing facility in Washington State, which would be colocated 
with a battery recycling plant--which is why their CEO, Anthony Huston, 
often describes Graphite One as ``a technology company that mines 
graphite.''
  This is a major opportunity for us. Previously, I have expressed some 
disappointment to Secretary Granholm that the Biden administration is 
heavily subsidizing a graphite processing plant in Louisiana that 
imports graphite. They import graphite from Mozambique, an unstable 
regime with a poor human rights record, a region where there has been 
significant labor unrest and where ISIS is reportedly active.

  It is not too late to realize the immense value that Graphite One 
holds for our economy and our security. This project will give us a 
significant domestic supply, breaking our wholesale dependence on 
imports. This will be a secure supply of natural graphite from day one. 
This stuff is pretty pure. Let me tell you, this was not just a random 
piece of graphite; this graphite is literally under your very feet, 
that you pick up with your hands. It is solid, solid material. It will 
be a secure supply of natural graphite from day one without the 
political and the security risks associated with so many projects that 
are located abroad.
  The health and environmental standards for Graphite One will both be 
exceedingly high and fully transparent. The company's leadership is 
working hard to ensure the project creates opportunities for the people 
who live in the region in Nome, as well as the Inupiaq communities of 
Brevig Mission, Mary's Igloo, and Teller.

[[Page S2304]]

  This is where I want to end my comments because, during my tour of 
Graphite One, I saw firsthand how even in these very developmental 
stages, this project is already benefiting these Alaska Native 
communities.
  Graphite One is committed to Alaska hire. They are working with a 
program that they call Arctic Access to help place disadvantaged 
individuals into meaningful jobs. We were able to talk a little bit 
about that program.
  One of the individuals who really struck me was a gentleman by the 
name of John. He was from Brevig Mission. He had been the water 
treatment operator there in Brevig for some years. He was hired to run 
Graphite One's very sophisticated water and wastewater system. John 
told me he knew next to nothing about this state-of-the-art system 
there, which could have been disqualifying in some places, but at 
Graphite One, it didn't matter. Rather than hiring somebody from the 
lower 48, they hired people to train him, and he is now succeeding. The 
guy was just beaming from ear to ear about the opportunities and the 
excitement that he has not only for the job but what this mine meant 
for the region.
  For people like John and other Alaskans, Graphite One is doing it 
right. I am proud to have them operating in Alaska.
  This is an opportunity for us as a country. Again, when we think 
about our dependence, when we think about our vulnerability on others 
for critical minerals and particularly our growing vulnerability on one 
country--China--everything we can do to responsibly address this is a 
step forward, and Alaska has a significant opportunity in front of us.
  I would hope that every Member of the Senate and every member of the 
administration will look at these as opportunities and join in doing 
everything we can to support this important work.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kelly). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.