10/07/2026
"Critical minerals are the raw ingredients of the modern economy," says Energy Technologies Area at Berkeley Lab researcher Andrew Haddad.
That's because these minerals are everywhere: in your phone and your car, in data centers training AI models, even in medical devices and defense systems.
"We have a lot of these minerals in the ground here," Haddad continues in a recent article out on ETA's website. "The challenge is that the deposits in the U.S. tend to be lower-grade or chemically more complicated than what's available abroad, which makes them more expensive to refine."
Haddad's team of researchers at Berkeley Lab are working to understand how we can change that, in three key areas:
1.) making domestic extraction and refinement cheaper and cleaner;
2.) mapping supply chain bottlenecks so industry and policymakers can plan ahead;
3.) developing alternative materials that reduce demand for the most constrained minerals.
Read more on this work and Haddad's perspective on what's ahead for critical minerals in the U.S. at the link below
