A federal watchdog says battery recycling could cut imported minerals within 2 to 3 years

Battery recycling can cut imported minerals faster than new technology

The Government Accountability Office, the federal watchdog agency that studies government programs for Congress, told the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in a report published July 22, 2026 that the fastest way to reduce United States reliance on imported minerals is not a new technology, it is recycling the batteries already in the country. Critical minerals are the raw metals the federal government has officially listed as essential to the economy and at risk of falling into short supply, and the report studied 11 of the 60 minerals on that list, the ones used in batteries and computer chips.

Battery recycling technologies are mature and offer a pathway to reduce imports for copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel in 2 to 3 years.

The report, the Government Accountability Office report on reducing imports of critical minerals. Source 1.

Copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel are 4 of the metals used to build batteries for electric cars, phones and the electric grid, and the chart below shows how narrow a slice of the full critical minerals list this single report actually covers.

The capacity gap that could slow it down

The same report warns of a catch to its own good news.

Experts told GAO, however, that U.S. battery recyclers lack capacity.

The report, the Government Accountability Office report on reducing imports of critical minerals. Source 1.

Capacity, in this context, means how much old battery material the country actually has the plants and equipment to process at once. Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company, says it opened a new site in South Carolina in November 2025 with an initial capacity of 20,000 metric tons a year, on top of more than 60,000 metric tons it says it processed last year at its original site in Nevada. The company estimates the country own retired electric vehicle fleet will eventually yield 2.25 million metric tons of recoverable battery material, a stockpile far larger than what any recycler currently handles in a single year.

Where the United States still depends on imports most

Outside of batteries, the country still leans heavily on imports for many of the same 11 minerals. Resource Recycling, reporting on the same Government Accountability Office findings, found the United States is at least 41% import reliant on nickel, and that 5 of the 11 minerals studied, arsenic, gallium, graphite, indium and manganese, are sourced entirely from overseas. Aluminum was the only mineral of the 11 to see its import reliance fall since 2021, from 61% down to 60% by 2025.

The harder problem is computer chips, not batteries

The report found the opposite pattern for semiconductor minerals, the metals used to make computer chips. China controls 99% of world gallium production, the agency states in a blog post about the same report, and both substitution and recycling fixes for chip minerals remain, in the report own words, years from maturity. Lithium iron phosphate batteries offer a nearer term substitute for cobalt and nickel inside battery packs, the same blog post finds, though replacing lithium itself is unlikely soon. The gap between the 2 findings is itself a finding, how quickly a mineral shortage can be fixed depends less on the metal than on whether the technology to reuse what is already mined already exists.