The DOE Office is Already Unleashing American Energy Dominance
“Unleashing American Energy,” President Trump’s executive order, promises an American economic revival based on lower costs, bringing back our supply chains, building America into a manufacturing superpower again and all-in-all, cutting reliance on foreign countries. Trump tasks the Secretary of Energy to prioritize programs to onshore critical mineral processing and development within this order. Luckily, an office within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) – the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) – is already at the heart of that agenda.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Energy manufacturing in the U.S. is experiencing a historic momentum, thanks in large part to the Department of Energy. Manufacturing was the backbone of the 20th century U.S. economy, but recent decades have seen a dramatic offshoring of domestic supply chains, in particular to China, that has threatened U.S. economic and national security. With the global supply chain crises of the early 2020s, driven by COVID and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Congress finally took note. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), lawmakers gave the federal government first-of-a-kind tools to reassert U.S. leadership in global manufacturing. This included creating, in 2021, a program (MESC) at the DOE that focuses on critical energy supply chains, including critical minerals.
Created in 2022 after the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that infused DOE with new funds to reshore advanced energy manufacturing, the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) has been hard at work executing on reshoring manufacturing. Since inception, MESC has achieved a remarkable impact on the energy supply chain and manufacturing industry in the US. It has resulted in over $39 billion of investments from both the public and private sector into the American energy sector in companies that have created over 47,000 private sector jobs. Many of these jobs and companies that have been funded are for critical minerals development and processing.
