U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stopped in Northern Nevada on Tuesday to discuss and tout the Biden Administration's national industrial strategy.
Granholm, a two-term governor of Michigan, led the state during the height of the 2008 Great Recession, which led to the bankruptcy of the Detroit auto industry.
Granholm's first stop in Northern Nevada was to address state and local leaders, as well as members of the region's clean energy industry, at the Truckee Meadows Community College William N. Pennington Applied Technology Center.
Granholm points out that the United States has yet to have a national industrial strategy, which, she says, played a critical role in the country's loss of an industrial base.
"We just stood by as our competitor ate us for lunch, they put their thumb on the scale," remarked U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Since the 1990s, manufacturing in the U.S. has declined and has been outsourced to the rest of the world, especially China.
"In fact, they were so successful that in the 2000s, 60,000 factories left America," Granholm stated.
In broad terms, the Biden Administration's industrial strategy is to subsidize and incentivize new manufacturing in the U.S. The move will generate economic activity and secure the nation's domestic supply lines.
Federal help comes from three main bills: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Those three pronges form the Biden Administration's "Investing in America" program.
"Nevada has all the ingredients for a whole economic cluster around batteries. So, that means extracting and processing the critical minerals, making the battery cells, putting those cells into a pack, putting it in the vehicle, and then the training programs that are here," explained Granholm.
Since President Biden took office, there have been 19 industrial clean energy projects announced in Nevada.
The strategy is centered around clean energy. President Biden wants to create a carbon free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.
For Granholm's second stop, she visited the lithium-ion battery recycling plant of American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) in Nevada, located east of Sparks.
The ABTC lithium-ion battery recycling plant won $10 million dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
ABTC also refines lithium near Tonopah. That project won $57 million dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
"It's very exciting to be able to compete with China and really allow all of these jobs to leave without doing something about it," stated Granholm, "almost 700 factories have announced they are coming to America where they would not have before without the incentives embedded in the inflation reduction act. And, Nevada is benefitting as well. 19 Companies have announced they are opening because of the inflation reduction act here."
We contacted the Trump campaign, and they provided the following statement:
"Joe Biden's energy policy is not based on strengthening national security or lowering costs, but rather caving to the radical demands of the environmental extremists in his administration. On day one, President Trump will unleash American Energy to lower inflation for all Americans, pay down debt, strengthen national security, and establish the United States as the manufacturing superpower of the world," said a Trump Campaign Spokesperson.
