Dept. of Energy launches new initiative to fill mining jobs, meet U.S. lithium needs

KINGS MOUNTAIN, N.C. — A North Carolina lithium mine says it needs hundreds of trained workers in order to reopen, so the Department of Energy was in Kings Mountain on Monday to announce a new federal education initiative to get workers into mines.

To run our phones, laptops, even the camera that shot this story, we use lithium.

The head of the Department of Energy’s Critical Minerals Office, Audrey Robertson, says it’s a shame we import most of it.

“We need lithium for lithium ion batteries and a lot of that lithium today does not come from the United States,” Robertson said.

But Kings Mountain’s Albemarle mine is proof that it used to.

Decades ago, this was an active lithium mine, but it retired when the business stopped making money. Albemarle bought the mine in 2015 and has been working to restart it. The last time we were here all of this was covered in water. Now the mine has drained that water, and Albemarle is assessing what’s underneath.

Scott Hutchins, Albemarle senior director of business readiness, said, “There’s a lot of the pit that hasn’t seen the daylight in the last 40 years.”

Hutchins says the mine is still years out from extraction, but once it is ready, Albemarle will need a workforce ready to help.

“Geologists, engineers, metallurgists, there’s just not a lot of those here locally and so we’re going to have to develop that and grow that,” Hutchins said.

Robertson says that’s an issue mineral projects across the country face. We haven’t had many mining jobs, so we haven’t had many programs.

“We graduated 163 mining engineers in this country. We have to change that,” Robertson said.

The DOE’s Prospect initiative aims to change that.

Monday, Robertson announced the first round of program funding, 16 million to support mining degree programs.

She says the goal is to double graduates in two years.

Currently, there are no schools in North Carolina eligible for the funding.

Robertson hopes local projects like Albemarle will encourage schools like NC State or UNC Charlotte to develop programs to funnel in local talent.

“We want to incentivize the development of this critical career path along that entire supply chain,” Robertson said.

Once restarted, the Kings Mountain mine aims to employ three to four hundred workers. Back in 2023, Albemarle partnered with Caterpillar, the large equipment manufacturer, to make the mine the first zero-emissions lithium mine in North America.

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