VIDALIA, La. (AP) — An Australian company’s Louisiana subsidiary can get up to $107 million in U.S. Department of Energy loans to expand a plant that produces materials for electric car batteries the department said Monday.The loan to Syrah Technologies LLC would be the Biden administration’s second clean energy loan.
The money is expected to enable the plant to produce enough graphite-based “active anode material” for about 2.5 million electric vehicles by 2040, “saving an estimated 970 million gallons of gasoline,” according to a department blog post.
It would reactivate a program last used more than a decade ago during the Obama administration to lend money to auto makers and would be the program’s first use for a supply chain project, the department said. It said previous Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loans went to Ford,…