Gov. Andy Beshear, center, speaks to Ascend Elements CEO Michael O’Kronley after a ground-breaking ceremony at Commerce Park II in Hopkinsville in October 2022. (Hoptown Chronicle photo by Jennifer P. Brown)
The company behind a planned battery recycling plant in Western Kentucky is receiving another $125 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as a part of a broader federal effort to boost battery production and recycling for electric vehicles (EVs) and the electric grid.
Massachusetts-based Ascend Elements is receiving the federal award for its planned $65 million lithium-ion battery recycling plant it announced last year in partnership with South Korea-based SK ecoplant, which will be the majority owner in the plant. The companies at that time said the 100,000-square-foot recycling plant would shred 24,000 metric tons of EV batteries.
The companies planned to have the construction of the battery recycling plant completed by January 2025. An Ascend Elements spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the funding announcement.
White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi in a statement Friday about the funding — which awarded more than $3 billion to 25 battery-related projects across the country — said the funding is “helping support the technologies that we need in the market today, the components that we will need in the near future, and the innovative technologies we need to advance our vision for a circular domestic battery supply chain that positions the United States to continue leading the global effort on clean energy.”
Ascend Elements’ battery recycling plant plans to collect thousands of tons of what’s known as “black mass,” or shredded battery material containing battery elements including lithium, cobalt and graphite. The companies plan to extract graphite from the recycled batteries, have it further processed and enhanced at a separate Louisiana facility and then sell the new battery-grade graphite.
The announcement follows earlier large federal investments in another Ascend Elements manufacturing plant in Hopkinsville. The Hoptown Chronicle has previously reported the recycled batteries will help supply another planned Ascend Elements plant, dubbed Apex 1, creating cathode active materials that constitute battery cells. The DOE has invested more than $480 million into the Apex 1 projects.