When Interior Secretary Doug Burgum toured LG's manufacturing facility in Lansing, Michigan, last month, he wasn't just checking in on an auto parts plant. He was carefully watching a plant originally built to make only electric vehicle batteries expand into battery production that can store power for the electric grid, a shift that could help America power the AI boom and compete with China.
Good. For years, Washington treated the electric grid like something that would simply keep working no matter how much we demanded of it. That era is over. Between the AI boom, a manufacturing renaissance, and a Pentagon that needs more power at more bases, the United States is in a race for electrons — one that China is hoping we lose.
AI data centers require enormous amounts of reliable, around-the-clock electricity. Batteries can help bring that power online faster by relieving pressure on an already strained grid and getting more capacity out of the power plants and transmission infrastructure we already have.
The problem is that China currently controls roughly 80 percent of global battery cell manufacturing capacity and an even tighter grip on the materials batteries are made from. The CCP boasts nearly 70 percent of global critical mineral processing capacity overall, including the overwhelming majority of the world's battery-grade graphite.
Beijing has already shown it's willing to use that leverage. In 2023, China imposed export licensing controls on key battery-grade graphite, citing "national security," and graphite exports to the rest of the world collapsed by more than 90 percent in the following month. A domestic battery industry — cells, minerals, and storage systems alike — is the only real insurance against a supply chain that a strategic competitor can turn off at will, and the Trump administration knows it.
That’s why the U.S. made a point to install a record 18.9 gigawatts of battery storage in 2025, 52 percent more than the year before, and followed it with another record-breaking start to 2026, installing 3.3 GW in the first quarter alone — 54 percent above the previous Q1 record.
President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is rewarding companies that build in America and source from American and allied supply chains, rather than depend on adversary nations for the technology that increasingly underpins our economy and our defense.
The market has responded at scale, and the administration has backed it up. $500 million just went out to seven domestic battery-mineral and processing projects covering lithium, cobalt, and recycling, on top of a $1.4 billion Department of Defense loan to support domestic synthetic anode production. Energy Secretary Chris Wright also recently toured a Form Energy storage site in Maine, providing yet another sign that this administration is treating battery storage as a serious piece of its energy strategy. This will pay dividends for energy, defense, and national security all at once.
Battery storage solves two problems that have plagued American energy policy for a decade: reliability and cost.
Batteries let America wring more value out of power plants, transmission lines, and substations we've already paid for, instead of building new infrastructure just to cover a handful of peak-demand hours a year. That's why a Department of Energy loan for battery storage projects in Puerto Rico is projected to save the territory roughly $312 million in electricity costs over the next 25 years, while 10 gigawatts of storage across the Midwest could deliver over $25 billion in consumer savings. Batteries are also how Texas helped save ratepayers $683 million during a brutal two-day winter freeze.
Storage doesn’t replace our conventional energy sources; it strengthens them. Pairing batteries with gas generation, as is happening at projects like the Paducah American Energy Hub, where up to 2.6 GW of battery storage will support a new AI and high-performance-computing campus, makes the whole system more responsive and resilient.
The Trump administration knows that the country that can deliver reliable, affordable power fastest will win the next round of industrial and technological competition. Speed to power has become a national security issue in its own right, and storage is one of the fastest, most cost-effective tools we have to deliver it.
Team Trump got this one right. By supporting domestic battery manufacturing and deployment, the administration is helping America produce the reliable power needed to win the AI race without becoming more dependent on China.
The OBBBA sent a clear signal that domestic battery manufacturing and deployment are strategic priorities, not just environmental nice-to-haves, and the market has responded with record investment. The administration should keep supporting the supply chains, manufacturing base, and deployment that make American energy both more secure and more affordable. This is what an America First energy policy is supposed to look like.