Introduction

Welcome to Tailings

I promised myself I’d never become a Substack Guy.

But after three years at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO), much of it spent leading the office’s work in metals and mining, I believe the insights I’ve developed are worth sharing while I have some time on my hands to think and write.¹

I hope you’ll agree.

So without further ado…welcome to Tailings: Lessons from the frontlines of America’s quest for minerals security.

For those readers less familiar with the mining sector, tailings are effectively the leftovers once the more valuable parts of an ore are extracted and processed. Typically dumped into a pile, or sometimes used to dam retention ponds at the mine site, they’re a necessary, if sometimes problematic form of waste disposal. Tailings aren’t always worthless, but often require new processing technologies, market conditions, security imperatives warranting subsidies, or all of the above to justify extracting additional materials from them.

Many of the “critical minerals” as designated by the US federal government and its counterparts around the world commonly end up in the tailings of primary base or precious metals mines. Think iron, gold, copper, or bauxite (alumina). While waste streams are attractive targets for speculators and policymakers seeking a readily attainable source of specific metals, few will ever produce anything worth recovering.

I felt it was a fitting name as I try to extract and synthesize lessons from my past three years leading this work for what was the sector’s premier US federal financing entity.

I’ve maintained a separate blog on my personal website since 2018, mostly for transportation-related musings. Tailings isn’t meant to replace that. It’s a limited series of posts I’ll publish over the next couple of months, covering a variety of topics related to critical minerals. Expect to see a mix of policy, finance, and technical content, mixing in relevant observations from my time serving in both the Biden and Trump administrations.

*Record scratch*

When I joined LPO, I had no relevant geology, engineering, or project finance experience.² I was recruited primarily for my electric vehicle subject matter expertise, and expected most of my work would center on manufacturing and deployment of those commercial products. But I also joined with a core conviction that America needed to reinvest in its manufacturing capabilities to both shore up a fading industrial middle class and remain globally competitive against China in the 21st Century. And that conviction would lead me down an entirely unexpected path.

Just a couple weeks into my tenure, Bank of Montreal (BMO) was trying to get someone from LPO to meet with project developers and financiers at their 2023 Global Metals and Mining Conference in Hollywood, FL. That year the conference had been rebranded to “Metals, Mining, and Critical Minerals,” reflecting heightened financing interest for battery metals, rare-earth elements, and other previously lower-priority materials. Much of that was the result of President Biden’s twin legislative achievements, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which added the first-ever tax credits for these projects, as well as billions of dollars in grants and lending authority through DOE, the Department of Defense (DOD), and other financing agencies.

I raised my hand, got a crash course in LPO’s financing authorities and mining project development, and flew to Florida for the conference. Thirty-five meetings with developers, investors, and other industry stakeholders in three days felt like a baptism by fire. Or a perfect start.

By the time I left nearly three years later, I’d reviewed hundreds of projects in the US and globally. From mines and processing facilities to battery and magnet manufacturing plants. From companies modernizing legacy facilities to those planning greenfield gigafactories. From mature manufacturers and venture-backed startups to mineral wildcatters. And spanning the spectrum from deeply serious to…downright clownish.

I saw it all. And I had plenty of help along the way, both inside and outside government. I wasn’t alone on the critical minerals beat within LPO, especially at the outset, and leaned heavily on financial and technical experts across the agency to get smart quickly. The clock didn’t start when I joined in 2023, and I was fortunate to benefit from decades of prior work and institutional knowledge built up across DOE and other federal agencies. Those foundations allowed me to advance existing minerals projects, originate new ones, and reorient agency financing tools to better serve American industry.

I collaborated with automakers, other key manufacturers, financiers, and counterparts across at least half a dozen other agencies to inform strategy, and worked with political leadership across both administrations to effect it.

Why I am doing this

Tailings is the product of my observations and insights across the industrial supply chain from those three years at DOE. Take that for what it is.

Much of the outside commentary I’ve seen on LinkedIn, industry publications, conference panels, and in other venues since the start of 2025 has been misinformed at best, and in many cases self-serving. Companies, financiers, lobbyists, and other consultants have shied from speaking candidly about administration policies and “dealmaking” activities, either for fear of drawing ire or desire to receive favorable treatment themselves.

It’s groupthink masquerading as thought leadership. And that sort of echo chamber tends to produce terrible policy outcomes. I fell victim in 2023 to inflated expectations at the peak of a euphoric market, where speculative project announcements received too little scrutiny and industry forecasts assumed far too much. Fool me once…

I see much of the same dynamic repeating, just with a more interventionist administration less constrained by laws, ethics, or market principles. That doesn’t mean the approach won’t produce some positive results for the country, or isn’t an improvement in some respects over the status quo ante. I just see a dearth of honest analysis today, in what is effectively still a honeymoon phase for this policy paradigm.

I don’t have all the answers and concede my own blind spots, but hope I can constructively advance the conversation.

In the next entry, I’ll define critical minerals. Not the official definition, provided by the US Interior Department per Congressional directive, but rather how I view and segment the category of materials we’ve established as policy priorities.

A few quick housekeeping notes:

1. I’ll use specific project examples and policies where I can to illustrate broader market dynamics, but am limited in what I can share publicly. Most of what I discuss will be aggregated sector observations.

2. I deeply respect the career staff I worked with at LPO, across DOE, and my counterparts at other financing agencies. Nearly all have served across multiple administrations, and do so out of a genuine desire to do good for our country. Nothing I write should be interpreted as denigrating their efforts.

3. I’ve never been a fan of indulging political correctness, so I’ll continue to use the Department of Defense’s legal name until Congress changes it. There is no U.S. Department of War.

4. The Department of Energy began to execute a broad reorganization shortly after I left, which included a renaming of LPO to the “Energy Dominance Financing Office” (EDF). I will try to use LPO in retrospective contexts and EDF for forward-looking commentary, but just assume they’re interchangeable.

With that…Happy New Year, and thanks for coming along for the ride.

1. I resigned my position at DOE at the end of October, intending to take at least three months of sabbatical before moving onto the next thing.

2. I took geology freshman year of college to fulfill my single lab science requirement. Slept through most of it on account of it being a morning class during my semester of fraternity pledging. Hooray for the humanities.