The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has its roots in the 1970s oil crisis. In 1974 President Gerald Ford signed a bill to create its precursor, the Solar Energy Research Institute. The 2021 budget for the lab was $464.3 million, with these amounts in millions going to renewable energy research:

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Rare earths, on the other hand, have narrower supply chains and are often more difficult to extract, requiring more cumbersome processes to separate them from other minerals (as Lecoq de Boisbaudran learned). The United States has just one operational rare earth mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., which produces around 15 percent of global rare earths.