CONSOL Innovations LLC, a subsidiary of Core Natural Resources, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation for a grant under DOE's "Mines & Metals Capacity Expansion" funding opportunity, according to a company announcement. The award would fund a pilot-scale facility to extract rare earth elements and other critical materials from coal waste tailings generated at Core's Pennsylvania Mining Complex. Per DOE's own selection notice, the award is contingent on Core completing grant negotiations, and the final dollar amount has not yet been set.

CONSOL Is One of Five Selected Under the Program

DOE's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation confirmed the selection directly, naming CONSOL Innovations as one of five recipients chosen under the program's coal-based industry track, alongside Peabody Energy, American Resources Corporation, Valor Metals, and the University of North Dakota. DOE said the five projects will share roughly $75 million in funding, part of a larger $275 million opportunity aimed at piloting critical-minerals recovery from coal and other industrial byproducts. That funding opportunity is itself one piece of a nearly $1 billionc push the agency has tied to two 2025 executive orders on domestic mineral production.

Coal Waste Has Been a Research Target for Years

The idea behind the pilot is not new. DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory has funded exploratory work on pulling rare earth elements out of coal ash and mining byproducts for over a decade, treating the material as a lower-grade but domestically available source at a time when the country still imports the large majority of the rare earths it uses. Those elements go into products ranging from defense systems to EV motors to wind turbines, and Washington has made reducing that import dependence, particularly on China, a stated priority across the last two administrations.

The Grant Fits a Broader Pattern at Core

The selection follows other recent moves by Core to diversify beyond traditional coal production. Earlier this year, Northrop Grumman named Core's Touchstone Advanced Composites unit as a supplier for its YFQ-48A Talon collaborative combat aircraft program, and the company's C-BATT joint venture is separately working to produce battery-grade graphite. Core has framed the rare earth pilot in similar terms: as a test of whether coal assets can generate revenue streams beyond fuel markets.

Company statements framed the grant as validation of that broader strategy, and DOE's Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy has said the pilot program overall is meant to help American industrial facilities produce valuable critical materials while reducing the financial risk of commercial deployment. For now, the practical outcome is narrower: a pilot-scale project, an undetermined grant amount, and a negotiation process still underway.