With the recognition that “battery technology holds the key” to a future of cleaner transport and flexible, resilient electricity grids, four key US government departments have jointly established a Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries (FCAB).
The US is the global leader in stationary battery storage deployments for the grid, with Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables recently finding that despite the COVID-19 downturn, the country just saw its second-highest quarterly figures for new installations.
However, the US is heavily reliant on imported lithium-ion batteries and raw materials, mainly from China, as well as from, to a lesser extent, South Korea and Japan. While the European Union has sought to turn this situation around by supporting its domestic value chain through the establishment of the European Battery Alliance, pumping in billions of Euros of investment into companies developing gigafactories across the continent, the picture in the US has been limited to a handful of efforts by private actors. At the beginning of this month, the European Commission also put lithium alongside other battery raw materials onto a list of Critical Raw Materials that the EU’s Member States should ensure access to the supply of.
In April, as supply chain disruptions effected by the coronavirus hit multiple US industries, one battery industry veteran and expert, Francis Wang, CEO of battery materials startup Nanograf, said the crisis put the US’ dependency on importing goods, particularly batteries for advanced energy storage and electric vehicles, firmly in the public eye.
Tesla’s Nevada gigafactory is the only major facility already up and running from a US-headquartered company, while startup KORE Power is seeking to establish a 10GWh battery and energy storage system for the grid and industrial markets but is yet to pinpoint a location and site. There is a gigafactory for EV batteries under construction by South Korean company SK Innovation in the US state of Georgia and another on the way with the company investing about US$1.67 billion in the state overall to create an annual production capacity of just over 20GWh, while German company AKASOL is planning a similar but much smaller EV battery production facility in Greater Detroit, Michigan.
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