Reed Smith Energy and Project Finance Team Leader Jim Greenberger, a Chicago-based lawyer, is heading up a landmark alliance of leading U.S. tech and energy companies to encourage government funding for the research and development and U.S. manufacture of cutting-edge battery technologies.
The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries (NAATB) is an industry consortium, co-founded and led by Greenberger, that is seeking $1 billion in federal money to fund battery development and a collaborative manufacturing center.
The goal is to make the U.S. a leader in the development and manufacturing of Lithium-ion and other high-performance battery technology, which has long been dominated by Asian companies. The money would come from $2.4 billion set aside in the federal economic stimulus law to be granted by the DOE to speed development of technology for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
The group, formed in December, following a June 2008 seminar at Reed Smith in Chicago, now has members from major companies to startups, including 3M Co., East Penn Manufacturing Co., Kemet Corp., and Exide Technologies.
Key elements of the plan are: Build or occupy three buildings that total 1.5 million square feet; employ 2,500 or more people over five years; and develop and make cells for lithium-ion batteries for hybrid electric vehicles.
The consortium is currently asking seven states to submit competing bids for the project, offering: Free or very cheap land for a plant site; the completion of permits and other approvals by April 30; waivers or rebates on sales and property taxes; loan guarantees; low-interest, long-term loans for equipment purchases; preferential electric rates; and political support in Washington.
Greenberger said he’s been co-head of the firm’s clean tech group for the last several years and has been working on all elements of clean tech for awhile. He started thinking about which areas of clean tech will come to commercial fruition the soonest, and which will likely make the biggest impact — and that was Lithium-ion batteries and their use in automobiles, he said.
Nobody in the United States is making these batteries in any quantity, Greenberger said. But Japanese, South Korean and Chinese businesses are. But building these batteries and creating the cars that would use them could help slow down global warming and break the reliance on petroleum, he said.
The Energy Department’s request for bids for the stimulus money was released in March with an expected deadline of mid-May. The department has pledged to move quickly to select grant winners once the applications are in.
If the consortium wins federal backing, it will move rapidly to set up a headquarters and battery cell engineering and development center. The completion of a factory might take another two years, according to Reed Smith. The race for federal money is highly competitive, and the consortium is asking for a quick response from competing states, so that it can move rapidly to submit its application to the DOE.
This work, he said, “gets me out of bed in the morning and, really, I’m just having the best time I’ve ever had in my professional career in the last several months working with this and turning it into something. Trying to promote the acceptance and the technology to power electric vehicles and hybrids is certainly a cause and a force greater than any individual as it has powerful long-term ramifications.”
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