The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News – September 20, 2023
From high-tech tactical gear and small unmanned aircraft to EVs and larger systems, the U.S. military is increasingly pulling on the demand side of the battery supply chain.
The U.S. Department of Defense is investing $30 million to establish an energy storage systems campus that will serve as the headquarters for a U.S. military-private sector alliance to accelerate the transition to next-generation batteries powering everything from smartphones and household appliances to electric vehicles and military hardware.
Over the past three months, the Pentagon has invested north of $160 million to support the domestic supply of battery materials such as cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel, along with nearly $300 million of funding to support non-battery mineral products critical to the military such as antimony and rare earths.
The energy storage systems campus being established through DOD's Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office, however, marks a shift from supporting the supply side of the battery market to aligning the buying power of the U.S. military and American private enterprise on the demand side, alongside the campuses primary goal of accelerating battery research and development.
The University of Texas at Dallas – along with a diverse consortium of multiple universities, emerging and established businesses, and four national laboratories – spearheaded a successful bid for the three-year, $30 million energy storage systems campus.
This project is part of DOD's Scaling Capacity and Accelerating Local Enterprises, an initiative focused on stimulating commercial investment in, and building sustainable markets for, technologies essential to national security.
"The SCALE initiative is built on robust research that indicates market pull is needed to transition innovative technologies into new domestic industrial base capability and capacity," said Laura Taylor-Kale, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, which oversees MCEIP. "Our approach of aggregating demand across national security and commercial markets will generate that market pull, drastically reducing timelines to transition and scale emerging technologies."
The energy storage systems campus is expected to leverage and stimulate over $200 million in private capital, to accomplish three complementary objectives:
• Optimize the performance of current lithium-ion-based batteries.
• Accelerated the development and production of next-generation batteries.
• Ensure the availability of raw materials needed for these batteries.
In addition to quickening the commercialization of battery tech and supporting secure supplies of the raw materials to make next-gen batteries, workforce development is a key pillar of the energy storage systems campus. This pillar will be supported by universities, trade schools, and businesses brought together to create job growth opportunities and upskill the domestic workforce for a battery-powered energy transition.
A workforce that will be needed sooner rather than later as DOD pushes on the supply side and pulls on the demand side of the American battery supply chain.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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