Energy Storage Journal, Issue 40 — Summer 2023

KOREA: THE FIGHT BACK

The gloves are off in the battle to become the world leader in lithium battery mass production. The US' IRA act is being challenged by nations across the planet with Korea proving a strong contender.

HOW MANY TRILLIONS IS THAT?

All the noise about how energy storage is vital to the energy transition still seems to be ignoring the fact that a huge amount of investment is needed immediately — there's too much of talk of funding sometime in the future.

LEAD'S UNLIKELY HEROES

Innovation has been the key theme in the energy storage markets for the past decade. But dismiss lead batteries at your peril, the incumbent technology for the last 150 years has a way of bouncing back!

There's too many pundits and not enough experts — it's time for a serious debate on storage

IN THIS ISSUE

The European Union has been urged to form a battery raw materials club with the US.

It's time to remember that precision measurement in battery production is a must.

2 EDITORIAL: Let mature debate prevail over lies, damned lies and statistics | 4 PEOPLE NEWS Dunckley appointed EMEA president for Leoch | Farewell to John Devitt battery pioneer | 8 RECYCLING NEWS | 10 NEWS | 19 COVER STORY: WHAT’S A TRILLION OR TWO BETWEEN FRIENDS? The investment sums needed just in storage for the energy transition are eye-watering | 31 INNOVATION IN LEAD ENERGY STORAGE: The contestants and the winner of the BCI innovation Award | 37 ZINCFIVE: Tod Higinbotham discusses choosing the right battery for data centers | 39 IN FOCUS: THERMO FISHER SCIENTIFIC The future of battery production is in automated metrology technology | 42 UPCOMING EVENTS: ESJ details the conferences and shows ahead

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The US DoE launch a contest to find the next generation of battery industry leaders.

Let mature debate prevail over lies, damned lies and statistics

“Ceilings and floors, my boy,” a banker once told me.

It was a phrase that baffled me well over a quarter-of-a-century ago as a trainee journalist writing about financial markets.

My topic: the inexorable rise of the Japanese stock market. In just five years the value of corporate Japan had trebled. The Nikkei stock index had soared to 39,000 and showed no sign of flagging.

“What’s ceilings and floors?” I asked.

“Don’t you know anything?” laughed the banker with just the right measure of scorn. “Once the price of the index hits its ceiling, then it’s the floor for its next rise. The only way is up. I expect to see the Nikkei at 40,000 in three months.”

As financial bubbles go Japan’s bubble was spectacular.

At one time the price of the land in the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo was so inflated that, if you could have sold it, you would have had enough money to buy Canada. (And that’s including everything inside Canada too.)

And then came the crash. Floors dropped through ceilings. And then fell through floors again, inexorably downwards.

That same stock index just 12 months later was down at 22,000 — $2 trillion of value had dropped in the value of corporate Japan.

And, to make the point more brutally, that same index 33 years afterwards is standing at an average of 25,600 for this April.

So why mention all this in a magazine dedicated to reporting about batteries and the energy storage industry?

What’s true about financial markets is equally true about commercial ones.

This is now a key issue at the heart of the lead battery and energy storage markets. Very simply, the forces of hype and unreality loom large over the entire energy storage market — and vast swathes of information, misinformation, and disinformation are at play.

A quick glance at the world of start-ups reveals a huge number of extravagant claims about various technologies — many of which have yet even to leave the laboratory bench — which may or may not be true.

It’s in the nature of start-ups to boast technologies that are up-and-ready while still not finalized. But frankly they can’t all be true and we all know it.

Then there’s informed opinion.

One sector of the industry reckons that lead batteries are yesterday’s technology (and suppliers are moving away from the chemistry).

Yet other suppliers are predicting that all things will be well and there are huge untapped markets in the developing world about to be tackled.

And yet others see an imminent world energy shortage crisis. Although reputable market analysts predict steady and not explosive growth for lead battery sales, other

A quick glance at the world of start-ups reveals a huge number of extravagant claims about various technologies — many of which have yet even to leave the laboratory bench — which may or may not be true.

super-optimists are preaching a gospel where lead batteries will become desperately needed in our decarbonized future.

Much as I respect the people who say this — one group sees the energy storage market at 585GW by 2030, and worth between $30 billion-$50 billion and that lead batteries can capture 20% of that market. Really? It presently captures less than 1% and its market share is falling?

Looking in another direction, what this magazine finds so puzzling is why are so many players, big and small alike, so entrenched in their thinking? Where is the balanced view? Where is the mature debate?

Each year our editorial team attends literally dozens of conferences and events. We dutifully try to follow the best presentations, hear the best speakers and keep up to date with an industry that is (perversely) both slow to change yet rocketing away at an unbelievable pace.

But choose the right conference and the right speaker and you may hear that lead acid is yesterday’s news (boo-sucks from the lithium ion community) or that lithium is explosive, costly and will probably bring you out in spots (courtesy of the lead acid gentlemen).

For this magazine we deliberately have to choose a middle path. Because, despite our occasional reservations, our job is to represent what people in this business say and are thinking, not our opinions.

For a profession where its leading lights see themselves as visionaries — and sometimes quite rightly too — there needs to be more coherence in that vision.

There are a host of issues facing this industry now that need to be dealt with in a concerted fashion. For example, irrespective of any belief that lithium/lead/nickel/ something-bright-and-shiny is going to save the planet, a reasonable debate has to be conducted over issues such as recycling batteries.

At the practical level there is a very real risk of an explosion if a lithium battery is smashed in a lead acid battery breaker. The chances of this happening are growing as both types of batteries can look similar.

Other super-optimists are preaching a gospel where lead batteries will become desperately needed in our decarbonized future

At the financial level, the commercialities of a huge range of recycling options need to be faced. At present it’s clear that it’s unlikely that anyone is going to be making a profit by selling the elements from a LiFePO4 cell (and other lithium variants also have question marks over them).

Is the world really crying out for more iron, phosphorous or oxygen?

So away from the world of hype will tolling arrangements be the future for most lithium recycling? Sensible discussions are needed over what that means for lead batteries too.

Let the debates begin.

Mike Halls, Editor-in-Chief

Mike Dunckley appointed EMEA president for Leoch

tries including lithium, redox flow and nickel-metal hydride.

He is one of the founding members of the Hawker Batteries Group and also one of the developers of the firm’s pure lead business.

Dunckley is also a former business development director for Fiamm.

Gao heads up Hammond lab as director of R&D

ing as a PhD student at Iowa State University.

Battery industry veteran Mike Dunckley has joined Leoch to help spearhead the lead and lithium giant’s continued expansion in new and existing markets.

Dunckley, who was appointed EMEA president for Leoch as of April 1, told Energy Storage Journal he was looking forward to the challenge of helping strengthen Leoch’s global presence.

His appointment came just days after Leoch chairman and founder Dong Li announced the group planned to build a manufacturing plant in Mexico to ramp up its presence in the Americas ( see article elsewhere in our news pages ).

“The challenge now is to build the Leoch brand, its identity and its role to take advantage of the opportunities in existing and future markets,” said Dunckley, who will be based in Europe.

Dunckley has been brought in as a result of his 30-plus years knowledge of the battery industry and his deep understanding of a wide range of technologies, having worked in various chemis-

For the past 14 years he has been running his Catalyst Solutions consultancy, focused on advising companies on technology selection, business strategy and development in the energy storage and electric mobility markets.

Now he will draw on his experience to help drive what he said will be the next phase of development of Leoch’s $2 billion international business, with an increasing reach into the Americas, Europe and Asia.

The China-centred company has its corporate HQ in Singapore and a US HQ in Los Angeles, with an extensive sales team across North America.

In May 2021, the company bought Madrid-based distribution business Meibat — from which it launched its Leoch Iberia subsidiary.

Dunckley said: “One of the things that really interested me about Leoch is they are one of the few incumbent battery manufacturers that have their own lithium operation.

“So having lithium iron phosphate in addition to pure lead and a full range of different technologies and the ability to serve all the markets — gives Leoch all the components that are needed as we drive the next stages of growth forward.”

Hammond Group has formally announced the appointment of Enqin Gao as R&D director, who is also heading up the company’s E=(LAB)² research unit in Indiana.

Hammond confirmed the appointment on April 6, although Gao told Energy Storage Journal he took up the post last November.

Gao has more than three decades of management and R&D experience in the lead acid battery industry.

He has previously worked on the manufacturing side of the industry with Trojan Battery and Camel Group and has held a number of top industry posts during his career including chief engineer, product specialist and research chemist.

He received his MS in physical chemistry from Peking University and a BS in chemistry from Wuhan University. He also studied materials science and engineer-

Metair makes interim CEO, CFO appointments permanent

Interim CEO of batteries and auto components groups Metair Investments, Sjoerd Douwenga, has been appointed to the role permanently, the company said on May 31.

Interim CFO Anesh Jogia has also been appointed permanently. He will also work as executive director and a member of the firm’s investment committee.

Hammond president and CEO Terry Murphy said Gao was uniquely qualified to lead E=(LAB)², which was set up in 2015 to work with industry to improve battery charge acceptance and cycle life.

“Lead acid batteries are central to the growing demand for energy storage as the world transitions away from fossil fuels, but we have to continue innovating,” said Murphy.

“Enqin is a key addition to our R&D team as we help drive further innovations for the industry.”

Gao said Hammond’s technical assistance programs allow customers to treat the lab as an extension of their own.

“Using our state-of-the-art instruments, many of which our customers don’t have in their own labs, our engineers can perform TGA/DSC analysis, BET analysis, SEM and more on material evaluation and cell and battery tests.

“Our team is composed of experts from material science, battery research, design, manufacturing and testing with a total industry experience over 200 years.”

The interim appointments of Douwenga and Jogia were announced in March, following the resignation of then CEO Riaz Haffejee.

Flow battery pioneer Skyllas-Kazacos joins Tivan advisory group Vanadium redox flow battery pioneer Maria Skyllas-Kazacos has joined a new technical advisory group set up by minerals processing tech company Tivan.

PEOPLE NEWS IN BRIEF

Nickel veteran Fetcenko joins CHASM

he joined Sion Power in April 2019 as executive chairman of the board.

vehicles on the road,” said a CHASM announcement.

Battery veteran Michael Fetcenko was appointed chairman of the board of directors at CHASM, the carbon nanotube developer, effective January 18.

Fetcenko brings extensive experience in the battery industry to CHASM. He joined Ovonic Battery Company in 1980, and was the key figure and inventor in its development of NiMH batteries which became the basis for an early generation of electric vehicles.

He was president of the company when Ovonic was acquired by BASF in 2012. He subsequently became managing director of BASF Battery Materials, North America before taking on the position of director for global licensing.

After retiring from BASF

Tivan said on May 31 Skyllas-Kazacos’s technical knowledge and experience will be keenly sought in developing and standardizing the global value chain in VRFB.

Other initial appointments to the group include Stéphane Leblanc and Simon Flowers.

Leblanc is a former MD of Rio Tinto Iron & Titanium. Flowers is the director and principal of Sustainergy Consulting and a former international

Fetcenko holds more than 70 patents and has authored 100+ publications in the NiMH and Li ion field. He has over 40 NiMH licences and led the successful Argonne National Laboratory NCM patent enforcement and licensing effort which resulted in 14 licences and sub-licences.

“His inventions are used in all NiMH batteries for consumer, stationary, and hybrid vehicle applications such as the iconic Toyota Prius with over 10 million

“Michael served on the board of directors and Technical Steering Committee for Sion Power for five years, a leader in advanced ultra-high energy lithium battery systems including protected metallic lithium anodes for Li ion batteries.”

Fetcenko said: “The potential for carbon nanotubes to deliver benefits such as improved battery performance has been known for some time. What is new is that CHASM has achieved breakthroughs that will lead directly to

widespread adoption: affordability, production at massive scale, methods for safe and easy handling and tunability to customer specifications.”

David Arthur, co-founder and CEO of CHASM said: “This appointment comes at a critical time as we accelerate the development and commercialization of our advanced materials solutions. Michael’s experience in the areas of intellectual property, building strategic partnerships with large corporations and his successful track record of scaling businesses are equally important.”

US Battery Manufacturing announces promotions

US Battery Manufacturing announced new promotions to the firm’s executive management team on February 17. The appointments became effective at the start of the year.

Leading the changes was Zachary Cox, who was promoted to EVP of operations. Cox has been with US Battery for nine years and has held various engineering, technical sales, and

management posts in the company.

Eric Rueter was promoted to EVP of manufacturing. He has been with US Battery for the past two years. He has an extensive background in process engineering and management in and outside the battery industry.

Marvin Ho was promoted to VP of product engineering and quality. Ho has been with US Battery for more than

a year and was previously lead researcher on Hammond’s lead silicate additive product that won the BCI Innovation Award in 2021.

COO Don Wallace said: “Our administrative, engineering, sales and manufacturing teams are helping the company spearhead new technologies that are moving US Battery into the future as we approach our 100year anniversary.”

team leader with US energy firm ConocoPhillips.

The group will provide independent technical advice to support development of two projects, including Tivan’s Mount Peake in Australia’s Northern Territory — which the company says has one of the largest flatlying, shallow vanadiumtitanium deposits in the country.

The other is the Speewah vanadium-titaniumiron project in Western

Australia, of which Tivan acquired 100% ownership in April.

Macchiarola joins ACP as chief policy officer

Frank Macchiarola is joining the American Clean Power Association as chief policy officer, the trade organization said on May 17.

Macchiarola, senior VP of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Insti-

tute, will start on June 20. ACP said he will lead a team working on regulatory and legislative proposals to boost development of advanced clean energy technologies.

Jason Grumet, ACP’s chief executive officer, said: “The clean energy sector is at a pivotal moment, and growing our team to embrace the opportunities before us will ensure this industry has the bench strength in place to match the moment.”

EnerSys appoints Thomas as chief human resources officer

ion, Apex Tool Group, and the Eramet Group.

Thomas holds an MBA in HR management from the University of Houston and a bachelor’s degree in HR management from Marietta College.

BMZ Germany names new executives

change through innovation, collaboration and challenging the status quo”.

EnerSys announced the appointment of Shannon Thomas as its new chief human resources officer effective May 1.

EnerSys said Thomas will be responsible for the strategy, leadership and operations of the company’s HR globally, overseeing talent lifecycle and development, total rewards, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Thomas has over 20 years’ experience as a global HR officer.

She spent her most recent five years at Chemours, where she helped set up several transformational initiatives, EnerSys said.

Before Chemours she held senior HR positions at several publicly traded and private companies including Owens Corning, Hex-

She succeeds Ted Fries — who is retiring after 26 years of service — and she joins the battery giant’s executive team, reporting directly to president and chief executive officer David Shaffer.

Shaffer said Thomas had extensive experience leading HR teams in a variety of industries and a “proven track record of driving

Thomas’s vision and leadership will support the company’s moves to attract, develop and retain top talent from around the world, while fostering a culture that values diversity, equity, and inclusion, Shaffer said.

On Ted Fries, Shaffer said his business acumen had been invaluable to the growth and success of EnerSys.

“We can’t thank him enough for the many contributions he has made to our business and community.”

Brian Leen leaves Gopher to join Vivify as new CEO

Brian Leen has quit as president and CEO of lead battery recycler Gopher Resource to become CEO of Vivify Specialty Ingredients.

Vivify, which provides additives and ingredients for the food, beverages and other markets, said on April 6 that Leen had joined the firm with immediate effect.

Leen succeeds Devlin Riley,

who has left the company.

Leen has been a member of Vivify’s board since it was acquired in December 2021 by Gryphon Heritage Fund. His appointment as CEO came four years after he joined Gopher.

Leen had previously been president and CEO of Colorado-based ADA Carbon Solutions since 2010.

H&V appoints Martinez as VP, chief people officer

human resource experience.

H&V said the title of chief people officer represented “an evolution beyond the traditional responsibilities of human resources”.

was VP of human resources and compensation and benefits at Spanishlanguage media company Univision.

Lithium ion battery systems company BMZ Germany announced that Oliver Makko had been appointed as CFO and Andreas Krist as chief purchasing officer and M&A manager effective May 1.

Makko, who has degrees in aerospace engineering and business administration, has 15 years of leadership experience in the finance sector.

He succeeds Jörg Dinkat, who left the company in March. Makko will report to BMZ Group CFO Stefan Kreysa.

Krist, a graduate engineer in physical technology, has 18 years of management experience in pre-development, value analysis and strategic purchasing, including responsibility for procuring battery production materials.

Sandra Martinez has been named as VP and chief people officer at Hollingsworth & Vose as of April 18. H&V said Martinez brings a strong blend of

Before joining H&V, Martinez was head of human resources for the industrial segment of Barnes Group, a global industrial and aerospace manufacturing company.

She has worked in the manufacturing industry since 2015. Before that she

Martinez has also been a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Council for the US Manufacturers Alliance.

CEO Josh Ayer said: “We selected Sandra due to her business acumen and experience working with a global workforce in key markets such as the Americas, APAC and Europe.”

He succeeds Oliver Reichertz, who was to leave the company at the end of May. Krist will report to BMZ Group CPO Magdalena Mozler.

On March 15, BMZ signed a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai’s Pingshan district government, under which BMZ’s China arm is set to have access to governmental support programs.

Oliver Makko

Andreas Krist

Farewell to John Devitt, VRLA pioneer

with the lead battery industry some five years before and his death, until now, has been unreported.

It is with sadness that Energy Storage Journal has to record the death of John Devitt, arguably the key figure in the development of the modern VRLA battery. He passed away, aged 96, on December 7, 2021. He had lost contact

John was born on September 27, 1925 in Denver, Colorado, a city where he was to spend most of his life. An early aptitude for science — he was making electromagnets at home aged eight — translated into a degree and later a masters in electrical engineering at Cornell university in Denver.

After a spell in the US Navy — he was in the naval reserve from 1943 to 1955 — mostly spent in battery research, he worked as chief engineer for a variety of Denver located companies. A

Haffejee quits as Metair CEO, Douwenga steps up to fill in during interim

The CEO of batteries and auto components group Metair Investments, Riaz Haffejee, resigned effective March 31.

The South Africa based group said in a regulatory filing on March 22 that Haffejee was also stepping down from its social and ethics committee.

CFO Sjoerd Douwenga was appointed as interim CEO and joined Metair’s social and ethics committee. Finance executive Anesh Jogia was appointed interim CFO.

Metair said Haffejee, who joined the company two years ago, was leaving to pursue other opportunities “more in line with his personal career goals”.

Haffejee successfully led the group through the impact of Covid-19, floods and riots and the group’s board wished him well, Metair said.

He would remain available for a period of two months up to the end of May to ensure a smooth transition and handover, Metair said.

pivotal moment in John’s life was when local manufacturing giant, Gates Rubber Company, then the largest manufacturer of rubber belts and hoses in the world, decided to go into the battery business,

He joined Gates in January 1965. Three months later John with his co-developer Don McLelland submitted a nine-page memo to CEO Charlie Gates called “Lead-Acid Sealed Cells”. The memo was to make history.

In effect Devitt’s proposal recommended the development of a cell that would perform in a manner similar to that of the sealed nickel-cadmium batteries then being sold.

It was an idea that John later said had been fermenting in his brain since listening to a presentation about nickelcadmium batteries five years before. John and McLelland issued the definitive patent in 1972.

Ken Peters, the man who perfected much of the design of later VRLA batteries, described its importance: “The development of gas recombining valve regulated designs has potentially been the most

important advance in the development of the lead battery in the last half of the 20th century.

“Offering improved highrate output, higher specific energy and operating flexibility never previously envisaged, their use in telephone and UPS systems grew quickly replacing previously-used designs in standby applications.

“Within 10 years of the first installation by British Telecom in 1981, 60% of the telephone systems in Western Europe relied upon VRLA batteries for emergency power. Today [in 2006] it must be approaching 100%.”

John, who remained a pioneer in advancing battery storage technology until his late 80s, was honoured over the years with the International Lead Medal, the Gaston Planté award and membership of the Alpha/Beta society.”

“One of the legends of the lead battery industry has disappeared for good,” said one commentator. “We may not see men of such like again in our lifetimes.”

John Devitt, electrochemist, 1925-2021

Further promotion for Stryten’s Dickie

Ian Dickie was appointed director of OEM sales at Stryten Energy at the start of February.

He began his career at Exide Technologies in June 2012 as a district sales manager based in Mississauga, Ontario and moved to GNB Industrial Power, a division of Exide, in April 2014.

Dickie had increasing sales responsibility over the next few years and

by 2020 was regional sales director for Canada, a position he carried further as the GNB Industrial Power segment was absorbed into Exide’s metamorphosis to Stryten Energy.

In July 2022 he became Stryten’s director of National Accounts which also included managing the new business development team for North America.

Riaz Haffejee

Sjoerd Douwenga

Fortum launches Finnish lithium processing plant

Energy company Fortum said on April 27 it had started commercial operation of its lithium hydrometallurgical battery material recycling facility in Finland.

Fortum claims the plant is the largest in Europe in terms of recycling capacity and the region’s first commercialscale facility for hydrometallurgical recycling. The plant can also recover 95% of the valuable and critical metals from battery black mass and reuse them to produce new lithium ion battery chemicals, Fortum claims.

At the time of going to press, the company had yet to respond to Battery International’s request for recycling capacity details or say what happens to residual black mass that cannot be

VinGroup and Li-Cycle assess new plant plan

recycled.

Fortum said the facility in Harjavalta will reduce Europe’s dependency on imported battery raw materials.

Head of the batteries business line at Fortum Battery Recycling, Tero Holländer, said the “low-CO2 plant can sustainably produce the materials urgently needed for new EV lithium ion and industrial-use batteries”.

The plant is already producing nickel and cobalt sulfates, Fortum said.

Recycling pre-treatment services for the Finnish plant will be conducted around 2,400km away at Fortum’s new operation in Kirchardt, Germany, The company said on March 16 it had received its environmental permit for Kirchardt from regulators.

Campine posts record figures after take-over

European metals recycling and speciality chemicals group Campine posted a record performance for 2022 on March 13 including increased sales of more than €317 million ($335 million) — less than a year after acquiring two lead battery recycling plants from French lead recycler Recyclex.

The Belgium-based group reported full-year Ebitda (earnings before interest tax debt and amortization) of €26.6 million and saying it had become Europe’s second largest lead-acid battery reprocessing company.

Ebitda was up 18% compared to €22.6 million achieved a year earlier. This comprised €17.2 million from its Belgian operations and €1.8 million from the French ones together with a one-time positive non-cash effect of €7.6 million.

Campine reported total consolidated revenue of €317.4 million, including six months of revenue of the ac-

quired French plants, which was an increase of more than 40% compared to 2021.

Campine said the revenue was related to increased material/metal prices as the volumes remained almost equal.

The battery breaker activities in France are hosted in a new recycled batteries business unit. Campine’s C2P recycling company has become its recycled polymers unit.

“With the expansion, we now recycle a volume of 180,000 tonnes of used batteries, which is the equivalent of 10 million car batteries per year,” said division director David Wijmans.

Wijmans said the group also expanded its feedstock and is now collecting batteries from a broader region.

CEO Wim De Vos said: “There is a clear consolidation in Europe with some temporary and definite lead metal production plant closures, which currently creates a relative shortage of lead metal in Europe.

Vietnam’s Vingroup and Canada’s Li-Cycle are assessing proposals to build a lithium ion recycling plant in Vietnam, the companies revealed on April 12.

The plant could be built near battery manufacturing facilities operated by Vingroup’s VinES Energy Solutions subsidiary, under an agreement where Li-Cycle would become VinES’ preferred recycling partner for its Vietnamese-sourced battery materials from 2024.

The move came five months after the firms agreed an international battery recycling partnership.

Separately, on April 10, VinES said it was joining forces with Turkey’s Altinay Elektromobilite to produce advanced batter-

ies as part of a full-service business for energy storage and mobility systems in the Turkish market.

Altinay general manager Mert Uygun said the partners also aimed to attract investment from the domestic energy sector.

VinES will offer the technology, system design, production and verification of the ESS units, while Altinay will head up sales and marketing as well as after-sales services in the Turkish market, Uygun said.

In November 2022, Vingroup auto subsidiary VinFast agreed to expand cooperation with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology to develop battery systems for the EVs market.

Gravita makes first moves into Middle East

Gravita India is to invest in the construction of a lead batteries recycling plant in Oman — its first in the Middle East, the company announced on February 24.

Gravita Netherlands, its subsidiary, has agreed a memorandum of understanding for the project in which it will hold a 50% stake, with the remainder held by undisclosed Omanbased partners.

The plant, to be designed and developed in India, will be managed by GNBV and have an initial, first-phase battery recycling capacity, of 6,000 tonnes per annum.

Gravita said the total investment for the first phase was around Rs40 crore ($5 million) of which GNBV’s share of investment would be around Rs20 crore.

The company has yet to disclose the location of the plant or comment on further development phases.

Gravita operates similar recycling facilities in Togo,

Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Sri Lanka in addition to India.

CEO Yogesh Malhotra revealed in August 2022 that the company was eyeing opportunities to further expand its operations outside India.

Battery recycling investment in the Middle East has gathered pace since March last year, when Italian group Seri Industrial said ground had been broken for a combined lead acid battery manufacturing plant and recycling facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The company behind the Dubai Industrial City project — Dubatt Battery Recycling — is a joint venture between Dubai-based Regency Group and Seashore Group. Dubatt is investing AED110 million (about $30 million) in the project.

In August, Royal Gulf Industries said it would invest more than AED62 million to build a lead batteries recycling centre in the UAE.

Lohum, ACKO in ‘pioneering’ EV battery insurance partnership

Indian recycler Lohum said on May 2 it was teaming up with insurer ACKO for what the firms say is a pioneering EV battery warranty insurance partnership.

Lohum said the move will pave the way for future partnerships with OEMs to launch “battery buy-back products” and improve the resale value of vehicles.

The collaboration will also benefit EV battery OEMs that already have their products underwritten by ACKO.

Under the partnership, ACKO will continue to provide performance warranty insurance for EV batteries

to multiple OEMs and “offer hassle-free redressal” in the event of performancerelated issues.

Meanwhile, Lohum will work towards collecting, repurposing, and recycling

used batteries that are returned as a result.

Lohum founder and CEO Rajat Verma said the partnership “weaves sustainability into India’s first EV battery performance war-

ranty insurance.

“We applaud ACKO’s emphasis on performance warranty, which ensures that customers get immediate replacements as soon as the battery performance drops even by a small margin over time.”

Animesh Das, ACKO’s chief underwriting officer, said the introduction of the 2022 Battery Waste Management Rule in India required end-to-end tracking of batteries to ensure safe disposal.

“Our partnership with Lohum will help OEMs comply with the necessary EV-specific rules.”

ABTC acquires former Aqua Metals facility

American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) has acquired a former Aqua Metals facility in Nevada in a $27 million deal to launch a lithium ion battery recycling operation, the company said on March 8.

ABTC has acquired the 137,000 ft2 facility in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) from Comstock, majority owner of lithium recycler LiNiCo, which originally had a lease-tobuy arrangement for the site with Aqua Metals.

Aqua Metals bought a 10% stake in LiNiCo in 2021 as part of a move into lithium recycling and LiNiCo had already agreed the lease-to-buy deal for the former lead-based AquaRefining facility.

In February, Aqua Metals said it would build its own 10,000 tonne-per-year lithium battery recycling campus and it plans to start phased development later this year, based on the design of its pilot TRIC facility.

Comstock executive chairman and CEO Corrado De Gasperis said:

“The sale of this asset was opportunistic and strategic since we secured our permitted 200-acre battery metal storage facility in Mound House, Nevada, and recently freed up our existing Storey County operating platform and facilities with the termination of the lease with Tonogold.”

An ABTC spokesperson told Energy Storage Journal

it would be operating the facility alone and had no collaboration with LiNiCo.

The spokesperson declined to give a start-up date for the facility, but said construction, commissioning, and operations were of the highest priority.

“ABTC has significantly increased the resources devoted to its execution including the further internal hiring of technical staff, expansion of laboratory

facilities, and purchasing of equipment.”

The facility is already equipped with necessary infrastructure equipment including electrical distribution, compressed air, nitrogen, water treatment, material handling, analytical quality control, and operational control rooms necessary to implement ABTC’s internally-developed lithium ion battery recycling technologies, the spokesperson said.

Lead recycling capacity at Gravita India’s Mundra

Port plant in Gujurat has been increased by 40,500 tonnes per annum, the firm announced on April 20.

Gravita said in a regulatory announcement that the expansion took overall recycling capacity at the flagship facility to 60,000 tpa.

Around 19,500 tpa

of the new capacity comes from switching some recycling from the firm’s existing facility at Gandhidham, about 60km northeast.

The company said it had also started commercial production of red lead and plastic granules at Mundra, with a capacity of 4,800 tpa and 7,500 tpa respectively.

Increasing recycling

at Mundra will boost operational efficiency in the import of scrap batteries and the export of new products and increase profitability in business from overseas markets for lead, red lead and plastic recycling, Gravita said. Gravita announced the start of the first phase of battery recycling operations at Mundra in December 2021.

Gravita expands recycling at Mundra

Gloves are off as Korea joins fight over US incentives for batteries

South Korea has launched a multibillion dollar program to defend and expand its battery industry amid fears lucrative US tax breaks and incentives are tipping the global battery trade balance stateside.

Trade, industry and energy minister Lee Changyang announced the move on April 7 after chairing a meeting of the governmentbacked Korean Battery Alliance.

Lee said the government’s new ‘post Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) public-private joint strategy’ policy was needed to support domestic manufacturing and battery material suppliers following the introduction of the US government’s own IRA.

A leading industry commentator told Energy Storage Journal: “The gloves are really off now and Korea, just like the Europeans, is concerned about US incentives.

“Korea fears its battery and EV industry could suffer because they source a significant amount of battery raw materials from China, which the US has designated as a foreign entity of concern.”

The Export-Import Bank of Korea and the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-Sure) will support investments by battery firms and material suppliers in facilities within North America with KRW7 trillion ($5.3 billion) of loans and guarantees over the next five years.

Firms will also qualify for Korea-backed higher credit lines, interest rate cuts, lower insurance premiums and other financial incentives.

Lee also pledged support for market penetration schemes for Korean-made lithium iron phosphate batteries.

Starting this year, the government plans to launch more than KRW50 billion ($38 million) of LFP battery projects to support companies entering overseas markets, the minister said.

Korean companies are already developing LFP batteries with some close to activating production lines.

In a related move, at the end of March, Korea’s National Assembly passed a bill proposing to boost tax credit rates for investments related to national strategic technologies for large firms of up to 15% and SMEs, 25%.

The government said that meant major incentives were lined up for firms throughout the battery supply chain. Lee said the public and private sectors must work together “to solve major challenges and respond effectively to the rapidly changing post-IRA global landscape”.

He said the government would aggressively push for a KRW150 billion nextgeneration battery R&D pre-feasibility study as part of investments to secure cutting-edge technology.

Meanwhile, an existing cap on how much industrial firms can expand floorspace in Korea will be increased by 1.4x for battery

companies and others designated as being of strategic national importance and who invest in a new hightech industrial complex to be unveiled in the first half of this year.

In a related move, Korean battery giant LG Energy Solution plans to shore up its battery materials supply chain by producing lithium hydroxide in Morocco, in partnership with China’s Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group.

On March 24, the company announced it would invest KRW7.2 trillion to build two battery production facilities in Arizona.

One plant will produce cylindrical batteries for EVs while the other will manufacture LFP pouch-type batteries for energy storage systems.

Lee said “mother factories” would also be established in the country to nurture and expand competitiveness within the domestic battery industry.

He said three major battery makers were aiming to invest KRW1.6 trillion in developing batteries over the next five years and building an all-solid-state battery pilot line in Korea.

Lee said the government would “fully support domestic firms’ efforts to keep achieving the best outcomes in the global market”.

From 2024, under the IRA in the US, credits will not be available for consumers to buy a ‘clean energy vehicle if it contains any battery components manufactured by a ‘foreign entity of concern’ — one of which designated is China.

From 2025, credits will not be allowed for vehicles containing any critical minerals that were extracted, processed, or recycled by a foreign entity of concern.

According to the US Treasury, at least $45 billion in private-sector investment has been announced to support the EVs and battery supply chain across the country since the IRA was introduced.

Investment in battery tech has the potential to supercharge Turkey’s economy, the country’s president said at the launch of an EV battery manufacturing plant in the country on April 24.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Siro Battery Development and Produc-

tion Campus in Gemlik — which will have a 20GWh battery cells production when it starts commercial operation in 2026.

Siro, a joint venture between China-based Farasis Energy and Turkish electric car manufacturer Togg, said that the facility intended to manufacture lithium ion nickel manganese cobalt batteries,

modules, and packs.

Erdogan said: “Turkey’s progress on green technologies is important not only in terms of the environment, but also economically and strategically.

Investments in battery technologies especially “have the potential to change Turkey’s place in the world”.

Erdogan

welcomes launch of Turkey EV battery project

A leading industry commentator told Energy Storage Journal: “The gloves are really off now and Korea, just like the Europeans, is concerned about US incentives."

Report says funding for corporate ESS in first quarter hits $2.2bn

Corporate funding for energy storage companies amounted to $2.2 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to a report published on April 17.

Mercom Capital Group’s report said smart grid companies raised $1.1 billion over the same period.

The $2.2 billion of total corporate funding — including venture capital (VC) funding, debt financing, and public market financing — was achieved in 27 deals.

The total was down on the $4.3 billion in 31 deals Mercom reported in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Meanwhile, Mercom said funding decreased significantly year-on-year compared to $12.9 billion in 27 deals in Q1 2022.

LG Energy Solution’s $10.7 billion IPO contributed 83% of Q1 2022 funding and skewed funding totals, Mercom said.

Energy storage firms’ VC funding, including private equity and corporate venture capital, amounted to $1.1 billion in 19 deals in Q1 2023, an 8% decrease year-on-year compared to $1.2 billion in 22 deals in Q1 2022.

Quarter-over-quarter funding was 35% lower compared to $1.7 billion in 22 deals in Q4 2022.

According to Mercom, the top five VC-funded battery storage companies in Q1 2023 were Electriq Power ($300 million), Our Next Energy ($300 million), WeView ($87 million), NanoGraf ($65 mil-

lion) and Caban Systems ($51 million).

Announced debt and public market financing for EES tech in Q1 2023 fell 58% quarter-on-quarter with $1.1 billion in eight deals, compared to $2.6 billion in nine deals in Q4 2022.

However, announced ESS project funding came in at $2 billion in nine deals in Q1 2023, compared to $749 million raised in seven deals in Q4 2022.

Corporate funding in the smart grid sector amounted to $1.1 billion in 18 deals in Q1 2023, a 42% decrease compared to $1.9 billion in 23 deals in Q4 2022, according to Mercom.

In a year-on-year comparison, funding in Q1

2023 increased 230% compared to $331 million in 15 deals in Q1 2022.

There was a 66% decrease quarter-over-quarter for smart grid VC funding in Q1 2023, with $280 million raised in 14 deals compared to $846 million in 15 deals in Q4 2022.

In a year-on-year comparison, funding in Q1 2023 was 14% lower compared to Q1 2022, when $327 million was raised in 13 deals.

Mercom said the top five VC funded smart grid companies in Q1 2023 included EO Charging ($80 million), CHARGE+ZONE ($54 million), Magenta Mobility ($40 million), ConnectDER ($27 million), and Indra ($21 million).

ENTEK picks contractor for building new $1.5 billion Indiana plant

ENTEK Lithium Separators said on April 20 that Chicago-based Clayco will be its design-build contractor for a new facility in Indiana.

ENTEK announced in March that it was investing $1.5 billion in building the new Terre Haute lithium ion battery separator production facility in the state.

Clayco will design and build the production facilities in Terre Haute to house equipment for the production of lithium battery separators across an area of about 1.4 million ft2

ENTEK said Clayco brings significant experience in the EV segment from projects with companies such as SK On and Group14, which recently announced the world’s

biggest factory for production of advanced silicon battery materials that is being designed and built by Clayco in Washington state.

Clayco has also delivered manufacturing plants throughout the entire electric vehicle supply chain, including battery component and mineral plants for anode and cathode providers, lithium-ion battery cell production plants, and vehicle manufacturing and assembly plants.

The Indiana site will help ENTEK scale its US production to be capable of supporting 1.4 to 1.6 million EVs annually by 2027.

The company plans to break ground on the campus in 2023-2024 and launch operations be-

Clayco will design and build the production facilities in Terre Haute to house equipment for the production of lithium battery separators across an area of about 1.4 million ft2

tween 2025-2027.

ENTEK CEO Larry Keith said: “We’re embarking on a project that will have positive impacts on the local and larger economy, as well provide a key component required for the electrification of vehicles to further US cli-

mate goals — and a partner like Clayco brings the experience to make informed decisions to help us achieve our objectives.”

ENTEK is the only producer of wet-process lithium ion battery separator materials owned and based in the US.

EU urged to form battery raw materials club with US

Transport industry leaders have urged the EU to form a ‘raw materials club’ with the US to ensure a stable battery supply chain.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) issued the call on March 17, the day after the European Commission published a longawaited Critical Raw Materials Act and Net-Zero Industry Act.

The draft raw materials regulations include an updated version of the EU’s list of critical raw materials and defines, for the first time, a list of strategic raw materials vital to powering the bloc’s green tech agenda, including domestic battery manufacturing for EVs and energy storage systems.

ACEA broadly welcomed the proposals but questioned the “potential effectiveness and overall coherence” of the proposals with the EU’s green agenda.

The body said more work needed to be done on the concept of establishing a raw materials club in conjunction with the US.

Meanwhile Recharge, the European association for advanced rechargeable and lithium batteries, said on March 16 the Commission’s proposals could become a game-changer for competitiveness in the battery value chain.

However, Recharge general manager Claude Chanson said it was crucial for the Commission to deal with “incoherencies” between the new proposals and existing EU laws that continue to delay investments and impede the bloc’s Green Deal.

The Commission said on December 9 it had concluded talks with Chile to unlock investment potential

for supplies of lithium for Europe’s batteries manufacturing market.

Last March, EU leaders and battery industry chiefs agreed to expand funding to support gigafactory projects and speed-up permitting processes, amid fears that investors are being lured away from Europe by lucrative tax breaks and incentives in the US and Asia.

According to new analysis published on March 6, nearly 70% of Europe’s overall planned pipeline of lithium ion battery cells production capacity by 2030 is at risk of being delayed, scaled down or cancelled, according to stark new analysis published on March 6.

The study by clean transport campaign group Transport & Environment indicated around a fifth (285GWh) of Europe’s 1.8TWh expected EV battery factories potential is at ‘high risk’ and a further 52% (around 910GWh) at ‘medium risk’.

Overall, 68% of the potential battery cell supply in Europe is at risk if further action is not taken — and the EU will be unable to satisfy its battery demand without imports from foreign rivals, T&E said.

T&E’s senior director for vehicles and e-mobility Julia Poliscanova said: “EU battery manufacturing is caught in the crossfire between America and China. Europe must act or risk losing it all.

“A green industrial policy focused on batteries with EU-wide support for scaling up production is urgently needed to react to US subsidies and China’s years of dominance.”

The study increased pressure on EU leaders following crisis proposals unveiled in December 2022 to avert a potential investments meltdown for European gigafactory plans, amid fears cash is instead flowing into projects in the US and Asia.

T&E’s analysis was derived from publicly avail-

able information assessing 50 gigafactories planned for Europe by 2030 — based on the projects’ maturity, financing, permits, secured factory sites and project companies’ links to the US.

On top of China’s dominance in EV supply chains the US Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to pour at least $150 billion into battery components and metals manufactured in the US or ‘friendly countries’, is “changing the rules of the game fast”, the study said.

In terms of global investment into lithium ion batteries tracked by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Europe’s share dropped from 41% in 2021 to a meagre 2% in 2022, while investment in China and the US continued to grow, according to T&E.

Germany, Hungary, Spain, Italy and the UK stand to lose the most if batterymakers change their plans, according to the study.

AM Batteries is teaming up with Amperex Technology to develop solvent-free electrode manufacturing technology for lithium ion cell production, the firms announced on April 5.

The partnership will further develop AMB’s dry-electrode fabrication technology with the lithium battery manufacturing expertise of Amperex, from which Chinese battery giant CATL was spun off in 2012.

Amperex is now owned by Japan’s TDK Corporation.

The firms said they want

to tackle critical challenges facing the Li battery sector including its heavy carbon footprint, energy consumption and high infrastructure costs derived from existing solvent evaporation process used for electrode fabrication.

US-based AMB says it has developed an electrostatic spray-deposition technique to produce key battery electrode components sustainably.

Dry cathode and anode electrode materials are electrostatically charged and deposited on to metal-foil current collectors,

which are then processed to their final state without the use of toxic solvents, the company claims.

AMB’s CEO Yan Wang said: “One of the fundamental problems for battery manufacturers is refining manufacturing techniques to remove the solvents used in wet-coating of electrodes.

“Our dry-electrode manufacturing technology allows for the coating of lithium ion battery electrodes without the need for any solvents or energy-intensive evaporation.”

AM Batteries, Amperex partner to develop solvent free electrodes

Israel gives its go-ahead for first national ESS prototype park

Planning chiefs in Israel have approved a blueprint for an 800MW/3,200MWh energy storage park comprising a variety of ESS technologies, the government announced on May 2.

The energy and infrastructure ministry said the National Council for Planning and Construction had given the green light for the project in the north of Haaretz — the first time Israel had approved a detailed national outline plan dedicated to energy storage.

The plan, which was set for formal sign-off by the

government as Energy Storage Journal went to press in mid-May, provides for the construction of four ESS complexes, each with a capacity of around 200MW to be built in stages “according to the needs of the system and different storage technologies”.

The battery systems would collect and store renewable power produced by solar facilities in the region for transmission via the grid during hours of electricity peak demand.

Energy and infrastructure minister Israel Katz said

Rimac accelerates into battery storage market

Autos and battery tech group Rimac said on May 4 it was entering the ESS market with the launch of Rimac Energy.

The Croatia-based group, whose Rimac Automobili division develops and produces electric sports cars, drivetrains and battery systems, said it would reveal details about its ESS technology later this year.

Rimac Energy will feature utility-scale systems, commercial and industrial applications plus integrated battery buffered charging.

The group claimed its proprietary battery architecture will provide more efficient stationary ESS units with a system footprint reduction of 40% compared to current systems.

The Rimac Energy team has been built up over the past 18 months and is now 60 strong.

Rimac Energy’s director Wasim Sarwar said the group is already in talks with several customers, including for a pilot project

with a leading renewable energy company to provide battery storage for its solar and wind plants.

“These pilot systems are expected to be produced by the end of this year and commissioned in 2024.”

Rimac said high volume ESS production will begin in 2025 at the Rimac Campus in Croatia, scaling to more than 10GWh of annual production.

in a subsequent Tweet on May 4 the ESS plan “includes the ability to provide ‘kosher electricity’ to ultraOrthodox neighborhoods on Shabbat (the Jewish day of rest) instead of the current polluting generators, without raising the price of electricity for the general public”.

In a separate announcement, Katz said: “Saving energy in this way will allow us to increase the production of renewable energy, improve the reliability of the electricity supply and stabilize the functioning of the network — measures that will contribute directly to the growth of the economy.”

SKIET hails China separators breakthrough with Sunwoda

South Korea’s SK IE Technology said on May 1 it had agreed a deal to supply separators to Chinese EV battery maker Sunwoda.

SKIET said the companies had signed a memorandum of understanding for the lithium ion separators deal, marking the Korean firm’s first large-scale supply of EV battery separators to a Chinese EV battery manufacturer.

Financial details were not disclosed, but SKIET said the separators will be produced and supplied from its Changzhou factory in China. The agreement also strengthens the firms’ existing business relationship.

To date, SKIET has been supplying separators for IT and electronic products to the Sunwoda Group.

Sunwoda’s major customers include the Geely Auto Group, Dongfeng Cummins Engine, SAIC Motor, Volvo Cars, and Volkswagen.

SKIET, which has a European manufacturing operation in Poland, said it now expects to work with Sunwoda in other countries.

The Korean firm is also considering entering the North American market — where, like a new generation of hopefuls, it hopes to benefit from incentives provided under the US Inflation Reduction Act.

Gravitricity adding weight to tech with crowdfunding

Scotland-based gravity storage system company Gravitricity has secured nearly £829,000 ($1 million) from a crowdfunding raise.

A company spokesperson told Energy Storage Journal on May 3 that the start-up had exceeded its initial goal of £550,000, with 1,085 investors participating in the Crowdcube raise.

The cash boost will be invested in hiring and de-

veloping the firm’s technology, the spokesperson said.

A larger institutional round is set to follow in which Gravitricity is seeking up to £40 million.

Commercial director Robin Lane said: “The funds have come at the perfect time for Gravitricity as we progress our plans to develop energy storage projects on three fronts here in the UK and in mainland Europe.”

The company has devel-

oped a gravity-harnessing method of generating electricity by dropping weights in underground areas such as abandoned mines and is also working on belowsurface green hydrogen storage.

Last year, Gravitricity secured UK government backing towards a £1.5 million feasibility study to develop a multi-weight energy storage system to be built on a brownfield site in northern England.

EcoGraf signs milestone deal for Tanzania graphite mining operation

Australia-listed EcoGraf said on April 18 it had signed a milestone deal to move ahead with development of a natural graphite mining operation in Tanzania to supply its battery anode materials business.

EcoGraf signed a framework agreement with Tanzania’s government for the Epanko graphite project, which is also to support lithium-ion EV battery manufacturing operations in Asia, Europe and North America.

Epanko will be developed and operated by a newly

formed joint venture mining firm, Duma TanzGraphite, in which EcoGraf has an 84% stake to the Tanzanian government’s 16%.

EcoGraf said it will use its proprietary HFfree purification technology to process Epanko’s flake graphite without the use of hydrofluoric acid to produce high performance BAM.

EcoGraf said in March that initial operations at Epanko should produce 60,000 tonnes per annum of graphite flake product over a lifespan of more than 17 years.

LG Chem, Huayou to invest in Korea battery precursors plant

LG Chem and China’s Huayou Cobalt are to invest KRW1.2 trillion ($909 million) in a joint venture to build a battery precursor plant in South Korea.

LG Chem announced on April 17 that it expects to start construction of the facility in Saemangeum later this year.

The battery maker said the facility will also be able to produce metal sulfates, giving it a domestic metals refining capacity to ease raw material supply chain concerns.

The deal came just days after South Korea’s government announced a multibillion dollar package of support for its battery sector in the face of lucrative US incentives for the battery industry stateside (see our report on page xx).

LG Chem and Huayou have signed a memorandum of understanding for the joint venture with other investment partners including the Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency.

The facility will have an annual production capac-

ity of 50,000 tonnes by 2026, following the first phase of development.

Production capacity will later be doubled.

LG Chem said about 100,000 tonnes of precursors is enough to annually produce cathodes for more than one million EVs with 75kWh batteries providing a driving range of 500km.

In February 2022, EcoGraf received conditional approval for a loan from the Australian government for the equivalent of up to $40 million to support the expansion of the company’s BAM facility in Western Australia.

As Energy Storage Journal went to press there were rumours that EcoGraf was about to conclude a supply agreement with Korean conglomerate Posco to provide battery grade graphite for the coming 10 years.

CATL commits to 2025 carbon neutral battery production plan

Chinese lithium batteries major Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) has said it plans to achieve carbon neutrality across its battery plants by 2025.

Board secretary Jiang Li told the 20th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition on April 18 that carbon neutrality would apply across its battery value chain, including raw materials, by 2035.

Meanwhile, Li said CATL would use its position as a new board member of the Global Batteries Alliance to play an active role in formulating and improving the organization’s battery passport initiative — a pilot program to provide

a ‘digital twin’ of physical batteries to aid supply chain transparency through to eventual recycling.

Li also cited latest data by SNE Research, indicating CATL had sold 289GWh of lithium-ion batteries in 2022, giving it a 37% share of the global EV batteries market and a share of more than 43% of the global energy storage batteries market.

In September 2022, CATL said cobalt and lithium used in a battery cells supply deal with Germany’s BMW would be sourced from certified mines, in a move to head-off potential criticism over sustainability and human rights issues.

VARTA cutting jobs despite plans for ESS expansion

VARTA said on April 25 it would cut around 800 full-time jobs across the group, just days after pledging a significant expansion of ESS sales and production following a restructure of the business.

Around 390 of the job cuts will be in Germany over the next two years — 240 of those taking place this year. VARTA employs around 4,700 worldwide.

The company said the cuts were a result of its restructuring and in

response to massive price increases for materials amid global crises, including the RussiaUkraine war and impact of the pandemic.

VARTA board of directors speaker Markus Hackstein said: “We have to shape the specifications of the restructuring plan in such a way that we can secure the future of our company while retaining as many jobs as possible.”

On April 19, the company said it planned a significant expansion of production and sales

of energy storage systems after proposals to restructure its business were given the go-ahead by financing banks.

The restructuring programme includes making targeted investments in growth areas, which the battery maker said included focusing on strong demand for ESS systems from the renewable energy market.

In addition, the company said it wanted to expand its market share of large format lithium ion cells.

Invinity Energy to build 30MWh UK flow battery

Invinity Energy Systems is to develop a 30MWh vanadium redox flow battery in the UK, the company announced on April 12.

Invinity said it had been awarded £11 million ($14 million) from the UK government for the VRFB longer duration energy asset demonstrator project, which it claimed will be the largest grid-scale battery ever manufactured in the country.

The battery will provide a broad range of grid balancing services.

Invinity said the battery’s storage capacity will be equivalent to the daily energy use of more than 3,500 homes and it will have the ability to deliver full power for a discharge duration of over four hours.

The battery, to be built at Invinity’s factory in Scotland, should start commercial operation in early 2025 and will be around six times larger than the company’s BESS at the Energy Superhub Oxford in southern England.

Invinity said the battery would also be one of the

Avesta plans solid-state R&D center in Portugal

Belgium-based Avesta Battery & Energy Engineering is to develop an R&D center for solid state battery cells in Portugal, the company announced on March 29.

world’s biggest flow batteries — although it should be noted that the China Energy Storage Alliance reported in July 2022 that the 100MW first phase of a planned 200MW/800MWh vanadium redox flow battery energy storage system had been connected to the grid in Dalian, China.

Vingroup, Altinay in Turkey batteries plan

Vietnam’s Vingroup said on April 10 it was joining forces with Turkey’s Altinay Elektromobilite to produce advanced batteries as part of a full-service business for energy storage and mobility systems in the Turkish market.

Altinay general manager Mert Uygun said the partnership with Vingroup’s VinES Energy Solutions subsidiary aimed to attract investment from the domestic energy sector.

VinES will offer the technology, system design, production and verification of the ESS units, while Altinay will head up sales and marketing as well as after-sales services in the Turkish market, Uygun said.

Altinay will also draw on its own experience of designing and building lithium-based energy storage systems and battery packs over the past 12 years, Uygun said.

Last November, Vingroup auto subsidiary VinFast agreed to expand cooperation with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology to develop battery systems for the EVs market.

Meanwhile, VinES and Canada’s Li-Cycle are assessing proposals to build a lithium ion recycling plant in Vietnam, the companies revealed on April 12.

The plant could be built near battery manufacturing facilities operated by VinES, under an agreement where Li-Cycle would become VinES’ preferred recycling partner for its Vietnamesesourced battery materials from 2024.

The move came five months after the firms agreed to form an international battery recycling partnership.

Avesta has signed a memorandum of understanding with the municipality of Figueira da Foz to develop the 500MWh-1GWh capacity plant at a total cost of more than €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) on a 17,000m² site owned by the authority.

Avesta CEO Noshin Omar (pictured left) said the plant would be built in two phases and would eventually employ more than 2,000.

Figueira da Foz mayor Pedro Santana Lopes (pictured right) said the project was in line with aspirations to become a center of high-tech development in the region.

In January, Avesta unveiled plans to develop a combined battery packs and recycling complex in Seneffe-Manage, Belgium.

The ‘BE-VOLT’ plant should have an annual manufacturing capacity of 3GWh, which Avesta said would make it Belgium’s first gigafactory.

Tesla to invest and build Shanghai Megapack factory

Tesla is investing an undisclosed sum to manufacture its Megapack energy storage systems at a new plant in Shanghai, the firm said on April 9.

The factory will have an annual production capacity of 40GWh, producing some 10,000 Megapacks each year.

According to Chinese state media, Tesla will

break ground for the project in the Lin-gang pilot free trade zone area in the third quarter of this year and start production in the second quarter of 2024.

Zhuang Mudi, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai municipal government, said the project would help drive the development of the

energy storage industry as well as the low-carbon transformation of Shanghai.

In January 2019, Tesla broke ground on a car manufacturing plant in Shanghai, becoming the first company to benefit from a policy allowing foreign carmakers to establish wholly-owned subsidiaries in China.

Invinity’s 5MWh VFB at the Energy Superhub Oxford

US contest to find future battery industry leaders

A three-year engineering competition to find the next generation of battery industry specialists has been launched by the US Department of Energy and auto firm Stellantis.

Called the Battery Workforce Challenge the aim is to nurture the next generation of battery specialists.

The collegiate program, which includes vocational training and youth education in science, tech, engineering and maths, will be managed by the Argonne National Laboratory when it gets underway in the autumn of this year.

The program will feature

an advanced battery design and development student competition, with universities and vocational schools from across North America invited to design, build, test

and integrate an advanced EV battery into a future Stellantis vehicle.

Teams will follow realworld industry milestones focused on battery design,

simulation, controls development, testing, and vehicle integration and demonstration.

Argonne said participants will also learn project management, communications, teamwork and problemsolving skills that will provide “unparalleled educational experience and ready them for future careers throughout the battery industry”.

Mark Stewart, Stellantis North America COO said: “The Battery Workforce Challenge will help train the engineers of tomorrow and is a win-win for Stellantis and the entire battery industry as we address our nation’s toughest energy and mobility challenges by helping to build a highly skilled and productive future workforce.”

No recovery for sunken ‘EV battery fire’ ship

A vessel carrying 4,000 vehicles that sank in the Atlantic last year after a suspected EV battery fire will likely never be recovered and the cause of the disaster will remain a mystery, the ship’s owner told Energy Storage Journal on March 30.

EVs were among the vehicles on board the Felicity Ace car carrier, which caught fire in February 2022 southwest of the Azores while sailing from Germany to the US.

A spokesperson for MOL Shipmanagement Singapore, whose Car Carriers subsidiary owned the vessel, said the depth of the sea where the Felicity Ace sank while being towed in a failed rescue attempt is an estimated 3,000 metres, making a potential salvage operation “quite difficult”.

The spokesperson declined to comment when asked if MOL had received claims for compensation relating to the potential environmental hazard

and loss of the vehicles on board — worth an estimated $400 million-$500 million, according to the Safety & Shipping Review 2022 , published by corporate insurance carrier Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty.

AGCS said that after more than 70 reported fires on container ships alone in the past five years, a major rethink of vessel designs, fire detection and fire-fighting capabilities

may also be required.

The MOL spokesperson said the company continues to transport EVs, taking necessary safety measures, but declined to say whether vehicle cargo handling rules had been reviewed or changed in the wake of the Felicity Ace incident.

Energy Storage Journal , revealed in March 2022 that China had called on the International Maritime Organization to con-

sider a shake-up of maritime safety rules for EVs being shipped by sea, amid a rising tide of fires involving lithium ion batteries.

An IMO spokesperson said that proposals relating to fire protection and the tackling of fires involving transport of EV/ new energy vehicles are expected to be discussed by the organization’s subcommittee on ship systems and equipment during the next year.

SMC, Fluence launch 1,000MW BESS park in Philippines

SMC Global Power Holdings inaugurated a 1,000MW/1,000MWh fleet of battery energy storage systems in the Philippines on April 4 — 570MW of which was supplied by Fluence Energy.

Fluence said the BESS portfolio, which is spread across 32 sites, is the largest in southeast Asia and provides

advanced grid stability as increasing amounts of intermittent renewable energy sources are added to the grid.

SMC is one of the biggest power suppliers in the Philippines and US-based Fluence’s biggest customer.

Fluence said the BESS projects provide critical grid stability services throughout the National

Transmission Network in the Philippines including frequency response, reserve power, and voltage regulation.

“The deployment of these energy storage systems marks a significant milestone in the clean energy transition journey of the Philippines towards a cleaner, more resilient, and flexible grid,” Fluence said.

Freyr launches cell demonstration plant

Freyr Battery held an inaugural ceremony on March 29 for its battery cells customer qualification plant in the north of Norway.

The CQP in Mo i Rana hosts an industrial-scale demonstration battery cells production line based on 24M’s semi-solid lithium ion technology.

The ceremony came a day after Freyr announced plans to work with Glencore, Caterpillar, Siemens and the Nidec Corporation.

Freyr co-founder and CEO Tom Einar Jensen said potential areas of commercial collaboration for

the partners included battery cell manufacturing, recycling, mining and refining and stationary battery storage for the power market.

The launch of the CQP came as Freyr pushed ahead with construction of its ‘Giga Arctic’ battery production plant at the same location.

Freyr plans to develop up to 43GWh of battery cell production capacity by 2025, with an ambition of up to 83GWh in total capacity by 2028.

The company announced last June that it had signed a battery materials deal

for the CQP with Chinabased Changzhou Senior New Energy Materials and Senior Material (Europe), based in Sweden.

The firms have reserved unspecified supplies of separator material through 2028 and Freyr has an option to extend supplies until 2031.

Those deals followed the signing of nine other agreements with key battery material suppliers, for what Freyr said would be “more than 90%” of its raw material requirements for initial facilities, including the CQP.

VanadiumCorp selects Quebec as site for flow battery electrolyte test facility

VanadiumCorp Resource, the Canadian mining and technology company, has chosen Quebec to build an initial test facility for the production of vanadium electrolytes for VRFB batteries, the firm announced on March 29.

Production should start in the fourth quarter of this year and the test facility is sufficient to supply 6.2MWh of VRFB storage annually, the firm said.

VanadiumCorp is buying manufacturing equipment

for the facility at the Carrefour d’Innovation sur les matériaux de la MRC des Sources (CIMMS).

CIMMS provides technical support services to innovative mining, metals and eco-materials companies active in the area.

Contingent on sales, potential production at the CIMMS site can expand incrementally according to market needs using a modular production-line design — each module having a capacity of four mil-

lion litres annually, each providing about 80MWh of VRFB storage per year.

VanadiumCorp and CIMMS have signed a cooperation agreement to produce more than two million litres a year of highquality vanadium electrolyte.

Paul McGuigant, VanadiumCorp CEO, said the facility will help the firm plan production for the expanding global market for this key ingredient in longduration VRFB batteries.

Volt Resources launches battery anode plant study

Volt Resources said on March 27 it was launching a feasibility study into plans to establish a battery anode material (BAM) plant, potentially to serve the US markets.

The move came six months after the Australiabased company formed a new unit, Volt Energy Materials, to supply graphite products for lead acid and lithium battery markets in the US.

The BAM feasibility

study should be completed in September 2023 and will be used to support a funding proposal to the US government.

CEO Prashant Chintawar said that while mining and processing of raw materials was the foundation of the company, Volt anticipates boosting the business by supplying battery manufacturers. “Due to a strong market interest in local natural graphite anode, supply deficit, and

robust financial incentives from governments, we expect the feasibility study to deliver highly favourable project economics.”

In February 2022, Volt was selected as the coated spheronized purified graphite supplier for Energy Supply Developers — whose initial 50GWh lithium battery production facility is set to start operations at an undisclosed site in a Midwestern state in the US by 2025.

Freyr has also bought a site in the US state of Georgia to build its ‘Giga America’ battery cells manufacturing plant.

Macquarie, Shell back Australian Gridstack project

Macquarie Asset Management’s Green Investment Group and Shell Energy Operations are behind plans to develop a 200MW/400MWh Fluence Gridstack BESS in Australia, the firms announced on March 31.

The system (see image), to be completed late next year on the Rangebank Business Park in Melbourne, will have the storage capacity to power the equivalent of 80,000 homes across the state of Victoria for an hour during peak periods, the partners said.

The Rangebank BESS will help to stabilize the state’s electricity supply by providing additional storage capacity, which can be discharged at times of peak demand.

Shell Energy will have access to all of the system’s energy over a 20-year period. Fluence will build, service and maintain Rangebank.

Shell Energy Australia CEO Greg Joiner said the project is the group’s first grid-scale battery investment in Victoria and marks Shell’s first direct equity investment in a utility-scale BESS worldwide.

Investment details were not disclosed, but investment firm Perfection Private has a minority stake in the project.

Green Investment Group’s interest in the project will be transferred to its Eku Energy battery storage development business, which has a pipeline of projects around the world including the UK, Japan and Taiwan.

Lead battolyser project underway in Africa

Planning has started on deploying lead battery technology at the heart of two innovative pilot energy storage systems in off-grid communities in Zambia and Ivory Coast, the Consortium for Battery Innovation announced on March 20.

The CBI revealed in September 2022 that, together with a consortium of international partners, it had won a €10 million ($9.9 million) call for the project under the EU’s flagship research and innovation funding instrument, Horizon Europe.

Now the LoCEL-H2 project, (or Low-cost, Circular, plug & play, Off-grid Energy for remote Locations including Hydrogen), is moving ahead — combining the expertise of lead battery manufacturers, academia, national laboratories, component manufacturers, and companies who are focused on integration, microgrids and renewables.

At the core of each proj-

Kirchev: “CEA looks forward to coordinating this exciting and challenging four-year project which will bring sustainable energy and green hydrogen to challenged communities.”

ect will be lead battery electrolyser components — the battolyser — paired with renewables for electricity generation and a hydrogen solution for cooking without burning fossil fuels in isolated communities without access to a power grid.

By combining lead batteries with wind and solar power, this project could become a template for other energy-deprived areas around the globe.

CBI research and innova-

tion manager Carl Telford coordinated the bid alongside academic and industry partners the French atomic energy agency (CEA), Hoppecke, Hollingsworth & Vose, UNINA, Loughborough University, Sunkofa, University of Gabes, SAS Réseaux Hydrogène Décarboné RHYDE, and LUMS.

Meanwhile, the CBI and Loughborough University have drawn up proposals for two additional, separate projects in the East African nation of Malawi.

For Malawi, the partners plan to develop a novel hydrogen-production energy storage system that uses a battolyser.

Funding is being sought for the Modular Energy Storage with Clean Hydrogen (MESCH) project, a first unit of which would support operations at a hospital in Malawi.

MESCH will provide essential backup power and also turn excess solar power into hydrogen for cooking.

Leoch plans Mexico plant build

China-headquartered batteries giant Leoch is to build a manufacturing plant in Mexico to ramp up its market presence in the Americas.

Leoch chairman Dong Li said in a regulatory filing in Hong Kong on March 24 that it had chosen Mexico because of its unique geographical location and “export policy advantages” for the region — such as the USMCA free trade agreement (formerly NAFTA) between the US, Canada and Mexico.

The lead and lithium battery maker did not disclose details or say when it would start work on the project, but said the decision followed careful studies of the market over the past year.

To date, the group has

looked to its Spanish subsidiary Leoch Iberia — launched following its May 2021 purchase of Madridbased distribution business Meibat — to help expand sales into Latin America.

The Mexico announcement came as Leoch posted a profit for the year ended December 31, 2022 of Rmb464.4 million ($67 million) — an increase of nearly 180% over the previous year.

Overall revenue increased to Rmb12.8 billion from Rmb11.4 billion previously. The lion’s share of revenue (Rmb10.4 billion) came from sales of batteries and related items.

Combined battery sales in overseas markets were up over the previous year by nearly 26% and nearly 2%

in mainland China.

Revenue from sales of lithium batteries have also “started to kick in and could become a major growth driver in future”, Leoch said.

In terms of geographic distribution the Americas sales increased by the largest, totalling Rmb2.2 billion (previously Rmb1.5 billion) — underlining why the group sees a need for a Mexico plant in addition to its facilities in the US.

Meanwhile, the group’s recycled lead business increased 17.5% from 2021 to Rmb2.4 billion.

On February 16, Leoch announced it had become the 122nd member of the Consortium for Battery Innovation and the fourth Chinese organization to join.

The second funding bid proposed is for the ‘AfTrac’ project — that aims to develop ‘micro tractor technology’ powered by lead batteries in support of African agriculture.

This project is being led by Loughborough University, with the CBI and another UK organization as partners.

Japan’s government is backing plans by lead battery major GS Yuasa and Honda Motor to invest ¥444 billion ($3.3 billion) in a lithium ion battery manufacturing plant for EVs and residential energy storage systems, the firms confirmed on April 28.

In addition, the government has pledged to contribute a maximum of ¥160 billion for the project by Blue Energy — the joint venture company formed by the partners in 2009, in which Yuasa has a majority 51% stake.

Yuasa and Honda said in January that they wanted to collaborate on developing a highcapacity, high-output lithium-ion battery.

Now the partners expect their Japan commercial battery production line to start up in April 2027 and achieve the targeted 20GWh annual capacity in October of that year.

Yuasa president and CEO Osamu Murao said the company will “make full use of all the government support we receive and strengthen the domestic (battery) manufacturing base for in-vehicle and stationary use with Honda”.

Japan backs

Yuasa, Honda gigafactory plans

Investments battle triggers green tech arms race

Battery storage projects around the globe are in line to benefit from an investments bonanza as economies power up to regain and expand business lost in the pandemic — but with climate-friendly industrial policies as the new touchstone.

Analysis for this Energy Storage Journal cover story shows widespread recognition by the world’s leading financial institutions that they need to turn on the financial taps to back innovations in battery storage, e-mobility, renewables and clean energy systems to feed an increasingly powerhungry planet.

The European Investment Bank alone revealed earlier this year that it had signed a record €17 billion ($18.5 billion) in new financing for energy storage, renewables, efficiency and grids in 2022, spurred by the European Union’s green energy agenda

and security of supply concerns amid Russia’s war with Ukraine.

That sum will be dwarfed by the near $400 billion package of investments that the US is rolling out to tackle the climate crisis.

However, the bonanza of investment support now being offered by governments and financial institutions to stimulate private investments in battery storage and beyond has also triggered a green arms race.

Texas-based hedge-fund manager Eagle Global Advisors defines the green arms race as the idea that in

As countries jostle to out-incentivize each other in a winner-takes-all strategy to succeed in the energy transition, there are warnings not to leave poorer nations behind.

“Throwing more money and technology at complex system change is not enough to ensure faster or fairer energy transitions”

— Angela Wilkinson. World Energy Council

order to encourage energy transition, countries have to out-incentivize others — be they friends or foes.

The introduction of the US Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022 was the tipping point, when allies, let alone enemies, braced themselves for the economic shockwave of Uncle Sam’s sheer financial firepower.

US allies voiced concerns over the potential of the measures to suck private investment away from them.

There has since been a redoubling of efforts by countries in the European Union, Canada and South Korea to name but a few to draw up similar incentives to protect battery manufacturing, raw material supply chains and related sectors.

According to World Energy Pulse — an annual survey by the World Energy Council of more than 700 energy leaders and decision makers from 77 countries — 48% of respondents said the focus on decarbonization was redirecting $1 trillion of investments a year to adding renewable power capacity and low carbon liquid fuels.

And 46% of respondents cited national self-interests and the risk of the green arms race as the “greatest obstacles to progressing orderly, clean and just energy transitions”.

The survey revealed that national interests continue to dominate, with 59% of respondents agreeing that energy independence was critical to securing their countries’ climate-energysecurity agendas.

However, this me-first sentiment was challenged with the overwhelming (84%) acceptance that “energy interdependence is the new global reality”.

Council secretary general and CEO Angela Wilkinson said: “Throwing more money and technology at complex system change is not enough to ensure faster or fairer energy transitions.”

Wilkinson called for a “humbler leadership approach”.

The International Renewable Energy Agency has also called for lessdeveloped regions not to be left out.

But even the highly-developed market economy that is Australia, the so-called lucky country, fears being locked out of the race to become a global clean energy superpower because of dramatic increases in ambition and levels of policy support among other major economies.

Clean Energy Council CEO Kane Thornton told an industry roundtable on March 1 that while the country had vast untapped potential

$5 TRILLION A YEAR NEEDED

According to a report published by the the International Renewable Energy Agency in May, to meet the climate goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the renewable energy share in the primary energy mix should rise to about three-quarters — which would require annual investments averaging over $5 trillion until 2030.

However, the agency said access to funding in many emerging and low-income economies is

insufficient, and often too costly, to accelerate the energy transition at the necessary rate.

It’s worth putting this $5 trillion number into context as human beings aren’t good at visualising huge numbers. Imagine how long a million seconds would last. The short answer is 11-1/2 days.

And now a billion seconds?

Roughly 31.7 years.

And now putting the number of a trillion seconds into context? It’s 32,000 years — less a few hundred years.

in renewables and storage, Australia was now facing a “global clean energy arms race that requires new levels of leadership and policy support to ensure we unlock Australia’s full potential”.

Thornton called for long-term policies to incentivize private capital to invest in Australia. “The production of green hydrogen and the rollout of renewable energy in the US is now backed by enormous new incentives,” he said.

“Australia has a small window of time to stake our claim in the emerging green industries of the future, which can ultimately overtake our declining fossil fuel industries and revitalise and expand our local manufacturing base.”

Thornton said there was no doubt that decision makers in Australia had the necessary ambition, but said that needed to be matched with “a cohesive strategy and policy framework that will stimulate the new wave of investment in clean energy and green manufacturing”.

Thornton said the unprecedented investment in clean energy by the US, Canada, and, most recently, Europe was acting as a “giant magnet for clean energy investment, making it harder for Australia to attract green capital, equipment and skilled workers”.

A key pillar of any strategy should be an extension of the national Renewable Energy Target to accelerate investment.

The RET, which is set to expire in 2030, is an Australian government scheme designed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the electricity sector and encourage the additional generation of electricity from sustainable and renewable sources.

RET works by allowing both largescale power stations and the owners of small-scale systems to create largescale generation certificates and smallscale technology certificates for every MWh of power they generate.

Certificates are then purchased by electricity retailers (who supply electricity to householders and businesses) and submitted to the Clean Energy Regulator to meet the retailers’ legal obligations under the RET.

This creates a market which provides financial incentives to both large-scale renewable energy power stations and the owners of small-scale renewable energy systems.

Thornton said extending the RET “would be a relatively simple and efficient approach for encouraging investors to accelerate clean energy deployment in Australia”.

An extension to the RET would ensure the government delivers on the ambition of 82% renewable energy by 2030 and rebuild Australia’s clean energy competitiveness.

“This would also deliver lower power prices by increasing the supply of low-cost power and further reducing our reliance on increasingly expensive gas and unreliable coal generation,” Thornton said.

Another mathematician puts it like this: “1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years“.

What’s a trillion or two between friends?

A landmark initiative that could create up to $15 billion in loans for battery storage and climate projects across Asia and the Pacific has been rolled out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The bank says IF-CAP — Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and the Pacific — announced on May 2, could ramp up support for the region in the battle against climate change.

IF-CAP financing will also contribute to ADB’s ambition of securing $100 billion from its own resources for climate change-related projects for 2019–2030.

A spokesperson for the bank told Energy Storage Journal that financing battery storage was totally in line with existing policies and IF-CAP.

Moreover, IF-CAP is definitely not going to favour one battery chemistry over another, the spokesperson said. (So the approach is unlike, for example, the EU’s propensity to cherry pick lithium over lead.)

The bank is expecting to see increased investments in battery storage by its developing member countries over the next few years, thanks to the “rapid growth in deployment of intermittent renewable energy in their power systems”.

Investment in renewables makes little sense without investment in storage.

Asian battery makers, South Korea in particular, are keen to bolster business in North America, so the ADB is keen to keep out of geopolitical concerns triggered by the tax and other incentives being offered by the US under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.

So the bank’s spokesperson declined to say whether ADB’s unveiling of a new financial support instrument had anything to do with fears that the pulling power of US investment prospects would lure business away.

But the US is itself one of the initial partners for IF-CAP, the others being Denmark, Japan, South Korea and

the UK — all are now in talks about providing a range of grants for project preparation along with guarantees for parts of ADB’s sovereign loan portfolios.

IF-CAP was unveiled on the opening day of ADB’s annual meeting in South Korea, where bank president Masatsugu Asakawa said the region was on the frontline of the global fight to tackle climate change.

The bank said reduced risk exposure created by the scheme will allow it to free up capital to accelerate new loans for climate projects.

With a model of ‘$1-in, $5-out’, the initial ambition of $3 billion in guarantees could create up to $15 billion in new loans for much-needed climate projects across Asia and the Pacific — which the bank claims to be the first leveraged guarantee mechanism for climate finance ever adopted by a multilateral development bank.

Empowering investments

Battery storage is clearly seen as an invaluable and bankable weapon in the armoury to combat climate change by global financial institutions.

In November, the United Arab Emirates will host the 28th outing of the UN’s Climate Change Conference — where International Monetary Fund president Kristalina Georgieva has said development banks and others will need to agree a step change in their approach to redirect trillions of dollars towards meeting the climate challenge.

Georgieva, a former World Bank CEO, said: “Stronger cooperation and partnerships across the public and private sector are vital, there is no time to waste.”

She joined COP28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber and the UN’s special envoy for climate action and finance, Mark Carney, at an IMF meeting in Washington on April 11 to call for greater concessional financing to give private investors the confidence they need to fund an expansion of clean energy systems to include energy storage systems.

Al Jaber, who is also the UAE’s industry and advanced technology minister, said: “Only 20% of clean tech investment is going to developing countries that make up over 70% of

Development banks will be critical to sustaining the momentum of public and private finance needed to power the global clean energy transition, but the multi-trillion-dollar scale of the challenge is not for the faint-hearted.

Initial ambition of $3 billion in guarantees could create up to $15 billion in new loans for much-needed climate projects across Asia and the Pacific

the global population, and the least developed countries receive less than two cents on every dollar spent.”

He said the UAE wanted to “reignite the relationship between public and private finance to meet development and climate goals”.

However, the scale of the task is staggering, particularly when seen against the backdrop of ongoing economic sluggishness in the wake of the pandemic and a war in Europe.

Greenbacks for green energy

According to a report released in February by the High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, whose co-chairs include the IMF and World Bank, even conservative estimates suggest emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), other than China, have aggregate investment and development spending needs in the order of at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2025 and $3.5 trillion per year by 2030.

The group, which has met 10 times since it was formed 18 months ago to

consider the twin impacts of the pandemic and climate change, said the figures “far exceed existing financing and call for urgent action”.

To support the integration of renewable energy into EMDEs countries’ energy mixes and provide reliable energy supply, electricity networks will need to double in length, and annual deployment of energy storage will need to increase 100 times.

According to the report, if facilitated, investing in the energy transformation at the scale and pace needed for inclusive and sustainable development and climate change mitigation and adaptation goals would represent the biggest investment opportunity ever for the world economy and especially for EMDEs.

Green recovery measures in 21 major EMDEs between 2020 and 2030 could generate $10 trillion in investment opportunities and more than 200 million jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion tonnes.

The private sector can undertake the bulk of the additional investment

required for energy transition, but the report says this must be complemented by concessional financing as well as up-front public investments in grid development and energy storage and backup capacity.

However, the report warned that private financial flows to low-income countries “pale in comparison” to both their needs for financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation and the trillions of dollars in resources the private sector manages.

The report said total private financial flows (including both those for climate-related and those for non-climate-related activities) have averaged only $12 billion per year for low-income countries and $800 billion for middle-income countries over the past five years.

The report warned: “The current decade will be decisive. The diminishing window of opportunity to act requires that all countries make a concerted push to accelerate a just energy transition and that the international community make a concerted effort to provide the necessary support.” 27-29

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Special purpose acquisition companies have proved popular in the US and could become more common in Europe’s capital markets — providing a potential financial boost for the energy storage sector. Jack Mason-Jebb, corporate solicitor, and Brad Isaac, corporate partner at European law firm Fieldfisher, assess the options.

Blank-cheque deals fuel SPAC boom investments

SPACs shot to prominence in 2020 due to their popularity in the US tech sector.

They have also been enthusiastically embraced (albeit to a far more modest extent) by the energy industry, specifically for renewable power, clean-tech, hydrogen, energy storage, EV charging and battery technologies — and in more limited cases for conventional power and oil and gas businesses.

Although there is nothing particular about SPACs that lend them to energy company floats, they have been one of many channels through which capital has flowed to the clean energy sector at a time when investors are motivated by commercial opportunities to tackle climate change through energy transition solutions.

In the energy sector, regardless of regulatory hurdles, in the right

WHAT ARE SPACS?

SPACs, in their current form, have been around since at least the early 1990s.

Often referred to as ‘blank-cheque’ companies, they are empty cash shells with no business operation, created with the sole purpose of holding investors’ cash and listing on a stock exchange, with the objective of acquiring a company or asset.

SPACs are formed by a sponsor, or group of sponsors, consisting of a management team who will seek a private business to purchase.

Private companies that are acquired by/merged with SPACs become publicly-listed and the SPAC relinquishes its acquisition vehicle status (known as ‘de-SPACing’).

If the acquired company trades well and its share price increases, investors receive a return on their investment.

Although SPACs do not usually have a specific target in mind at the time of listing, the sponsors typically have industry-specific knowledge and will target businesses in these industries.

As part of the acquisition, the SPAC’s sponsors will often join the acquired business’s management, and may serve on the board of the public company.

Once listed, SPACs typically have two years in which to acquire a private business, or they must return the money to their investors.

SPACS: THE EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

Europe’s capital markets have been largely sceptical of these vehicles and to date European regulators have resisted emulating the enthusiasm in the US for SPACs — although there are signs that this is beginning to change.

FRANCE

As of April 2021, France’s Euronext Exchange had only seen two SPAC listings.

However, the Autorité des marchés financiers, the French financial markets authority, issued a statement that April clarifying that the professional segment of Paris’s regulated market was “a suitable listing place for SPACs, which, in their initial phase, mainly target such qualified investors”.

The AMF also noted that it had seen a significant increase in the number of SPACs preparing their listings on the Paris stock exchange since the start of 2021 and said the French legal framework and regulatory requirements were equipped to welcome a SPAC listing in Paris, while providing appropriate investor protection.

ITALY

Regulators have also indicated their interest in seeing more domestic SPAC listings, although the effectiveness of such financial vehicles is undermined by the difficulties in finding appropriate targets and Italy’s complicated process for approving business combinations.

GERMANY

The Frankfurt Stock Exchange has seen a modest number of SPAC listings over the past decade and is now facing calls to encourage more to join its markets, encouraged by comparisons between the Frankfurt Exchange’s SPAC structure and the structure used for such companies on the New York Stock Exchange.

THE NETHERLANDS

The Netherlands is most hotly tipped to emerge as the European capital for SPAC listings.

Like Frankfurt, Amsterdam’s stock market (the Euronext Amsterdam) bears comparison with the NYSE in its treatment of SPACs.

Unlike most other European jurisdictions, Dutch law does not have rules that apply only to SPACs, and allows further flexibility to entities formed as a BV — a private limited company.

Investors in Amsterdam-listed SPACs can exercise redemption rights at ease, and also remove their money in the SPAC if they do not like the proposed target chosen for the merger.

Euronext Amsterdam also has earned a reputation as a European home for many international and technology-focused companies and may be a more natural venue than London for renewable energy and clean-tech related growth companies.

circumstances SPACs can offer a useful way for small and growing energy companies to achieve a public listing as an alternative to an IPO.

Energy companies with a technology aspect to their business or a focus on renewable energy may be best placed to take advantage on the SPAC boom.

Why have SPACs become so popular? The answer — low interest rates and cheap debt.

At times of low interest rates, investors often look to equities for returns. Low interest rates also make it cheaper to raise debt for M&A deals.

When fiscal stimulus measures from central banks flood markets with cash, this encourages private companies to make a dash for public markets to take advantage of the available capital.

SPACs can offer a quicker, cheaper route to the public markets than a traditional IPO. Consequently, they appeal to early-stage businesses with growth potential in need of fresh liquidity.

The start-up culture that emerged from the 2008-2009 financial crisis created a huge choice of potential targets for acquirers.

The management teams of many of such businesses, having built them up over the past decade, are now looking for exit strategies.

In the UK, which had not previously had a listing regime designed to cater for SPACs, the Financial Conduct Authority implemented changes in August 2021 to permit listing.

A minimum of £100 million ($125 million) must be raised when a SPAC’s shares are initially listed.

The FCA’s initial consultation had proposed a minimum threshold of £200 million, but most respondents felt this figure was too high and that £100 million better reflected the size of SPACs likely to be seen in the UK and European markets.

SPACs are also required to disclose a description of the target business, links to all relevant public information on the target company, material terms of the proposed transaction and an indication of how the SPAC has, or will, assess and value the identified target.

One of the principal benefits of SPACs is that they do not have to comply with the tougher listing rules that apply to traditional IPOs.

Floating a company on a major stock exchange is typically a lengthy process that requires a business, with the help of financial and legal advisers, to draw up a detailed prospectus or admission document designed to give potential investors as much information as possible about its operations.

For energy companies, especially those with novel technologies or complicated business models, this can be a long and complicated part of the listing procedure.

While this rigorous practice is designed to prevent companies from providing incomplete or misleading information that could harm the interests

SPACs can offer a quicker, cheaper route to the public markets than a traditional IPO

of investors, management teams may regard IPO requirements as overly onerous and expensive when weighed against the benefits of a listing.

More financially attractive to founders

Another draw of SPACs versus traditional IPOs is that company founders get to keep or redeploy a greater share of the IPO rewards, rather than paying significant shares of the listing proceeds to banks.

Investment banks can expect to receive between 5% and 10% of IPO proceeds through underwriting fees alone, and legal and accounting costs incurred through due diligence further eat into companies’ finances.

By opting for a less expensive route to market via a SPAC, companies can choose to channel the money they save into, for example, marketing or research and development for future growth.

For smaller companies seeking to access the public equity markets, where underwriting the fundraising is much less common, listing via a SPAC de-risks the potential for the fundraising to fail.

The company and the SPAC can also agree a valuation for the business upfront, rather than have it determined — effectively priced — through the IPO marketing process.

A SPAC listing, particularly merging with an entity with the proceeds of a previous funding round, is therefore an attractive prospect to early stage, pre-revenue companies.

Reversing into a cash shell or investing company is already a popular way for exploration and appraisal companies in the natural resources sector to come to market.

Less scrutiny from the media

IPOs often receive close media scrutiny, from the publication of the intention to float right through to first day of dealings.

Media coverage can be desirable and useful, but it can also be negative and unhelpful, particularly if the company looking to float is a complicated energy business whose proposition or target market is difficult to sell to the press.

By contrast, SPACs can make acquisitions and bring companies to market relatively quickly and quietly.

Among the main concerns about SPACs is that they can be riskier for investors.

Unlike IPOs, where a company’s

SPACs do not usually have a specific target in mind at the time of listing, the sponsors typically have industry-specific knowledge and will target businesses in these industries

business proposition and valuation are scrutinized through investor presentations and verification of the admission document by legal and financial advisers before it floats, such detailed examination is largely absent in SPAC mergers.

Protection of retail investors is a key concern for institutional investors and financial market regulators, and SPACs are considered particularly risky because investors usually decide to invest in the SPAC based on little more than the sponsors’ reputation and a hope that they will choose a successful target.

But concerns have been raised over the transparency around sponsor compensation and incentives for insiders and the sustainability of valuations given to pre-revenue companies during acquisition frenzies.

In September 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission indicated that it planned to enhance disclosure and transparency require-

ments for SPACs, following regulatory concerns over recent fundraisings.

The SEC has issued various further statements covering a range of SPACrelated issues, including commentary on celebrity endorsements, what it considers to be misunderstandings about liability risks involved in deSPAC transactions and possible accounting and financial reporting changes for SPACs.

Isaac told Energy Storage Journal in May SPACs had become popular as a result of low interest rates and fiscal stimulus measures, although there had been a slowdown of SPAC listings from 2022 to the present.

“Clearly this has changed in the last year with central banks increasing interest rates to counter high inflation.

“What we are seeing now are a lot of the SPACs which listed in the boom in 2020 and 2021 under pressure to complete an acquisition in order to de-SPAC before investors seek a return of their initial investments.”

US cleaning up in capital boost for energy tech

As of March 31, more than $150 billion in capital investment has been announced for utility-scale clean energy projects and manufacturing facilities in the US, since incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act were signed into law last August, analysis by the American Clean Power Association shows.

This is equivalent to five years of American clean energy investment, surpassing total investment into US clean power projects commissioned between 2017-2021.

American Clean Power’s Clean Energy Investing in America report details several other landmark achievements for the industry, including announcements of 47 new or expanded utility-scale clean energy manufacturing facilities.

ACP said clean energy had clearly

started to “transform the make-up of American manufacturing and investment”.

Since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, the ACP said signs of rapid growth for maturing American clean energy industries are emerging.

“Plans for an unprecedented amount of new solar, battery, and offshore wind plants are being drawn and developed,” the report said.

“The new incentives offer companies a significant opportunity to invest in new utility-scale wind, solar, and

storage projects and manufacturing facilities, while passing on savings to American consumers.”

However, the ACP urged the Biden administration and Congress to continue improving trade policies, support next-generation technologies, finalize effective tax implementation and work to enact “commonsense permitting reform”.

Ahmed Maqsood, a banker on the energy team at Société Générale in New York, says: “Battery storage is often an overlooked but nonetheless

A surge in batteries and related project investments is underway across the US, but battery storage projects worldwide are increasingly attracting the finances needed to power the clean energy transition.

“Simply put, as states across the US continue to push forward with their renewable portfolio standards, the demand for BESS will accelerate exponentially to provide replacement capacity value and grid stability”

critical component of the energy transition. “Simply put, as states across the US continue to push forward with their renewable portfolio standards, the demand for BESS will accelerate exponentially to provide replacement capacity value and grid stability.”

Société Générale acted as a coordinating lead arranger and green loan structuring bank for the $98.9 million financing to support the construction and operations of a BESS portfolio in Southern California.

Hecate Grid, a joint venture between Hecate Energy and InfraRed Capital Partners, is in the process of completing the construction of the four standalone BESS units battery energy storage assets in Southern California.

The projects comprise a total portfolio of 290MWh which, as of April 4, one was operational and three were under construction.

UK-based retail and commercial bank NatWest says that the UK and Europe are in the midst of an energy transition journey. NatWest says battery storage is a growing, fastevolving market as BESS assets are expected to be critical to meet the energy transition and the bank has committed to provide an additional £100 billion ($126 billion) of climate and sustainable funding and financing between 1 July 2021 and the end of 2025.

This includes financing to the BESS sector where NatWest has arranged, structured and advised multiple first of their kind financings across the full spectrum of tenors, revenue models and buildout strategies to support the rollout of BESS assets.

Looking to the future Jacob Lloyd, head of NatWest’s specialist asset finance, is optimistic about the growth of the BESS market and lenders’ potential to contribute to progress towards net zero through deploying more capital.

“The opportunities are fast flowing across all of Europe. And they don’t seem to be slowing down.”

Developing economies

As of February 2023, the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) has helped to attract public and private financing to the total of $725 million in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Maldives, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Ukraine, and Western Africa.

ESMAP has to date supported 14 World Bank lending projects including six mini-grid projects to boost

CHINA’S AMBITIOUS TARGETS

Manuela Ferror, the World Bank’s regional VP for East Asia and Pacific, has said China now requires less energy, less minerals, and less water than it did just 10 years ago to power growth.

But to achieve the ambitious goals that China has set for itself to become carbon neutral by 2060, China needs to do more and to start sooner.

Ferror told the World Bank Economic Summit of China Development Forum 2023 in April that battery storage is part of the solution to China “catalyzing climate action to unlock new sources of growth, new sources of job creation and new sources of innovation”.

Many low-carbon technologies, including wind and battery storage, exhibit increasing returns to scale in innovation, in manufacturing, and in operation, Ferror said.

“This offers China a comparative advantage relative to other smaller countries. The progressive deployment of low-carbon technologies in China can push down prices overall, reducing

abatement costs. And that is achievable because of its scale.”

According to the World Bank, China accounted for 24% of global energy R&D spending in 2019.

Meanwhile, Ferror said start-ups in the country have attracted more than a third of global early-stage energy venture capital over the past five years alone.

Growth in climate change-related patents has also accelerated in China, especially in low-carbon information and communications technology, in buildings, and solar power.

However, Ferror said low-carbon patenting accounts for only 5% of all patenting inventions, “leaving room for China to catch up to advanced countries where that share is higher”.

From a historical perspective, China’s innovation policy has been particularly successful in driving competition that reduces the manufacturing costs of existing technologies, for example, wind and solar energy and energy storage, Ferror said.

“The progressive deployment of low-carbon technologies in China can push down prices overall, reducing abatement costs. And that is achievable because of its scale.”

the take-up of renewable energy and increasing battery storage capacity by 2,527MWh.

The initiative also supports capacity building and training to clients involved in ESS project and mentors women in the energy storage industry.

ESMAP’s Energy Storage Program — an international partnership between the World Bank and 43 other entities — has also developed an energy storage sizing app.

This can be used by countries to

get a preliminary assessment of energy storage sizing requirements and to project the cost of hybrid solar PV and ESS, using storage for smoothing and shifting applications.

The program’s international partners include government departments, academia and multilateral banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Islamic Development Bank and bodies such as the European Association for Storage of Energy, the Korean Battery Industry

Association and the China Energy Storage Alliance.

The World Bank-administered ESMAP trust fund provided $7.4 million in funding for the Energy Storage Program in fiscal 2021-2022 and the program’s concessional financing has helped to unlock a further $276 million through the multilateral Climate Investment Fund and the Green Climate Fund — which is party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

government in 2021 has already led to a series of reforms around mining that have begun to yield some successes in attracting inward investment and expanding production, the bank says.

In Africa, the World Bank says that at a time of energy transition and rising demand for metals and minerals, resource-rich governments have an opportunity to better use natural resources to finance public programs, diversify economies and expand access to energy.

According to the latest Africa’s Pulse, the bank’s April 2023 economic update for Sub-Saharan Africa, countries could potentially more than double the average revenues that they currently collect from natural resources.

While the global low-carbon transition will eventually lead to significant declines in demand for Africa’s oil, gas, and coal resources there may be a marked increase in the demand for the minerals required for the clean energy transition — such as lithium, cobalt, copper, platinum, and manganese, many of which are abundant across

Africa and used for batteries, EVs and other technologies.

The bank says tapping these fiscal resources in the form of royalties and taxes, while continuing to attract private sector investment, requires the right kinds of policies, reforms, and good governance.

According to data compiled last year by the International Energy Agency, Zimbabwe now has one of the 10 largest reserves of lithium in the world, while other countries, such as Namibia, have started building lithium mines.

South Africa is the world’s largest producer of manganese and the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to nearly 70% of the global supply of the cobalt used in lithium ion batteries.

Madagascar, Mozambique and Tanzania are among the 10 countries with the largest graphite deposits.

Zambia’s election of a new

Zambian government revenues from mining are also on the rise. The country also made a marked shift toward regional cooperation when it signed a memorandum of understanding agreement with the DRC and the US to develop resources found in both nations to manufacture batteries. The bank says countries in the region, most of which face infrastructure and capital constraints, should now be looking to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to collectively build regional clean energy value chains.

AfCFTA is a key avenue for building clean energy value chains regionally, the bank says. It brings together 54 African countries with a total population of more than one billion people and (based on 2020 bank data) a combined GDP of more than $3.4 trillion.

“AfCFTA offers an unprecedented opportunity to develop the mineto-market value chain within the continent.”

World Bank senior economist James Cust said: “Rapid global decarbonization will bring significant economic opportunities to Africa. Metals and minerals will be needed in larger quantities for low-carbon technologies like batteries and with the right policies could boost fiscal revenues, increase opportunities for regional value chains that create jobs, and accelerate economic transformation.”

AFRICA: OPENING UP THE CONTINENT

Super-charged growth in battery demand in conference spotlight

Pillot says highlights of this year’s conference will be the focus on the growth of demand for batteries in Europe and worldwide — and the need for security of materials supply.

“Most of the companies involved in the construction of gigafactories will be represented,” he says.

These and keynote speakers will include the CEO of Automated Cells Company Yann Vincent, Verkor CEO Benoit Lemaignan, the VP of operational excellence at Northvolt Luc Hovan and Envision’s Europe MD Maher Chebo.

Also attending will be Gery Bonduelle, EVP of sales and marketing for Freyr Battery, CATL’s general manager for France Jean-Baptiste Zalmanski, Jeff Dahn — whose research group at Dalhousie University focuses on lithium ion battery research and works exclusively with Tesla — and Jean Marie Tarascon, who is chair of solid-state chemistry and energy at the Collège de France.

The main topic of discussion will as usual center around lithium ion batteries for automotive applications but, as always at the Batteries Event, Pillot said other technologies and applications will be included.

This year’s conference will feature a dedicated session on lead acid, zinc, sulfur and solid-state batteries and topics will be as varied as energy storage systems, aviation, e-buses and space applications.

Avicenne’s analytics continue to look at the role of lead in the automo-

tive and energy storage markets.

“Lead acid batteries of course can have advantages over lithium ion in different applications and can cost less. Their record on safety and 99% recycling ability are also factors.

“Lead batteries will still be there in the 2030s.”

However, Pillot says it is important that Avicenne also charts the switch from lead acid to lithium ion batteries in applications that were historically lead, including forklifts, e-bikes in China, UPS systems and in telecoms.

For Pillot, the stand-out development involving other chemistries in recent years is, “without surprise”, increasing R&D into solid-state batteries.

“But there is also strong interest in Na ion, high-manganese cathodes (outside China) and lithium manganese iron phosphate in China.”

Concern in the European market over lucrative incentives being offered to battery manufacturers in the US and Asia is also expected to be a topic of discussion as delegates network and chat on the sidelines of the event.

For Pillot, there are three key geopolitical approaches impacting batteries that are influencing markets.

China’s leaders can introduce new rules and incentives relatively quickly — although they can change them again quickly too.

While in Europe it takes quite some time for the European Commission to introduce legislation, but when the rules are in place they are there for a long while, providing stability, he says.

In the US too, rules can change quickly (as seen by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act) — “but what will happen to that if there is a change of administration at the next general election?

“However, for the moment it is clear that it is more attractive to invest in the US than in Europe.”

Sustaining the battery materials supply chain, against a background of increasing competition among nations for resources will also be in the conference spotlight.

“Of course we all need to keep an eye on the battery value chain,” Pillot says.

“Raw materials account for 70% of battery costs, so we have to. And as we saw for the first time in 2022, the price of lithium ion batteries increased because of a rise in metal costs.”

That in turn further increases the importance of recycling on a longterm basis, which Pillot says will also come under scrutiny.

“In our forecast, we see a plateau for the lithium ion battery market in 2040-2045 depending on the countries involved. That means that if we recycle let’s say 90% of the battery, recycling could cover the lion’s share of material needs.”

The variety of issues covered in depth has been key to the Batteries Event’s longevity and its ability to garner ever-increasing interest, says Pillot.

In 2020, the event attracted 200 attendees, 60 international speakers and 30 booths.

Last year, the number of attendees rose to 780 — with the opportunity to hear from 90 international speakers and visit 70 booths.

This year’s event to be held in Lyon, France, from October 10-13, is on course to expand further still.

As Energy Storage Journal went to press, in excess of 1,000 were expected to attend, together with more than 130 international speakers and over 90 booths.

The Batteries Event has long been a mainstay on the industry’s calendar and now, with its 25th outing just a few months away, Avicenne Energy director Christophe Pillot looks ahead to this year’s program.

Pillot: “For the moment it is clear that it is more attractive to invest in the US than in Europe”

The BCI Innovation Award

For almost a decade now Battery Council International, a trade organization representing the interests of major battery players in North America, has given a special award to those firms that have displayed the greatest innovation in developing lead battery energy storage.

This year, there were five applicants for the award: Water Gremlin, Daramic, ACE Green, STC and the eventual winner Gopher Resources.

Each had an unusual take on providing a further impetus to the competitiveness of the lead battery industry — these

have ranged from better separators, more environmentally suitable manufacturing techniques to yet better ways to recycle lead.

The independent panel of judges this year decided that Gopher Resources’ approach to creating a better path to recycling lead batteries was the winner.

Interestingly lead batteries’ almost 99% ability to be recycled — and profitably so — stands in stark contrast to the difficulties the lithium battery industry has in doing this profitably, safely and to scale.

Water Gremlin has pioneered a unique process to reduce the environmental impact of organic solvents as a coating material by using UV light.

Gremlin Green shining a light on the environment

For several decades, Water Gremlin has been manufacturing battery terminals for a wide range of applications such as automobiles, motorboats, military, recreational vehicles, and many more. Battery terminals are an essential component of lead acid batteries, and lead acid batteries play a critical, often assumed role in our everyday lives.

The coating on a terminal is critical in preventing leakage and corrosion between the terminal and the plastic cover of the battery. The adhesion of the plastic to the lead allows the battery to last longer, perform more efficiently, and function safely.

The traditional coating on a terminal is a solid polymer which requires a significant amount of solvent to reduce the viscosity of the polymer so that it can be easily and smoothly applied to the terminals.

Water Gremlin’s long term goal is to significantly reduce the use of organic solvents in its manufacturing process.

Initially, Water Gremlin has been able to reduce solvent usage by 25% moving to a water-based process. However, the water-based process proved to be unsuccessful in all applications thus requiring the continued use of organic solvents. Water Gremlin then looked for an alternative that would allow further

reduction of the use of organic solvents with the goal to eventually eliminate the usage of solvents in their facility.

After three years of research and development, Water Gremlin has been able to successfully develop and patent a proprietary ultraviolet light curable coating that is completely solvent-free.

This new process is far more ecofriendly for the environment as compared to the previous formula. It eliminates the need for solvents and is proving to be more durable and reliable.

As a trial, Water Gremlin converted

one of its coating machines to the new ultraviolet light cured coating process. To date approximately 10% of their coating capacity has been converted to a UV curable coating, known as Gremlin Green.

By doing so, it has impressively been able to reduce solvent usage by nearly 20%. Water Gremlin intends to continue to implement UV cure technology to eventually end all usage of organic solvents for coating in their facility. Water Gremlin’s commitment is to reduce solvent usage by more than 50% by the end of 2023 and by more than 80% in 2024 and beyond.

Water Gremlin intends to continue to implement UV cure technology to eventually end all usage of organic solvents for coating in its facility

WATER GREMLIN — PROFILE

Founded in 1949 on farmland in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, Water Gremlin has been a well-known supplier of innovative products to the recreational fishing market. These initial products included fishing lures and lead sinkers. However, its manufacturing scope broadened in the 1970s to include industry leading terminals for lead-acid batteries.

The company has over 160,000 square feet of combined manufacturing and warehousing space in Minnesota.

Getting the maximum value out of lead battery slag

Disposing of the slag from lead battery recycling has always been problematic — the end residue from smelting is toxic with a high lead content and traces, among other things, of antimony, arsenic, bismuth and cadmium. This slag, perforce, has to go into landfill.

Attempts to reuse it in, for example, paving blocks is just kicking the can further down the road. Finally, the paving will crack up and the poisons will leach out. Now perhaps a permanent solution is in sight.

Gopher Resource has developed a Slag Cleaning and Recovery of Useful Metals (SCRUM) process that is says can reduce its solid waste footprint by 99%.

The patent-pending approach, takes end slags that are typically landfilled as waste and economically recovers the tin and lead for reuse in the lead battery supply chain.

Each year the lead battery industry globally disposes of end slags that have approximately 100,000 tonnes of lead, and 30,000 tonnes of tin. This tin loss is equivalent to three quarters of US domestic tin consumption

This SCRUM process slag is a value-add product that avoids landfill for reuse in building construction and roadway aggregate industry sectors.

The SCRUM process uses furnace fuming technology to separate the tin and lead into a concentrated fume form with very high selectivity and efficiency, leaving behind a “cleaned” bulk iron sodium-silicate “SCRUM Slag”.

Previous fuming efforts have not been feasible due to poor selectivity and high partitioning of bulk slag components, in particular sodium, into the fume. “Our process leaves greater than 70% of the sodium in the slag, and recovers 99.9% of both tin

and lead in the fume,” says Gopher Resource.

“This tin and lead concentrated fume can be combined with other byproducts for refining into lead, and LME tin. The ability to recover these metals from lead battery recycling slag in a safe, economically feasible way is an industry first.

“Waste minimization is a key goal of ours in developing this process. To reach that goal our SCRUM Slag has trace ppm levels of RCRA elements enabling its use in a variety of value added applications.”

This cleaned slag is applicable for use in commercialized products such as cements and roadway aggregates. SCRUM Slag valorization improves process economics, minimizes our environmental footprint, and is an embodiment of the circular economy.

How it developed

Gopher Resource has supported SCRUM process development efforts for over five years with hundreds of person hours and over $1 million spent in external and internal funding.

Internal R&D resources were committed in 2016 when desk studies began to develop a process to recover metals from the blast slag

Slag. It’s been a persistent problem from the moment lead was first smelted or batteries recycled. There’s always an irrecoverable residue that is toxic, useless and needs disposal. But better extraction methods are on the horizon.

“This tin and lead concentrated fume can be combined with other by-products for refining into lead, and LME tin. The ability to recover these metals from lead battery recycling slag in a safe, economically feasible way is an industry first”

and render a “cleaned” slag available for value-addded applications.

As part of these investments, from 2017-2019 various process technologies were evaluated and tested at the lab scale, including hydrometallurgical and mineral processing technologies. These technologies were found not viable, and pyrometallurgical process routes were then tested.

Gopher said it initially investigated pyrometallurgical lab scale work on “extreme” methane reduction which was promising but ultimately unsuccessful, and the research results were published at the Pb/Zn (LeadZinc) 2020 conference.

Pyrometallurgical fuming

Pyrometallurgical fuming was then evaluated, which has been demonstrated in zinc and other industries but not successfully in the lead battery recycling industry. There was some reluctance to strongly pursuing pyrometallurgical fuming processing routes as every single expert Gopher conferred with discouraged this as being practical.

Conventional wisdom argues selective fuming in high sodium slags doesn’t work as there isn’t sufficient selectivity in the separation. “We persisted and after repeated lab scale tests and advanced thermodynamic calculations, we generated some initial results that were promising enough to proceed to the next stage,” says the firm.

Gopher Resource continued to support this work through piloting efforts through 2020-2022 where various components of the SCRUM process were tested at larger scales. The firm worked with multiple partners to test various process parameters and equipment configurations, and eventually discovered a set of process conditions that separated 99.9% of the tin and lead to the fume, keeping >72% of the sodium in the slag.

To date, SCRUM has been successfully piloted at scales of 100lb through repeated tests by multiple independent parties, with 1000s of lbs of material having been processed.

“These pilots used equipment and process parameters that are realistic, scalable, and economic. In parallel to the SCRUM process development work,” says the firm.

“The SCRUM process successfully

demonstrated pilot results on metal fuming, impurities management, and metal conversion and refining.

“SCRUM slag has also been demonstrated to be sufficiently clean for a variety of applications. Process information collected in our pilot tests provide engineering information for equipment sizing,

labour, utilities, consumables, etc., to generate CAPEX and OPEX estimates.”

The firm says that product streams with required specifications have been demonstrated to provide realistic cashflow forecasts for lead bullion, >99.9% tin, and SCRUM Slag.

“Cashflows are resistant to low tin prices and NPV (net present value) analysis has shown favourable results. We’re evaluating next steps and appropriate strategies to bring SCRUM to market,” says the firm.

The future

Gopher Resource continues to have multiple external projects funded looking at value add applications for its slag past 2025. These include road aggregates, cement paving stones, and advanced manufacturing applications such as 3D printing.

Development of this technology has been a global undertaking with test work conducted at Gopher Resource facilities and partner facilities in six countries across North America, Europe, Australia and Africa.

This cleaned slag is applicable for use in commercialized products such as cements and roadway aggregates. SCRUM Slag valorization improves process economics, minimizes our environmental footprint, and is an embodiment of the circular economy

WHAT’S LEFT OF THE SCRUM SLAG

The SCRUM Slag byproduct is also applicable for use in building materials such as concretes and dense or porous monoliths. Slag is granulated using air or water and made into a slurry mortar via a binder/activator [such as Metakaolin (MK; Al-Si), limestone (LS; CaCO³), Alkali salts (mainly Na) (Na2CO3 (Nc), Na2SO4 (N$), NaOH (NH), Na-silicate (NS)],

Controlling the TBRC slag to retain the high concentrations of sodium, provides benefits of a natural binder/ activator in the slurry. This reduces the amount of additives needed to meet specifications for use. This mortar has multiple uses in

structural applications or design applications and uses 5x less cement than typical mortars resulting in approximately 80% less CO2 production. The strength of the mortar projections matches that of current commercial produced mortars.

These mortar products allow for efficient construction customization and complexity in building systems, while reducing CO2 footprint.

Leaching results from column tests have shown non-hazardous solids. The mortar can be 3D printed or cast into different types of monolithic construction materials (dense or porous).

Daramic has featured in the innovation awards since their inception in 2016, receiving an Honorable Mention for its HD Plus separator in 2022. This year, the company presents its latest innovation — the HiCharge advanced separator.

Separator tech charges ahead to new levels of performance

Faster rechargeability and lower maintenance continues to be the holy grail for batteries and now Daramic is pushing the envelope further still with its latest separator technology — HiCharge.

HICHARGE INDUSTRIAL SEPARATOR FEATURES

Key characteristics of Hi-Charge separators are their serrated rib pattern, designed with a 3.5mm pitch to enhance circulation, improve backup time and aid rechargeability.

An antimony suppression formulation reduces top-up frequency, lowers float current and reduces plate corrosion.

HiCharge’s closer rib pitch allows for uniform compression and reduces sulfation.

HiCharge separators deliver strong results when tested in deep cycle applications

In motive power (flooded flat plate battery) the separators provide:

• Greater than 2x battery cycle life improvement in repeated testing

• 2.5x longer life in discharge motion testing

• 2.75x longer life in a stationary discharge test.

Solar battery application (flooded tubular battery):

• Enhanced battery life with capacity improvement of 6% during cycling

• Positive plate corrosion improvement through Sb suppression and water loss reduction of 25%

• Decreased active material shedding and deposition on separator surface.

Flooded deep cycle batteries tend to operate in a partial-stateof-charge, causing plate sulfation, continued decline in backup time and premature battery failure.

However, Daramic says its innovation solves these issues, delivering faster rechargeability, lower maintenance and longer life.

Examples of deployment in practice include a forklift battery that lasts 100% longer than current batteries on the market — with the ability to charge up enough over a lunch break to last through the remainder of the day with more than 10% improved backup time, sustained over the unit’s cycle life.

HiCharge can also boost the efficiency of a solar battery’s energy capture during peak sunlight periods, with 10% improved charged acceptance and reduced maintenance from a water loss reduction of 20-25%, Daramic says.

And with the increasing take-up of residential UPS systems in mind, Daramic says using HiCharge could see a home UPS unit continue to

provide power over 15% longer during an outage than competing products.

Daramic’s award entry aims to step up to meet evolving market needs for deep cycle applications, which have been identified by the Consortium for Battery Innovation as a priority area of research for lead acid batteries.

For more than 90 years Daramic has been a market leader in developing new and innovative technology for the lead acid battery market and is the global leader in supplying high performance polyethylene battery separators to the Pb battery industry.

The 2023 award entry takes Daramic’s technology development to a new level, following its presentation of HD Plus at last year’s convention in Naples.

HiCharge can change what is possible across many deep cycle applications.

Testing of HiCharge in many deep cycle applications was completed in 2022 and the product is just now being offered to most markets.

A new horizon for lead paste desulfurization

Desulfurization is a key step in the recycling of lead batteries. In the first step (Figure 1) of recycling the casing and the electrolyte is separated off before the pure lead and lead paste are processed.

Traditional desulfurization of the paste typically uses sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate. The reactions are:

PbSO4 + Na2CO3 ⇒ PbCO3 + Na2SO4

PbSO4 + 2NaOH ⇒ Pb(OH)2 + Na2SO4

H2SO4 +Na2CO3 ⇒ Na2SO4 + H2O+ CO2

H2SO4 + NaOH ⇒ Na2SO4 + H2O

The chemistry of the traditional sodium carbonate-based desulfurization is a straightforward reaction.

Among the main advantages, it is possible to highlight the easy availability of the reagent, the well known and studied mechanisms of reaction the process is based on, the possibility to use the obtained by-product (sodium sulfate) as an intermediate in the chemical industry and the stability of the reagent and its product.

In summary this hydrometallurgical approach resulted in savings of a variety of production expenditure: principally the eduction of slags generated (-65%); iron consumption

reduced by 90%; less fuel required (-15%); less oxygen required (-15%) when using oxy-fuel burners; higher productivity; faster cycle; less lead lost with slags; and, revenue from sodium sulfate covers some of the additional costs (chemicals and energy).

The environmental impact was also lessened.

The desulfurization of lead paste has become so essential in the ULAB recycling activities: this chemical reaction via sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide leads to the reduction of the environmental impact (less SO² emissions and slags production) and to an increase in productivity of the subsequent lead paste smelting operations.

It has however limitations related to the relatively poor market for sodium sulfate (a by-product of the process), also important here is the high level of equipment corrosion which is part of the process and to the high costs of the chemicals used.

Urea as the answer

The U4Lead process by STC uses an amino compound — urea, as chemical for the desulfurization of paste and electrolyte neutralization process.

The simplified reaction can be summarized as:

CO(NH2)2 + PbSO4+H2O

⇒ PbCO3 + (NH4)2SO4

CO(NH2)2 + H2SO4 + H2O

⇒ (NH4)2SO4+CO2

The U4Lead patent was published in November 2019 but the installation of this technology on an industrial scale was started in 2020 as a subproject of a larger project for a new complete battery recycling plant entirely supplied by STC to our Nigeria plant.

The U4Lead process by STC, protected by national and international patents, is based on the use of urea as chemical for the desulfurization of paste and electrolyte neutralization. The U4Lead solution offers the following advantages (Figure 2):

• PbSO4 conversion >97% = low residual sulfur (< 0.3%)

• No side reactions ⇒ no sodium/ lead double salts formation

• Further reduction of iron addition ⇒ less slag production, natural gas/oxygen consumption, etc.

• Ammonium sulfate valuable as a fertilizer

• No Na2S

The ability for lead to be endlessly recycled — and profitably so — gives it a strong advantage over lithium batteries. But any improvement on the mechanisms to do so and related cost considerations has to be welcomed.

Figure 1: the traditional desulfurization process Figure 2: The U4Lead process

Electrifying the recycling process at room temperature

COMPLIMENTARY TECHNOLOGIES

ACE Green says it is piloting several important new initiatives.

• Production of 99.99% pure e-lead

The firm says it can now directly obtain 99.99% high-purity e-lead from battery paste. This new process is also at room temperature, requires no external heating and can use the same commercial-scale electrolysis machines.

• In-process regeneration of desulfurization agent

ACE has developed a modified process to regenerate the desulfurizing agent, helping to further reduce costs. This improvement does not require any changes or modifications to the electrolysis process.

• Electric kettles for melting e-lead

By utilising a new electrically heated kettle, the firm say it is moving towards 100% electrification of the lead recycling process.

• Baghouse dust treatment

The firm has a room temperature technique to treat and recover lead from baghouse dust.

• Smelting furnace slag treatment

Fascinatingly, the firms says it has created a technology to treat and extract metals from slag generated during conventional smelting. Besides the recovery of lead and iron, there is also a reduction of more than 65% in the net solid waste for disposal in landfill.

US corporation ACE Green Recycling

Inc has developed a proprietary new technology that produces no waste products that require smelting and furnaces. The process, the firm says, operates at room temperature with no carbon or heavy metal emissions. It replaces the conventional smelting furnace with an oxygen-producing pH-basic electrochemical process. This modular process is also readily scalable to suit any production capacity needs.

“Our zero-emissions technology is a game-changer for the heavily regulated secondary lead industry,” says Farid Ahmed, business development manager for ACE Green. “Automated material handling enables plant operation with minimal operator intervention, further reducing exposure to health and safety risks. Higher lead recovery and lower waste generation contribute to our process having more favourable economics than traditional smelting.

The two streams of lead components from the battery breaker — battery paste and battery metallics — are treated separately.

Battery paste is treated with proprietary chemicals in the presence of sodium hydroxide, removing sulphur and preparing it for the next stage. This is then fed to the room temperature electrolysis process, producing ‘spongy’ lead of around 99.95% purity.

This lead sponge is then mechanically pressed into ‘e-lead’ briquettes, which are then transferred directly to normal melting kettles.

After minimal conventional refining and casting into ingots, the finished lead has a typical purity of better than 99.985%. The small quantity of drosses produced during refining can be treated by a separate proprietary electrochemical technique to recover the lead content or recycled through smelting.

Battery metallics such as grids, poles and connectors are first chemically cleaned with proprietary chemicals to remove any paste adhering to the solid lead surface. These clean metallics are then melted directly in normal process kettles. At this stage, the metal can be refined to produce pure lead or alloyed to obtain highvalue lead alloys. As these metallics haven’t been smelted, all the original alloys elements such as antimony are retained in the lead.

ACE Green has been operating a commercial-scale demonstration plant near Delhi through its Indian subsidiary but the process equipment was disassembled to accommodate ACE’s new commercial scale lithium ion battery recycling operation. Luminous India, part of the Schneider Electric group, was previously supplying scrap batteries as well as buying the lead produced at this facility.

Hydrometallurgical processing of scrap lead batteries has long been a dream in the recycling industry. It offers a less energy-intensive route to recycling with all the additional savings that entails.

Tod Higinbotham, COO of nickel-zinc batteries producer ZincFive,

Critical power thinking is needed for 24/7 reliability

For datacenters, few things rival the importance of ensuring service reliability around the clock. Without this consistency, the day-to-day operations of countless critical sectors — from telecommunications to emergency medical services — can be severely disrupted, risking individu-

als’ safety and hampering economic growth.

This underlines why datacenters are cautious about protecting their assets, and why choosing the right UPS system is particularly important.

To ensure that these systems can support the datacenter’s needs at any

time, they require the best battery technology to power them.

Lead acid batteries have a long history as the default choice, but the proliferation of new innovations and technologies has started to change this in recent years.

Datacenter operators have the option of choosing between a variety of battery chemistries, each of which comes with unique advantages.

When analyzing what battery type is best for their datacenter workflow, managers should keep in mind these key components.

Higinbotham has a strong track record of successfully growing advanced materials companies in the energy storage, semiconductor, and solar markets.

He worked as executive VP/GM for ATMI and led the rapid growth of the company, which was sold for more than $1 billion.

He was formerly the CEO of PowerGenix, the company that pioneered the novel nickel-zinc battery technology that has become the core of ZincFive’s portfolio.

on the importance of choosing the right battery chemistry for your datacenter

Datacenter operators have the option of choosing between a variety of battery chemistries, each of which comes with unique advantages

Physical Footprint

The physical size of a UPS system plays a significant role in the layout and internal organization of datacenters.

Out of the commercial battery varieties, lead acid has the largest footprint: it possesses the lowest power density, and therefore requires significantly more space than lithium ion or nickel zinc (NiZn) technology to accommodate the same amount of storage.

While this doesn’t pose a challenge for every facility, it does mean that lead acid batteries are poorly suited for modular facilities, as well as for datacenters in expensive urban areas.

In comparison, NiZn batteries use up to 65% less linear footprint and thus allow modular builders and construction teams to better optimize their buildouts.

Total cost

Cost inevitably plays a decisive role in selecting the right battery type. It’s important for datacenter managers to factor both capital expenditures and long-term operational costs into their investment decision.

Lead acid batteries have the distinct advantage of being the lowest upfront-cost option on the market. They do, however, require regular maintenance to preserve their average five-year lifespan.

Though an attractive option because of their low initial capital cost, lead acid batteries can be the most expensive to operate in the long run — an important consideration for datacenter managers.

However, lithium ion and NiZn batteries have a higher upfront cost but have a longer life and require less maintenance once installed.

For example, by lowering operating expenses (OpEx), NiZn solutions reduce ownership costs by up to 28% over lead acid-based UPS products across the total UPS useful life.

Sustainability

The environmental impact of datacenters has gained increasing attention in recent years as businesses face growing pressures from investors, consumers, and regulatory agencies to integrate sustainability into their operations.

A third-party expert analysis was conducted to assess the sustainabil-

ity of various battery chemistries.

The study compared factors such as GHG emissions, water footprint, energy use footprint, and volatile organic compounds. The study also provides GHG Protocol Scope 3 level emissions analysis (a methodology that can be used to account for and report emissions from companies of all sectors).

This information helps datacenter operators make sustainability one of the top factors in picking a technology — the best choice for both the environment and their company’s reputation.

Reliability

Unfortunately, the very UPS system meant to prevent an outage too often causes one; accounting for 37% of datacenter outages, on-site power failure is still the most common cause of significant datacenter outages. The majority of these onsite outages (53%) are caused by UPS failure and often may cost over $100,000 to repair.

One distinct reliability advantage is the ability to sustain battery discharge despite failure of an individual battery cell.

In a UPS system, individual batteries are connected in a serial string (with multiple strings often paralleled) to support the required system voltage, power output, and run time. When a lead acid or lithium ion cell fails, it creates a high impedance or an open circuit that halts battery string operation. One single cell could be the difference between having the backup capacity needed or none at all, leaving the datacenter at unnecessary risk.

Unlike lead acid and lithium ion, NiZn cells remain conductive when weak or depleted, allowing for continuous string operation and uninterrupted uptime.

Safety

The safety of datacenter workers and equipment is paramount when choosing batteries. Selecting a battery type that’s inherently non-flammable removes significant risks and makes the datacenter safer.

For example, cell-level testing with the UL 9540A test method has revealed that NiZn batteries do not exhibit thermal runaway and are non-flammable, making them a safer choice for datacenters and their workers alike.

Whichever battery type they choose, datacenter operators can help ensure their batteries’ safety by having them adhere to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1 (National Fire Code), the NFPA 855 standard, and the International Code Council’s (ICC) International Fire Code (IFC) 2021. These standards list both the installation safety rules for energy storage systems and testing procedures for batteries.

Additional Resources

As the number of options on the market grows, choosing the storage technology best suited for your datacenter has major impacts on cost, energy efficiency, sustainability, and safety. That’s why the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE’s) 1679 document family helps users, integrators, and servicing organizations compare traditional stationary battery technologies with newer, advanced technologies.

These documents guide the user to select the best battery type for their needs.

If you are considering an energy storage purchase, the IEEE 1679-2020 document and its child documents (IEEE 1679.1, 1679.2, 1679.3 and 1679.4) are invaluable tools.

Unfortunately, the very UPS system meant to prevent an outage too often causes one; accounting for 37% of datacenter outages

As the number of options on the market grows, choosing the storage technology best suited for your datacenter has major impacts on cost, energy efficiency, sustainability, and safety.

The future of battery production is in automated metrology technology

Lithium ion batteries can store energy efficiently for long periods of time, making this technology essential to many everyday devices, from mobile phones to electric vehicles.

Lithium ion cells are also the most common battery storage choice for grid operations today, supplying more than 90% of the world’s markets. In fact, 74% of the world’s mined lithium goes into battery production alone.

However, the available reserves of lithium that are required for battery manufacture are close to depletion, prompting the exploration of alternative battery chemistries that will be able to supplement or replace lithium in the near future.

Despite their advantages, many of these technologies cannot currently provide the required energy densities, compact form factor or affordability to rival lithium ion batteries, and some are also difficult to scale up for commercial production. This makes it ever more important to maximize the usage of available lithium stocks, and to reduce wastage as much as possible during the manufacturing process.

Making sense of the shortage

The reasons behind the lithium shortfall are multifaceted. First of all, contrary to what you may think, lithium is not a rare metal; it is simply buried deep in the Earth’s crust, making it hard to access.

New mines take many years to be brought online and environmental objectives are making it harder for companies to gain permission to explore potential new sites.

This means that, even though lithium is still plentiful in nature, new sources won’t be available for use in batteries for quite some time, creating a pressing need for technologies that will enhance process efficiencies and minimize the loss of existing raw material during battery fabrication.

To understand how we got to the current state, we need to go back sev-

eral years. Between 2017 and 2020, the prices of lithium and lithium compounds plummeted by around 60%, hitting an all-time low worldwide, largely in reaction to a supply glut and a lack of demand.

This sudden drawdown forced miners to cut back on their lithium extraction operations and call off the exploration of new mines, with the result that today only a few active mines are bringing new material into circulation. Exploration for new lithium mines is once again on the increase, but it will be years before they contribute to the current supply.

This issue is being compounded by the fact that EVs — from scooters to aeroplanes — are rapidly gaining in popularity.

Of course, EVs rely on large rechargeable batteries for their power, and these are almost all lithium ion based at the moment. This rapid surge of interest in EVs over the last couple

of years is therefore draining the existing stocks of lithium, with the trend only set to continue as EVs become more affordable.

The reduced mining capacity caused by the low prices of a few years ago is now limiting the industry’s ability to supply battery manufacturers with the raw material they need to ramp up their production and meet the needs of the growing EV market.

The combination of depleted supplies and low mining capacity has inevitably led to lithium and its compounds becoming incredibly expensive since the start of 2021.

For example, lithium carbonate is now 10x the cost it was at the beginning of 2020, at around $72,155 per tonne, with lithium hydroxide prices sitting even higher at $75,000 per tonne.

This sudden price hike is proving challenging for many battery manufacturers, forcing them to cut the amount

Christopher Burnett, senior applications manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific, highlights the value of automated measurement systems in helping to reduce lithium wastage.

The combination of depleted supplies and low mining capacity has inevitably led to lithium and its compounds becoming incredibly expensive since the start of 2021

Image 1: The end-to-end electrode coating process monitored and controlled at all stages.

of raw material they purchase and thereby limiting the quantity of lithium ion batteries they can produce for the EV market.

Fortunately, there is some scope for recycling to address some of this gap between supply and demand. However, there are currently no wide-scale systems in place to collect and process scrap materials such as used lithium ion batteries.

The absence of an effective recycling infrastructure means that, eventually, much of the lithium originally mined out of the ground goes right back where it came from, but locked away in landfill.

This adds up to a tremendous amount of lithium wastage every year. Reversing this trend and rescuing material that has already been thrown away would contribute to a much more sustainable, circular economy.

Optimizing Li usage in battery production

Suitable and widely available alternatives to lithium ion batteries are still some way away and, with supply constraints looming, better management of existing resources is critical. Improving the efficiency of the battery manufacturing process in order to reduce lithium wastage is key.

In particular, coating variations during the electrode coating process can both be detrimental to battery performance and reduce product yield, leading to lithium wastage.

The safety, longevity and cost-effectiveness of lithium ion batteries are dependent on achieving consistent coating uniformity for the anode and cathode during the manufacturing process.

In-line metrology systems can be used to provide automated measurement of the electrode coating throughout the entire production process. (Image 1).

This non-contact, non-destructive measurement equipment enables manufacturers to continuously monitor production through real-time analysis of coating uniformity, providing rapid detection of any defects. This allows issues to be identified as early as possible in the cell manufacturing process and traced back to their source, ensuring defective or out-of-specification material can be segregated before it is incorporated into the final product.

In-line metrology systems can be combined with automatic profile control (APC) to further reduce coating variability and raw material wastage through the elimination of human error.

Closing the loop between measurement and adjustment

Until recently, most optimization processes in battery production lines were performed manually, but this makes it difficult to regulate coating uniformity and reliably identify production line defects.

In-line coating measurement gauges represent a development in automated production, scanning moving reels of coated electrodes to monitor coating thickness in real-time to ensure that coating defects are detected. (Image 2).

Sensor selection is a key consideration when using in-line metrology during lithium ion battery manufacture.

A variety of sensor technologies are available for different applications, including beta and X-ray sensors for measuring coating weight during the coating process and confocal laser sensors for measuring coating thickness during the calendering process.

Sensor quality is determined by factors such as resolution, precision and beam size, and is crucial for precisely and reliably measuring defects during

electrode production.

Following the scanning stage, the next step is to feed the collected data back into the production process. This helps to optimize the electrode coating procedure by modifying fabrication variables like slurry thickness or volume.

In manual workflows, sensor-generated data is made visible to machine operators, allowing them to make informed adjustments to the coating stage, whereas, in more advanced production lines, a feedback loop can be programmed to connect process measurement and control.

For example, electrode coating using automated slot-dies is controlled by thermal die bolts, which expand or reduce dispensing volumes based on downstream measurements. (Image 3).

Using APC algorithms to automatically fine-tune the thickness and uniformity of electrode coatings increases production speed and efficiency by eliminating common issues, such as high error frequency, delays, and raw material wastage.

Image 2: Example reporting capabilities available with an in-line metrology system, including specific displays for battery manufacturing

Image 3: Automated slot-dies used in the electrode coating process.

This metrology solution also allows for data storage, recall and analysis, so that manufacturers can resolve future issues in production lines and keep up with the growing global demands for lithium ion batteries. (Image 4).

The outlook for the future

In 2020 it was calculated that lithium demand is on course to more than triple in the five years leading up to 2025, rising to a million tonnes and outpacing supply by an estimated 200,000 tonnes.

This spike is largely driven by the growing need for more EV and energy storage battery cells, as well as the global push towards carbon neutrality, with EVs expected to exceed 50% of total vehicle sales as early as 2030.

However, current mining operations cannot keep pace with this sudden uptick in demand due to a combination of factors, including lack of mine capacity and depleted reserves, which

are helping to send the price of lithium sky-high.

Consequently, some manufacturers are now struggling to afford what lithium there is available on the market. There is also a lack of recycling, causing this precious element to be wasted in alarming quantities.

As a result, quickly and precisely detecting flaws in electrode coatings using in-line metrology solutions is becoming increasingly important for reducing the wastage of lithium and enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of battery manufacturing in the years to come.

Image 4: How the use of APC control during the electrode coating process improves production efficiency and achieves raw material savings.

ees Europe

June 13–16

Munich, Germany

Discover future-ready solutions for renewable energy storage and advanced battery technology at ees Europe! Europe’s largest, most international and most visited exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions as well as battery systems.

In 2023, more than 450 suppliers of products for energy storage technology and systems will be present at ees Europe and the parallel exhibitions of The smarter E Europe taking place in Munich.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a two-day energy storage conference.

Contact Solar Promotion GmbH

E: merz@solarpromotion.com www.ees-europe.com

Advanced Automotive Battery Conference Europe — AABC Europe

June 19–22, Mainz, Germany

Take part in this game-changing event where battery technologists from leading automotive OEMs and their key suppliers explore development trends and breakthrough technologies shaping the future of vehicle electrification.

As more European nations and international automotive OEMs invest in their commitment to vehicle electrification and eMobility, the 2023 AABC Europe event propels that momentum forward, presenting unparalleled coverage of the research and development that helps drive outcomes and supports the next generation of electric vehicle batteries.

Contact Cambridge Enertech www.advancedautobat.com/europe

International Automotive Recycling Conference — IARC

June 21 – 23

Geneva, Switzerland

IARC is the international platform for discussing the latest developments and challenges in circular economy and automotive recycling. We bring together up to 300 decision-makers from the automotive and recycling sector, especially car manufacturers, metal suppliers, plastic scrap traders, recyclers, shredder operators, policymakers and many more.

IARC 2023 gives you the unique opportunity to hear and exchange with industry leaders and pioneers such as ArcelorMittal, LKQ, EMR and Toyota in a privileged business environment.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to get valuable industry insights and engage in the most inspiring discussions and unrivalled networking opportunities amongst the leading experts in the field of automotive recycling!

Contact ICM AG

E: info@icm.ch

www.events.icm.ch/event/e2e5c27c-ff224918-b685-0b07aa604ddf/summary

Pb2023 — International Lead Conference

June 21 – 23

Athens, Greece

Pb2023 is the premier event for analysis, networking and discussions on all matters relating to lead, including mining, production, batteries, recycling and the environmental management of the metal and its compounds organised by the International Lead Association.

This year the Pb2023 programme includes the latest market trends

and forecasts from world-renowned industry experts, a workplace lead exposure management workshop, together with all the latest updates on regulation, sustainability and advanced lead battery research from the Consortium for Battery Innovation.

Registration is now open — check our website www.pb2023.org

Contact

International Lead Association

Maura McDermott

E: McDermott@ila-lead.org

www.pb2023.org

Battery Cells & Systems Expo

June 28 – 29

Birmingham, UK

Battery Cells & Systems Expo is a free to attend exhibition and conference showcasing international manufacturers, users and the entire supply chain working to increase battery performance, cost and safety. The show will bring together automotive OEM’s, electric utilities, battery cell manufacturers, system manufacturers and integrators along with the entire manufacturing supply chain.

Co-located with Vehicle Electrification Expo. The show will benefit from the rapid growth in the manufacturing of electric and hybrid vehicles in the UK along with the significant investments being made in domestic battery manufacture and research. Featuring a global list of exhibitors and speakers, the entire world of battery manufacturing and integration will gather in the heart of UK manufacturing, Birmingham.

Contact

Event Partners

Lana Fowler, event director

E: lana.fowler@event-partners.org

www.batterysystemsexpo.com

Geneva, Switzerland

International Flow Battery Forum

June 28 – 29

Brussels, Belgium

The International Flow Battery Forum is the leading event for the flow battery community. The IFBF promotes the most recent developments in the science, technology and deployment of flow batteries and its conferences cover a broad range of interests in research and commercial aspects of flow batteries.

IFBF conferences provide an ideal opportunity to promote products and develop business contacts.

Contact Swanbarton www.flowbatteryforum.com

Battery Recycling Conference

June 28 – 29

Messe Frankfurt, Germany

Battery Recycling Conference & Expo 2023 is the must-attend event for battery producers, recycling companies, critical raw material suppliers, and the entire battery supply chain to come together on a single platform.

This year’s cycle will showcase over 80 exhibitors in the free-to-attend exhibition, 100+ expert speakers at the conference and over 1,500 highquality participants. Furthermore, it will be complemented by two other industry-specific co-located events, E-Waste World and Metal Recycling Conference & Expos.

Contact

Transglobal Events

Peter Sarno, event director

E: peter@trans-globalevents.com www.batteryrecycling-expo.com

World Battery Industry Expo

August 8 – 10

Guangzhou, China

Committed to promoting global market trade and battery industrial chain, WBE has developed into a professional exhibition with the largest number of exhibitors in battery enterprises and the highest participation of professional visitors and foreign buyers.

Relying on its worldwide influence and thousands of overseas buyers, WBE provides exhibitors with highquality buyers resources to help enterprises get more business opportunities.

Contact Guangzhou Honest Exhibition Co., Ltd

E: grand.fi@grahw.com www.battery-expo.com

Oslo Battery Days

August 21 – 22

Oslo, Norway

The 5th Oslo Battery Conference will meet to discuss and provide a platform for technological innovations and business opportunities with the latest updates in that fields in Norway and abroad.

For the 2023 event we will offer a beautiful Fjord cruise that includes dinner, networking and a view of the Oslo skyline on the classic Norwegian boat MS Nobel.

Contact Shmuel De-Leon Energy

E: sigalit@sdle.co.il

www.oslobatterydays.com

Intersolar Mexico

Mexico City, Mexico.

September 5 – 7

Intersolar Mexico serves as the industry’s go-to source for invaluable technology trends and premier B2B contacts in the promising Mexican solar market. It sits at the cross-section of photovoltaics, solar heating & cooling technologies, and energy storage.

Together, the two events will be the largest gathering of professionals in Mexico for international manufacturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers in the fields of solar, renewable energy and cleantech.

More than 250 exhibitors and 13,000 visitors from over 35 countries are expected to participate in this year’s events.

Contact Solar Promotion International

E: info@solarpromotion.com

https://www.intersolar.mx/organizers

Guangzhou, China

Frankfurt, Germany

Mexico City, Mexico

SAVE THE DATE

8TH International Secondary Lead and Battery Recycling Conference — Recycle100

September 4–5

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Fourteen years ago, the first Secondary Lead Conference was held in Macau, China, bringing together all aspects of the leadacid battery recycling and smelting industry. It has successfully brought the industry together to discuss, debate and learn.

Over that period, the battery recycling industry has continued to develop and now expanded into an exciting new phase, the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.

The conference will discuss the many technical and market aspects of the recycling industry of various battery chemistries. The conference’s overall themes will not change, as we will hear from some leading recycling, smelting and environmental speakers worldwide about the best methods for collecting, breaking, and recovering valuable elements.

Contact Conference Works — CW3 Events

E: events@conferenceworks.com.au

www.recycle100.events

SAVE THE DATE

20th Asian Battery Conference and Exhibition

— 20ABC

September 5–8

Siem Reap, Cambodia

The Asian Battery Conference has a long and proud history of bringing together the world’s leading battery industry C-level executives, marketers, technical staff and sales teams biennially to remain updated on new and emerging technologies, understand future directions, meet new suppliers, conduct business and network with industry peers.

An integral feature of the Asian Battery Conference is the exhibition. A true international opportunity, the exhibition sees the world’s major battery companies come together to showcase their capabilities and leverage off the considerable business developments and direct sales opportunities the conference provides.

The Asian Battery Conference has seen tremendous growth since its inception in 1986, not only in terms of the size of the event but more importantly its ability to act as an educator and business development tool for all the worlds key battery industry executives.

The importance of the Asian Battery Conference to the global battery industry can be demonstrated by the success of the past four conferences.

Contact Conference Works — CW3 Events

E: events@conferenceworks.com.au www.asianbatteryconference.com

International Congress for Battery Recycling — ICBR

September 6 – 8

Valencia Spain

ICBR 2023 is the international platform for reviewing the challenges faced by the Battery Recycling Industry on a global basis.

For 28 consecutive years, ICBR has brought together the international community of experts and decision makers of the entire Battery Recycling value chain, including battery recyclers and manufacturers, collection organizations, OEM’s, policymakers, materials and services providers and many more.

Contact ICM AG

E: info@icm.ch

www.events.icm.ch/event/743ec9e5df9d-42e1-8e20-e13bafe7f6ed/summary

The Battery Show

North America

September 12 – 14

Novi, MI. USA

The Battery Show connects you with more than 8,000 engineers and executives, and more than 600 leading suppliers across the advanced battery supply chain.

A powerful end-to-end showcase, this leading global industry event covers today’s emerging advanced battery technology for the automotive, portable electronics, medical technology, military and telecommunications, and utility and renewable energy support sectors.

Explore the most comprehensive industry event in North America.

Contact

Informa Markets

E: registration.ime@informa.com

www.thebatteryshow.com

Battery Tech Expo Sweden

September 27 – 28

Gothenburg, Sweden

The Battery Tech Expo Nordic 2023 will bring together the latest technologies and services involved in the battery technology covering battery storage, battery management systems, fuel cell technology, lithium-ion batteries to name a few.

The event will welcome senior decision makers and users from across the power industry who share a professional interest in the technology and science of battery technology.

Held in Gothenburg, the hub of battery technology industry of Sweden, the event will provide a unique opportunity to showcase the latest technological products and services from within the industry.

Contact 10fourmedia

E: david.reeks@104-media.com www.batterytechexpo.se

The Battery Show India

October 4 – 6

Greater Noida, India

The Battery Show portfolio brings together engineers, business leaders, top industry companies, and innovative thinkers to discover groundbreaking products and create powerful solutions from across the globe.

From raw materials to components, find what you need to power your next project at the Battery Show India. The exhibition brings together more than 200+ brands showcasing the latest solutions across the transportation, stationary, portable and industrial sectors.

Contact Informa Markets

www.thebatteryshowindia.com

Batteries Event

October 10 – 13

Lyon, France

The Batteries Event will cover aspects of the circular economy chain, starting from the production of the battery through raw materials, cell manufacturing, use and safety, management and applications, going through market trends, research and development, new technologies and finally closing the loop with a focus on recycling, second life and regulations.

International battery industry key players such as OEM, cell and pack manufacturers, end users, experts, researchers and recyclers will come together to discuss and exchange on new chemistries, manufacturing process, battery components, battery second life, recycling, regulation, future expectations and innovations.

Contact AVICENNE Energy www.batteriesevent.com

Fenibat

October 15 – 17

Londrina, Brazil

FENIBAT will gather in Londrina, Paraná, Brazil, from October 15 – 17, 2023 the Brazilian and Latin American battery and lead recycling industry and its suppliers. Its objective is to disseminate new products, services and technologies from all countries of the world to the South American market, as well as the exchange of information and knowledge.

Contact Fenibat

Jayme Gusmao, event director

E: gusmao@fenibat.com www.fenibat.com

Battery Tech Expo, Prague

October 18

Prague, Czech Republic

Central Europe is rapidly emerging as a key location in the Battery Technology landscape. With a well-established and rapidly developing automotive industry, and a growing number of gigafactories both in operation and planned to come on-stream, the next few years will see a rapid expansion

in battery production capacity in the region.

The Battery Tech Expo, Prague is perfectly located to showcase the Battery Technology supply chain in the Central Europe Hub — highlighting the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, whilst remaining within easy reach of the German, French and Italian automotive centres of excellence.

Contact 10fourmedia

David Reeks, event director

E: david.reeks@104-media.com

www.batterytechexpocentraleurope.com

Battery Safety Summit

November 6 – 7

Tysons Corner, Virginia, USA

The Annual Battery Safety Summit will bring together the key players from around the world to present the latest R&D advancements for integrating and implementing LIB safety to meet ever-increasing energy demands.

With constantly increasing market demands for higher energy density cells globally, it is critical that advances in chemistry and engineering for next generation batteries have a significant focus on safety.

Accurate testing, modelling and battery management systems are critical for predicting and controlling the complex electrochemical, thermal, and mechanical behavior of LIBs.

Contact Cambridge Enertech

E: ce@cambridgeenertech.com

www.cambridgeenertech.com/batterysafety

Lyon, France

Prague, Czech Republic

www.ees-events.com

ENERGY STORAGE EVENTS

—

The Leading Exhibition Series for Batteries and Energy Storage Systems

■ JUNE 14–16, 2023, MUNICH, GERMANY EUROPE’S LARGEST EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-europe.com

■ AUGUST 29–31, 2023, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL SOUTH AMERICA’S HOT SPOT FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-southamerica.com

■ JANUARY 17–19, 2024, GANDHINAGAR, INDIA INDIA‘S LEADING ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE EXHIBITION www.ees-india.in

■ APRIL 16–18, 2024 – DUBAI INTERSOLAR & EES MIDDLE EAST DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTER www.intersolar.ae

Follow us

Battery Experts Forum

November 7 – 9

Darmstadt, Germany

The Battery Expert Forum is the largest battery conference in Europe. The forum offers an unparalleled platform for exchanging information on the latest developments in battery technology, presenting innovative products and services, and making valuable business contacts through renowned exhibitors, a comprehensive conference program and first-class trade visitors. In addition to the conference, there is also a trade exhibition where companies can showcase their latest products and services.

Contact Battery Experts Forum

E: info@battery-experts-forum.com www.battery-experts-forum.com

London EV Show

November 28 – 30

London, UK

The next edition of the London EV Show will once again bring the entire EV value chain under one roof to network with major industry players and identify numerous business opportunities in a hypercompetitive EV market.

The event aims to enable a large showcase of the new EV models & innovative solutions, a powerful speaker line-up and an enthused audience of policymakers, business

SAVE THE DATE

Future Battery Forum

November 27 – 28

Berlin, Germany + Online

The management conference brings together the entire value system of battery technologies: Across various industries more than 300 users, battery system and cell manufacturers and their suppliers will spend two days exchanging information, making new contacts and enriching each other.

Contact IPM AG

E: fbf@ipm.ag

www.futurebattery.eu

leaders, investors, thought leaders and a wide range of end-users.

Contact Valiant Business Media

E: info@londonevshow.com www.londonevshow.com

Expo for Decarbonised Industries

November 28 – 30

Düsseldorf, Germany

All you need for climate-friendly, secure and economical energy supply in your company: The Expo for Decarbonized Industries > ENERGY STORAGE (decarbXpo) bundles the most comprehensive range of energy storage systems, solutions for decarbonization in industry and commerce, and a high-quality forum and conference program into one event.

Directly from the organizer of leading global industry trade shows. Supported by research institutes, sector and industry associations.

Contact

Caroline Markowski, Messe Dusseldorf

E: markowskic@messe-duesseldorf.de www.decarbxpo.com

Advanced Automotive Battery Conference USA — AABC USA

December 11 – 14

San Diego, California, USA

AABC was founded more than twenty years ago to review the status of automotive battery technology and provide informed glimpses into the future.

The 2023 program will uncover the underlying technical and business issues that will impact the pace and path of vehicle electrification worldwide.

Join us to network with chief battery technologists from leading automotive OEMs, who will share their development trends and projected battery needs, as well as their key suppliers who will present their latest offerings and roadmaps for the future.

Contact Cambridge Enertech

E: ce@cambridgeenertec.com

www.advancedautobat.com/us

Intersolar North America

January 17 – 19

San Diego, California, USA

Intersolar North America and Energy

Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. .

Join 6,000+ energy leaders and 300+ exhibitors in Long Beach, CA, to help shape the next phase of our clean energy transformation.

Contact Diversified Communications

E: ISNAinfo@divcom.com www.intersolar.us

The Smarter E India

— ees India

January 17 – 19

Gujarat, India

The market potential for electrical energy storage in India is expected to be tremendous in the future – especially driven by incoming policies for the e-mobility industry.

With the great success and support of ees Europe, Europe’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage, ees India becomes the most powerful energy storage exhibition in India.

The exhibition is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions. Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technologies – from components and production to specific user applications.

Contact Solar Promotion International

E: info@solarpromotion.com

www.thesmartere.in/en/ees-india

Gujarat, India