The nation is pursuing a bold agenda to address the climate crisis and build a clean and equitable energy economy that achieves carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and puts the U.S. on a path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by 2050. Batteries for transportation and stationary storage are central to this transition. However, rapid movement to electrification requires a massive increase in manufacturing capacity, including mineral refining, recycling, material production, component processing, and cell/pack manufacturing.

The Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries (FCAB) described the challenges and opportunities in the National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries 2021-2030 and the 100-day supply chain report on high-capacity batteries. To address the bold vision of the Blueprint, the Department of Energy (DOE) created Li-Bridge, a public-private alliance managed by Argonne National Laboratory. Li-Bridge aims to develop a holistic strategy to bridge the looming battery supply chain gap. 
 
While advanced lithium-based batteries will play an outsized role in the energy transition, non-lithium technologies are expected to be critical for specific applications and their market share is expected to increase in the intermediate/long term. These include sodium-ion and other metal ion systems, aqueous systems such as lead-acid, Zn-MnO2, metal-air, Ni-MH, high temperature systems such as Na-FeCl2 and Na-S, various flow battery technologies (including components and systems), and other non-lithium technologies. Some of these battery technologies have a high technology and manufacturing readiness level and are primed for domestic production in large-scale manufacturing facilities.

On April 11, 2023, Argonne, on behalf of DOE and Li-Bridge, convened a virtual discussion on commercialization and manufacturing of non-lithium battery technologies.

The meeting included a plenary session, with presentations from federal government representatives on U.S. manufacturing challenges. The plenary was followed by a series of one-on-one discussions in which individual companies dialogued with DOE and other federal agency representatives on the following topics:

• Status of the battery technology and operation at the cell/system level
• Manufacturing barriers
• Cost barriers
• First adopter market and full-scale end-use market and the size of each market segment
• The supply chain risks, from minerals to systems

The one-on-one discussions were focused on identifying the barriers that prevent domestic large-scale production.

Event Presenters

Bill Acker
Executive Director
New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST)
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Dave Howell
Acting Director and Principal Deputy Director
U.S. DOE Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC)
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Eric Shields
Senior Battery Advisor, Policy, Analysis, & Transition, ASD, Industrial Base Policy
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment (OUSD)
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Ben Shrager
Strategy Storage Engineer
U.S. DOE Office of Electricity
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