Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and CalCEF Galvanize California’s Battery Industry

May 29, 2012

CalCEF, which creates innovative financial products for the clean energy economy, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) today announced a partnership to launch CalCharge, a consortium uniting California’s emerging and established battery technology companies with critical academic and government resources. By bringing together the dozens of battery companies and institutions in California working on applications for consumer electronics batteries, electric/hybrid vehicle transportation and the electric grid, Berkeley Lab, CalCEF, along with other Bay Area academic institutions, aim to create a regional ecosystem for innovation in energy storage that will not only jumpstart a new era of battery technologies but also help ensure that U.S. companies succeed in this highly competitive environment.

“The next decade will be critical for this industry and this region,” said Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos. “With our highly regarded battery scientists and state-of-the-art equipment at Berkeley Lab, the CalCharge consortium will be able to leverage these resources to enable the development of battery solutions for electric transportation and other clean energy applications in California.”

CalCharge is a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership working to accelerate the timeline of energy storage commercialization and market adoption through technology assistance, workforce training and market education. Members will have access to Berkeley Lab’s world-class scientific facilities and personnel, including testing and diagnostics equipment not available to many start-up companies. CalCharge offers a streamlined and more affordable channel for Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and similar arrangements. These allow firms to access technical resources at the Lab, which will help scale battery innovations from the bench to the market.