DOE creates energy innovation hub to advance battery technology

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) created a new Energy Innovation Hubs, the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA), which will work to advance battery technology.

ESRA is led by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and co-led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). It brings together nearly 50 world-class researchers from three national laboratories and 12 universities to address the nation’s most pressing battery challenges. These challenges include safety, high-energy density, and long-duration batteries made from inexpensive, abundant materials.

ESRA’s main goal is to push the boundaries of energy storage science to drive technological innovation and strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness. It seeks to enable transformative discoveries in materials chemistry, gain a fundamental understanding of electrochemical phenomena at the atomic scale, and lay the scientific foundations for breakthroughs in energy storage technologies.

“The demand for high-performance, low-cost and sustainable energy storage devices is on the rise, especially those with potential to deeply decarbonize heavy-duty transportation and the electric grid,” Shirley Meng, ESRA director, said. ​“To achieve this, energy storage technology must reach levels of unprecedented performance, surpassing the capabilities of current lithium-ion technology. The key to making these transformative leaps lies in a robust research and development initiative firmly grounded in basic science.”

Meng is also the chief scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science and professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago

“ESRA creates an energy storage research ecosystem with the mission to rapidly innovate, shorten the time between basic discovery and technology development, and train the next-generation workforce,” Bryan McCloskey, ESRA deputy director for scientific thrusts and faculty engineer in the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division at Berkeley Lab, said.

Argonne is joined in the collaboration by 14 partners that are embedded in all aspects of ESRA. The ESRA partners are:

• Columbia University
• Duke University
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
• Princeton University
• UC San Diego
• UChicago
• University of Houston
• University of Illinois Chicago
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• University of Michigan
• Utah State University
• Xavier University

“ESRA will pave the way for innovative energy storage solutions that drive both U.S. prosperity and security,” Argonne Director Paul Kearns said. ​“As the lead laboratory for ESRA under the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Argonne takes pride in spearheading this collaborative effort that unites world-leading experts and taps the impressive scientific resources available in national labs and academia.”

The DOE is providing up to $62.5 million in funding for this initiative for up to five years.

“Cultivating a diverse workforce dedicated to safeguarding America’s energy resilience is key to ESRA’s mission,” Wei Wang, ESRA deputy director for crosscuts and director of the Energy Storage Materials Initiative at PNNL, said. ​“Through our strategic equity and inclusion initiatives, we plan to create a robust training ground for energy storage science from the undergraduate to postdoctoral levels.”

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