Bridging the Gap Between Battery Research and Technological Maturity
Bringing new battery technologies out of the lab and onto the grid requires careful collaboration between government agencies and private investors.
As the energy transition proceeds, batteries have emerged as a crucial technology for decarbonization. From mitigating the intermittency of renewable energy, to enabling electric transportation, this emergence has been made possible by improvements in the cost-competitiveness of energy storage through lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. Unfortunately, Li-ion technology faces energy density, storage duration, and safety issues that limit its effectiveness for certain important applications, like grid-scale storage and electric aviation.
Improvements in electrochemical energy storage may depend on fundamental scientific discoveries, but the long road to commercialization presents challenges.
At the 6th Annual AIChE Battery & Energy Storage Conference, held at New York University, invited speakers and panelists from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Breakthrough Energy (BE) addressed these challenges head-on. They highlighted gaps in funding for technological development, at which point success depends on funding from private industry. The panelists also emphasized that, in addition to research on novel battery chemistry and architecture, supply chain innovations can significantly improve the viability of existing technologies.
The DOE measures progress towards commercialization with the Technology Readiness Level (TRL), a scale from 1 to 9 that can be applied to any market-destined invention. The TRL continuum is segmented into research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D); each of which receive dedicated DOE funding. These funds provide the backbone for much of basic science research (as well as larger applied research projects), but they fail to address the entire path to commercialization.
Significant steps must be made between each phase of the RDD&D landscape without support from public funds, creating multiple common failure points known as “valleys of death.” These liminal phases are inevitable in technological evolution, and they spell doom for many capital-intensive climate tech startups. For batteries, this means new approaches that might one day rival Li-ion are unlikely to survive long enough to reach commercial scale.
Breakthrough Energy, Bill Gates’ clean energy organization, attempts to bridge the valleys of death by providing targeted funds at each stage. Through a philanthropic Fellows program focused on basic research, a for-profit Ventures arm that invests in post-demonstration startups, and a nonprofit Catalyst group for first-of-a-kind project finance, they provide a suite of funding opportunities that complement DOE’s existing programs. For innovations in battery science to have meaningful impacts, informal private-public partnerships like this one must be sustained for the extended period required by technology development.
Beyond the technology development and financing roadmap, panelists from DOE and BE also stressed that energy storage innovations cannot be confined to basic science. For example, improvements in lithium supply have rendered alternate battery chemistries (e.g., sodium-ion) less necessary, but creating a circular battery economy is an ever-present challenge. Research that focuses on battery-related processes rather than battery chemistry itself, like efficient lithium extraction and end-of-life recycling, deserves additional funding attention.
Moving forward, the discussions at the conference highlight the importance of leveraging complementary private and public funds. When both are used to support a single idea, funds should be provided for non-overlapping, independently measurable scopes of work to ensure both agencies can verify results, which requires ongoing dialogue between public and private organizations. It’s also important that private investors and commercial competition don’t prevent the publication of scientific results, upon which future progress in battery technology depends. By maximizing these partnerships and broadening the focus of energy storage research, policymakers can best support the growing clean energy ecosystem.
Colby Snyder
Undergraduate Seminar FellowColby Snyder is an undergraduate studying Physics and Chemical Engineering in the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research. Snyder was also a 2024 Undergraduate Student Fellow at the Kleinman Center.
