The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China

This is the story of the former UniEnergy Technologies in Mukilteo, Wash. where Taxpayers spent $15 million on research to build a breakthrough battery. Then the U.S. government gave it to China -,yes then gave it away to China.

When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

“It was beyond promise,” said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. “We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected.”

It all began in the basement of a government lab, three hours southwest of Seattle, called Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It was 2006, and more than two dozen scientists began to suspect that a special mix of acid and electrolyte could hold unusual amounts of energy without degrading. They turned out to be right.

It took six years and more than 15 million taxpayer dollars for the scientists to uncover what they believed was the perfect vanadium battery recipe. Others had made similar batteries with vanadium, but this mix was twice as powerful and did not appear to degrade the way cellphone batteries or even car batteries do. The researchers found the batteries capable of charging and recharging for as long as 30 years.

An employee looks at a vanadium flow battery in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Battery Reliability Laboratory in 2021. Andrea Starr/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Gary Yang, the lead scientist on the project, said he was excited to see if he could make the batteries outside the lab. The lab encourages scientists to do just that, in an effort to bring critical new technology into the marketplace. The lab and the U.S. government still hold the patents, because U.S. taxpayers paid for the research.

In 2012, Yang applied to the Department of Energy for a license to manufacture and sell the batteries.

The agency issued the license, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies. He hired engineers and researchers. But he soon ran into trouble. He said he couldn’t persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard.

“I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries,” Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit.

Imre Gyuk (left), director of energy storage research in the Office of Electricity of the Department of Energy, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Gary Yang of UniEnergy Technologies stand together in 2015. Office of Gov. Jay Inslee

He said a fellow scientist connected him with a Chinese businessman named Yanhui Liu and a company called Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd., along with its parent company, and he jumped at the chance to have them invest and even help manufacture the batteries.

At first, UniEnergy Technologies did the bulk of the battery assembly in the warehouse. But over the course of the next few years, more and more of the manufacturing and assembling began to shift to Rongke Power, Chris Howard said. In 2017, Yang formalized the relationship and granted Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. an official sublicense, allowing the company to make the batteries in China.

Any company can choose to manufacture in China. But in this case, the rules are pretty clear. Yang’s original license requires him to sell a certain number of batteries in the U.S., and it says those batteries must be “substantially manufactured” here.

In an interview, Yang acknowledged that he did not do that. UniEnergy Technologies sold a few batteries in the U.S., but not enough to meet its requirements. The ones it did sell, including in one instance to the U.S. Navy, were made in China. But Yang said in all those years, neither the lab nor the department questioned him or raised any issues.

Chris Howard is now the director of operations at Forever Energy in Bellevue, Wash. Jovelle Tamayo for NPR

Then in 2019, Howard said, UniEnergy Technologies officials gathered all the engineers in a meeting room. He said supervisors told them they would have to work in China at Rongke Power Co. for four months at a time.

“It was unclear, certainly to myself and other engineers, what the plan was,” said Howard, who now works for Forever Energy.

Yang acknowledges that he wanted his U.S. engineers to work in China. But he says it was because he thought Rongke Power could help teach them critical skills.

Yang was born in China but is a U.S. citizen and got his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut. He said he wanted to manufacture the entire battery in the U.S., but that the U.S. does not have the supply chain he required. He said China is more advanced when it comes to manufacturing and engineering utility-scale batteries.

“In this field — manufacturing, engineering — China is ahead of the U.S.,” Yang said. “Many wouldn’t believe [it].”

He said he didn’t send the battery and his engineers abroad to help China. He said the engineers in that country were helping his UniEnergy Technologies employees and helping him get his batteries built.

But news reports at the time show the moves were helping China. The Chinese government launched several large demonstration projects and announced millions of dollars in funding for large-scale vanadium batteries.

As battery work took off in China, Yang was facing more financial trouble in the U.S. So he made a decision that would again keep the technology from staying in the U.S.

The EU has strict rules about where companies manufacture products

In 2021, Yang transferred the battery license to a European company based in the Netherlands. The company, Vanadis Power, told NPR it initially planned to continue making the batteries in China and then would set up a factory in Germany, eventually hoping to manufacture in the U.S., said Roelof Platenkamp, the company’s founding partner.

Vanadis Power needed to manufacture batteries in Europe because the European Union has strict rules about where companies manufacture products, Platenkamp said.

“I have to be a European company, certainly a non-Chinese company, in Europe,” Platenkamp said in an interview with NPR.

Gary Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies after the Department of Energy issued him a license to manufacture and sell the vanadium batteries. Jovelle Tamayo for NPR

But the U.S. has these types of rules, too. Any transfer of a U.S. government license requires U.S. government approval so that manufacturing doesn’t move overseas. The U.S. has lost significant jobs in recent years in areas where it first forged ahead, such as solar panels, drones and telecom equipment. Still, when UniEnergy requested approval, it apparently had no trouble getting it.

On July 7, 2021, a top official at UniEnergy Technologies emailed a government manager at the lab where the battery was created. The UniEnergy official said they were making a deal with Vanadis, according to emails reviewed by NPR, and were going to transfer the license to Vanadis.

“We’re working to finalize a deal with Vanadis Power and believe they have the right blend of technical expertise,” the email from UniEnergy Technologies said. “Our transaction with Vanadis is ready to go pending your approval …”

The government manager responded that he needed confirmation before transferring the license and emailed a second employee at UniEnergy. The second employee responded an hour and a half later, and the license was transferred to Vanadis Power.

Whether the manager or anyone else at the lab or Department of Energy thought to check during that hour and a half or thereafter whether Vanadis Power was an American company, or whether it intended to manufacture in the U.S., is unclear. Vanadis’ own website said it planned to make the batteries in China.

In response, department officials said they review each transfer for compliance and said that new rules put in place last summer by the Biden administration will close loopholes and keep more manufacturing here.

But agency officials acknowledged that its reviews often rely on “good faith disclosures” by the companies, which means if companies such as UniEnergy Technologies don’t say anything, the U.S. government may never know.

Joanne Skievaski said she and others from the company repeatedly warned Department of Energy officials that the UniEnergy license was not in compliance. Jovelle Tamayo for NPR

That’s a problem that has plagued the department for years, according to government investigators.

In 2018, the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Energy lacked resources to properly monitor its licenses, relied on antiquated computer systems, and didn’t have consistent policies across its labs.

In this case, it was an American company, Forever Energy, that raised concerns about the license with UniEnergy more than a year ago. Joanne Skievaski said she and others from the company repeatedly warned department officials that the UniEnergy license was not in compliance. In emails NPR has reviewed, department officials told them it was.

“How is it that the national lab did not require U.S. manufacturing?” Skievaski asked. “Not only is it a violation of the license, it’s a violation to our country.”

Now that the Department of Energy has revoked the license, Skievaski said she hopes Forever Energy will be able to acquire it or obtain a similar license. The company plans to open a factory in Louisiana next year and begin manufacturing. She bristles at the idea that U.S. engineers aren’t up to the challenge.

“That’s hogwash,” she said. “We are ready to go with this technology.”

Still, she says it will be difficult for any American company at this point to catch up. Industry trade reports currently list Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. as the top manufacturer of vanadium redox flow batteries worldwide. Skievaski also worries about whether China will stop making the batteries once an American company is granted the right to start making them.

That may be unlikely. Chinese news reports say the country is about to bring online one of the largest battery farms the world has ever seen. The reports say the entire farm is made up of vanadium redux flow batteries.

This story is a partnership with NPR’s Station Investigations Team, which supports local investigative journalism, and the Northwest News Network, a collaboration of public radio stations that broadcast in Oregon and Washington state.

New way to pull lithium from water could increase supply, efficiency

Lithium extraction. Credit: The University of Texas at Austin.

Anyone using a cellphone, laptop or electric vehicle depends on lithium. The element is in tremendous demand. And although the supply of lithium around the world is plentiful, getting access to it and extracting it remains a challenging and inefficient process.

An interdisciplinary team of engineers and scientists is developing a way to extract lithium from contaminated water. New research, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, could simplify the process of extracting lithium from aqueous brines, potentially create a much larger supply and reduce costs of the element for batteries to power electric vehicles, electronics and a wide range of other devices. Currently, lithium is most commonly sourced from salt brines in South America using solar evaporation, a costly process that can take years and loses much of the lithium along the way.

The research team from The University of Texas at Austin and University of California, Santa Barbara designed membranes for precise separation of lithium over other ions, such as sodium, significantly improving the efficiency of gathering the coveted element.

“The study’s findings have significant implications for addressing major resource constraints for lithium, with the potential to also extract it from water generated in oil and gas production for batteries,” said Benny Freeman, a professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin and a co-author on the paper.

Beyond salt brines, wastewater generated in oil and gas production also contains lithium but remains untapped today. Just a single week’s worth of water from hydraulic fracturing in Texas’s Eagle Ford Shale has the potential to produce enough lithium for 300 electric vehicle batteries or 1.7 million smartphones, the researchers said. This example shows the scale of opportunities for this new technique to vastly increase lithium supply and lower costs for devices that rely on it.

At the heart of the discovery is a novel polymer membrane the researchers created using crown ethers, which are ligands with specific chemical functionality to bind certain ions. Crown ethers had not previously been applied or studied as integral parts of water treatment membranes, but they can target specific molecules in water—a key ingredient for lithium extraction.

In most polymers, sodium travels through membranes faster than lithium. However, in these new materials, lithium travels faster than sodium, which is a common contaminant in lithium-containing brines. Through computer modeling, the team discovered why this was happening. Sodium ions bind with the crown ethers, slowing them down, while lithium ions remain unbound, enabling them to move more quickly through the polymer.

The findings represent a new frontier in membrane science that required above-and-beyond collaboration between the universities in such areas as polymer synthesis, membrane characterization and modeling simulation. The research was supported as part of the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems, an Energy Frontier Research Center at UT Austin funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The lead authors of the paper are Samuel J. Warnock of UCSB’s Materials Department and Rahul Sujanani and Everett S. Zofchak from the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin. Other contributors are, from UT Austin, professors Venkat Ganesan and Freeman and researchers Theodore J. Dilenschneider; and from UCSB, Chemical Engineering assistant professor Chris Bates, Chemistry professor Mahdi Abu-Omar, and researchers Kalin G. Hanson, Shou Zhao and Sanjoy Mukherjee.

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Hydrogen truck player Hyzon is going public at $2.7 billion valuation

Hyzon Motors, the hydrogen fuel cell truck and bus startup, is going public via reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

Driving the news: Hyzon is merging with Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp. in a deal that values the New York-based startup at $2.7 billion.

Why it matters: The 2020 craze of electric and hydrogen transportation startups going public is continuing in 2021.

• And it’s the latest sign of investors betting on commercial fleet buyers to eventually buy lots and lots of electric and hydrogen-powered big trucks.

The details: The deal will provide the company with $626 million in proceeds to fuel its expansion, the announcement states.

• New and existing investors include BlackRock, Federated, Fidelity, Wellington and Riverstone Energy Limited.
• It comes after the multinational oil-and-gas giant Total SE invested in Hyzon last year.
• Hyzon CEO Craig Knight said heavy truck deliveries to customers in Europe and North America will begin later this year.

Catch up fast: Hyzon said last fall that it plans to deliver several thousand fuel cell trucks and buses over the next three years from its facilities in North America, Europe and Asia.

• The company, a spinoff out of Singapore-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, said at the time it had roughly 400 trucks and buses on the roads.

The big picture: Via Bloomberg, which reported a few days ago that the Hyzon SPAC deal was coming…

• “According to Bloomberg NEF, fuel-cell vehicles could capture as much as 30% of bus-fleet volume globally by 2050 and as much as 75% of heavy-vehicle fleets, with growth driven primarily by demand from China and the European Union.”

More Reading: Trucking into the hydrogen era

 

NextEra Energy to Build Its First Green Hydrogen Plant in Florida

The emerging green hydrogen market could open new opportunities for NextEra to use its renewable power.

 

Largest U.S. renewables generator “really excited” about green hydrogen, reveals plans for $65 million pilot plant for Florida Power & Light.

NextEra Energy is closing its last coal-fired power unit and investing in its first green hydrogen facility.

Through its Florida Power & Light utility, NextEra will propose a $65 million pilot in the Sunshine State that will use a 20-megawatt electrolyzer to produce 100 percent green hydrogen from solar power, the company revealed on Friday.

The project, which could be online by 2023 if it receives approval from state regulators, would represent the first step into green hydrogen for NextEra Energy, by far the largest developer and operator of wind, solar and battery plants in North America.

“We’re really excited about hydrogen, in particular when we think about getting not to a net-zero emissions profile but actually to a zero-emissions carbon profile,” NextEra Energy CFO Rebecca Kujawa said on Friday’s earnings call.

“When we looked at this five or 10 years ago and thought about what it would take to get to true zero emissions, we were worried it was extraordinarily expensive for customers,” Kujawa said.

“What makes us really excited about hydrogen — particularly in the 2030 and beyond timeframe — is the potential to supplement a significant deployment of renewables [and energy storage]. That last amount of emissions you’d take out of the system to get down to zero could be most economically served by hydrogen.”

Green hydrogen plans taking off around the world

Although still in its infancy as a market, the concept of green hydrogen is rapidly catching on globally as a potentially viable way to fully decarbonize energy systems, taking them beyond where simple renewable power generation alone can go even at very high penetrations.

The green hydrogen produced by Florida Power & Light’s electrolyzers would be used to replace a portion of the natural gas that’s consumed by the turbines at FPL’s existing 1.75-gigawatt Okeechobee gas-fired plant, Kujawa said. The electricity will come from solar power that would otherwise have been “clipped,” or gone unused.

If the hydrogen economy scales up and green hydrogen becomes economic, Florida Power & Light would likely retrofit some of its gas facilities to run wholly or partially on hydrogen, Kujawa said.

Most of the vast quantities of hydrogen produced globally today use fossil fuels as a feedstock, generating substantial emissions in the process. In contrast, green hydrogen is made using renewables to power the electrolysis of water, throwing off no CO2 emissions.

Whichever way it’s produced, hydrogen can be used for a variety of purposes, from swapping in for natural gas in thermal power plants to powering fuel cells used to move cars and ships. (For more background, read GTM’s green hydrogen explainer.)

The EU recently set a target of installing 40 gigawatts of electrolyzers within its borders by 2030 to produce green hydrogen, as it charts a path to net-zero.

Air Products, the world’s leading hydrogen producer, recently announced a massive green hydrogen plant to be built in Saudi Arabia, powered by 4 gigawatts of wind and solar. And last week California-based fuel-cell maker Bloom Energy sent its shares soaring by announcing its launch into the commercial hydrogen market.

For NextEra, hydrogen represents not only an opportunity to help decarbonize its FPL utility but also a potential new market for the wind and solar power it generates across North America.

NextEra will start with the same “toe in the water” approach it took with solar and batteries, Kujawa said. “While the investments are expected to be small in the context of our overall capital program, we are excited about the technology’s long-term potential, which should further support future demand for low-cost renewables as well as accelerating the decarbonization of transportation fuel and industrial feedstocks.”

Florida Power & Light’s push into green hydrogen comes just weeks after the utility announced it plans to exit its 847-megawatt portion of Georgia’s Plant Scherer, the largest operating coal-fired power plant in the U.S. — and the last remaining coal unit in NextEra’s portfolio.

CEO Robo’s thoughts on the election

NextEra CEO Jim Robo was asked on the earnings call what impact could come from November’s election, with Joe Biden pledging to push policies aimed at fully decarbonizing the U.S. power supply by 2035 and the Democratic platform promising a near-term surge of renewables.

NextEra will be “positioned really well regardless of who wins in November,” Robo said.

“You can remember back close to four years ago … there was some turmoil around our stock when President Trump was elected. We’ve managed to completely be fine under this administration in terms of being able to continue to grow our renewable business, because you know: it’s all about economics.”

“The time for renewables is now and that kind of transcends politics, frankly,” Robo said. “Obviously, we watch [political outcomes] closely. We think good clean energy policy is important and the right policy for America in the future.”

What if Green Energy Isn’t the Future?

A gas-filtration system atop a well, managed by Anadarko in Pennsylvania, Sept. 8, 2012.Photo: Robert Nicklesberg /Getty Images

What’s Warren Buffett doing with a $10 billion bet on the future of oil and gas, helping old-school Occidental Petroleum buy Anadarko, a U.S. shale leader? For pundits promoting the all-green future, this looks like betting on horse farms circa 1919.

Meanwhile, broad market sentiment is decidedly bearish on hydrocarbons. The oil and gas share of the S&P 500 is at a 40-year low, and the first quarter of 2019 saw the Nasdaq Clean Edge Green Energy Index and “clean tech” exchange-traded funds outperform the S&P.

A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor or policy maker joining the headlong rush to pledge or demand a green energy future.

Some 100 U.S. cities have made such promises. Hydrocarbons may be the source of 80% of America’s and the world’s energy, but to say they are currently out of favor is a dramatic understatement.

Yet it’s both reasonable and, for contrarian investors, potentially lucrative to ask: What happens if renewables fail to deliver?

The prevailing wisdom has wind and solar, paired with batteries, adding 250% more energy to the world over the next two decades than American shale has added over the past 15 years.

Is that realistic? The shale revolution has been the single biggest addition to the world energy supply in the past century. And even bullish green scenarios still see global demand for oil and gas rising, if more slowly.

Q: If the favored alternatives fall short of delivering what growing economies need, will markets tolerate energy starvation? Not likely. Nations everywhere will necessarily turn to hydrocarbons.

And just how big could the call on oil and natural gas—and coal, for that matter—become if, say, only half as much green-tech energy gets produced as is now forecast? Keep in mind that a 50% “haircut” would still mean unprecedented growth in green-tech.

If the three hydrocarbons were each to supply one-third of such a posited green shortfall, global petroleum output would have to increase by an amount equal to doubling the production of the Permian shale field (Anadarko’s home). And the world supply of liquid natural gas would need to increase by an amount equal to twice Qatar’s current exports, plus coal would have to almost double what the top global exporter, Australia, now ships.

Green forecasters are likely out over their skis. All the predictions assume that emerging economies—the least wealthy nations—will account for more nearly three-fourths of total new spending on renewables. That won’t happen unless the promised radical cost reductions occur.

For a bellwether reality-check, note that none of the wealthy nations that are parties to the Paris Accord—or any of the poor ones, for that matter—have come close to meeting the green pledges called for. In fact, let’s quote the International Energy Agency on what has actually happened: “Energy demand worldwide [in 2018] grew by . . . its fastest pace this decade . . . driven by a robust global economy . . . with fossil fuels meeting nearly 70% of the growth for the second year running.”

The reason? Using wind, solar and batteries as the primary sources of a nation’s energy supply remains far too expensive. You don’t need science or economics to know that. Simply propose taking away subsidies or mandates, and you’ll unleash the full fury of the green lobby.

Meanwhile, there are already signs that the green vision is losing luster. Sweden’s big shift to wind power has not only created alarm over inadequate electricity supplies; it’s depressing economic growth and may imperil that nation’s bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics. China, although adept at green virtue-signaling, has quietly restarted massive domestic coal-power construction and is building hundreds of coal plants for emerging economies around the world.

In the U.S., utilities, furiously but without fanfare, have been adding billions of dollars of massive oil- and natural-gas-burning diesel engines to the grid. Over the past two decades, three times as much grid-class reciprocating engine capacity has been added to the U.S. grid as in the entire half-century before. It’s the only practical way to produce grid-scale electricity fast enough when the wind dies off. Sweden will doubtless be forced to do the same.

A common response to all of the above: Make more electric cars. But mere arithmetic reveals that even the optimists’ 100-fold growth in electric vehicles wouldn’t displace more than 5% of global oil demand in two decades. Tepid growth in gasoline demand would be more than offset by growing economies’ appetites for air travel and manufactured goods. Goodness knows what would happen if Trump-like economic growth were to take hold in the rest of the developed world. As Mr. Buffett knows, the IEA foresees the U.S. supplying nearly three-fourths of the world’s net new demand for oil and gas.

Green advocates can hope to persuade governments—and thus taxpayers—to deploy a huge tax on hydrocarbons to ensure more green construction. But there’s no chance that wealthy nations will agree to subsidize expensive green tech for the rest of the world.

And we know where the Oracle of Omaha has placed a bet.

Re-Posted from the Wall Street Journal – Mr. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a partner in Cottonwood Venture Partners, an energy-tech venture fund, and author of the recent report, “The ‘New Energy Economy’: An Exercise in Magical Thinking.”

 

Israeli and Australian scientists come up with a fast and efficient method of producing graphene

Researchers at the Israeli Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and University of Western Australia have designed a new process for creating few-layer graphene for use in energy storage and other material applications that is faster, potentially scalable and surmounts some of the current graphene production limitations.

The new one-step, high-yield generation process is based on an ultra-bright lamp-ablation method and has succeeded in synthesizing few-layer (4-5) graphene in relatively high yields. It involves a novel optical system (originally invented by BGU professors) that reconstitutes the immense brightness within the plasma of high-power xenon discharge lamps at a remote reactor, where a transparent tube filled with simple, inexpensive graphite is irradiated. The process is considered fast, safe and green (free of any toxic substances – just graphite plus concentrated light).

The BGU-UWA team is now planning an experimental program to scale up this initial success toward improving the volume and rate at which few-layer (and eventually single-layer) graphene can be synthesized.

U of Wisonsin-Madison: Researchers Invent a Metal-Free Fuel Cell: Molecular vs. ‘Solid’ Catalyst: Why that’s Important

The development of fuel cell technology has been hamstrung by the need for expensive and difficult-to-manufacture catalysts like platinum, rhodium or palladium. But a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe they’ve found an ingenious alternative that employs a molecular, rather than solid, catalyst.

A fuel cell generates electricity from chemicals by reacting hydrogen and oxygen at its anode and cathode, respectively. Specifically, a catalyst at the anode oxidizes the hydrogen fuel to create free electrons and charged ions. The ions pass through the electrolyte while the electrons pass through a separate wire (to drive an electronic device) and the two recombine in the cathode with oxygen to create water or CO2.

The team, led by Professor Shannon Stahl and lab scientist James Gerken, noticed that the aerobic oxidation reactions they had studied in their previous work closely mimicked the oxygen reaction in fuel cells. To see if this aerobic reaction could work as a fuel cell, they built one using a catalyst composed of nitroxyl and nitrogen oxide molecules to react with its electrode and oxygen. “While this catalyst combination has been used previously in aerobic oxidations, we didn’t know if it would be a good fuel cell catalyst,” Stahl said in a statement. “It turns out that it is the most effective molecular catalyst system ever reported.”

The results are more than impressive. “This work shows for the first time that molecular catalysts can approach the efficiency of platinum,” Gerken continued. “And the advantage of molecules is that you can continue to modify their structure to climb further up the mountain to achieve even better efficiency.”