The Department of Defense will establish an energy storage systems campus aimed at accelerating the transition and development of next generation batteries to support an enlarged domestic capacity for critical materials.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization office, selected the University of Texas at Dallas for the three-year, $30 million project, DOD said Monday.
Establishing the campus is among DOD initiatives under the Scaling Capacity and Accelerating Local Enterprises program, which was launched to drive commercial investment and create sustainable technology markets to support national security efforts.
“The SCALE initiative is built on robust research that indicates market pull is needed to transition innovative technologies into new domestic industrial base capability and capacity,” said Laura Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy. “Our approach of aggregating demand across national security and commercial markets will generate that market pull, drastically reducing timelines to transition and scale emerging technologies.”
The energy storage systems campus has three complementary objectives. Aside from the earlier mentioned goal of advancing next-gen battery development and production, it seeks to optimize current lithium ion-based battery performance and ensure the availability of battery’s raw materials.
It is expected to stimulate more than $200 million in private capital and bring together businesses, universities and trade schools to generate jobs and upskill domestic workforce.
