September 9, 2024, The US Department of Energy this week announced $125 million in funding for two energy innovation hub teams to provide the scientific foundation needed to seed and accelerate next generation technologies beyond today’s generation of lithium-ion batteries.

The two energy innovation hub teams receiving funding will be made up of scientists from several institutions and led by Argonne National Laboratory and Stanford University.

The teams will look for solutions that offer greater storage capacity, are safer, lower cost and are made with a diversity of materials.

“Emerging applications will require even greater energy storage capabilities, safer operation, lower costs, and diversity of materials to manufacture batteries,” said the DoE. “Meeting these challenges requires a better understanding of foundational battery and materials sciences to enable scalable battery designs with versatile and reversible energy storage capabilities beyond what is currently possible. Additional benefits may include mitigation of supply chain risks associated with the current generation of batteries.

The two Energy Innovation Hub teams are the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA) led by Argonne National Laboratory and the Aqueous Battery Consortium (ABC) led by Stanford University.