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Energy

Battery Beginnings

Groundbreaking: Biden visits site of new Dow Kokam lithium ion battery plant to tout Recovery Act spending

by Melody Voith
June 21, 2010

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Credit: Dow
Vice President Joe Biden, center, and Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris, right, greet construction workers at the groundbreaking of the Dow Kokam advanced battery facility in Midland, Mich.
Credit: Dow
Vice President Joe Biden, center, and Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris, right, greet construction workers at the groundbreaking of the Dow Kokam advanced battery facility in Midland, Mich.

Vice President Joe Biden visited Midland, Mich., today to help break ground on a new Dow Kokam lithium ion battery production facility. Half of the cost of the first phase of the facility will be paid for with a $161 million grant from the Department of Energy, part of the spending from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Construction of the facility actually began last month, so the dignitaries on hand, including Biden, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew N. Liveris, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Dow Kokam CEO Ravi Shanker, symbolized the groundbreaking by lighting up several green lightning bolts.

In his remarks, Biden characterized the federal government's investment in the facility as "seed money" and an example of how Recovery Act spending will stimulate long-term economic growth. He said DOE is working to "dramatically change the way we produce and use energy" and that the Dow Kokam plant was part of an effort to "launch entirely new industries and create jobs in a virtuous cycle of innovation."

The plant will manufacture prismatic lithium ion battery cells and packs mainly for the transportation industry, with secondary uses in stationary utility storage and defense. The first phase will have a capacity of 600 million watt hours, equivalent to batteries for 30,000 fully-electric vehicles. According to Dow Kokam, the plant will come online in the first half of 2012 and employ 320 full-time workers. A second phase, scheduled to kick off in 2011, will double the size of the plant.

Dow Kokam was established in 2009 as a partnership between Dow; TK Advanced Battery, which owns a stake in the battery maker Kokam; and the French electric vehicle power systems firm Dassault. In addition to the federal funds, Dow Kokam received $180 million in tax incentives from the state of Michigan.

"The government seed money helped us catalyze this effort," Ravi Ramanathan, vice president of business and geographic development at Dow Kokam, tells C&EN. "This is a very capital intensive industry. When we talk about making batteries, it's not for the faint of heart," he observes.

Ramanathan notes that the investment has special meaning in a state hard hit by the economic crisis. "Living in Michigan, it's real when your neighbors are losing their jobs," he says. "It took a real partnership between local, state, and federal governments and companies like Dow and Kokam to make this happen."

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