It’s easy for the historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—touted as the nation’s most significant climate legislation—to overshadow last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). But the BIL offers considerable game-changing funding opportunities for transmission, electric vehicle (EV) charging networks, and domestic battery manufacturing.
Washington state benefited from the BIL on October 19, 2022, when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded $2.8 billion to 20 recipients, two of which are located in the Evergreen state. The money is designed to boost domestic production of batteries and critical minerals used in electric vehicles.
The recipients were chosen by a White House committee coordinated by the DOE, which said this portfolio of projects is meant to support “new, retrofitted, and expanded commercial-scale domestic facilities to produce battery materials, processing, and battery recycling and manufacturing demonstrations.”
The two Washington projects received $100 million each. Both projects focus on manufacturing the anode component of a battery and plan to build new manufacturing facilities in Moses Lake, Washington.
The first recipient, Group14 Technologies Inc., is based in Woodinville, WA and manufactures a silicon-carbon composite called SCC55™ that can displace graphite in lithium battery anodes, a key component of EV batteries, as well as other electronics. Group14 states that SCC55™ can achieve a 50% increase in energy density compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries, which results in per-unit reductions in both cost and carbon emissions.
Group14 will contribute $223 million of its own funds and plans to hire 300 employees to construct the plant and an additional 200 employees to ramp up and sustain production.
The second recipient is California-based Sila Nanotechnologies, which plans to renovate a 600,000 square foot facility in Moses Lake that they purchased in May of this year to produce silicon anode materials. Sila expects anode material production to begin in 2025 and reach full capacity by 2026. The company projects that at full capacity, it will produce enough materials to power 200,000 EVs, which would make Sila’s plant the largest silicon anode production facility in the world. Mercedes-Benz is Sila’s first commercial customer.
Sila will invest $300 million in addition to the $100 million grant from DOE. The company plans to hire 150-300 technologists and is working with local high schools, vocational training programs, and community colleges to recruit and train talented individuals.
Moses Lake in Grant County, WA emerged as an agricultural center after the Columbia Basin Project started diverting water from the Columbia River in the early 1950s, creating fertile cropland out of previously arid land. Aviation was another economic driver in Grant County, with roots in a United States Army training airfield during World War II.
More recently, Grant County has been attracting technology manufacturing companies, drawn by available land, water, and cheap electricity produced by the region’s dams. One of these companies, REC Silicon, produces polysilicon and silicon gases used in solar and electronics industries, including Sila and Group14 silicon anode manufacturing. Though REC’s Moses Lake facility has been closed since 2019, they plan to restart production in 2023.
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash), a strong supporter of expanding clean energy tax incentives, said, “These two cutting-edge companies will not only use domestically sourced materials to make electric vehicles more affordable, they will be creating hundreds of high paying jobs that will help transform Moses Lake into an epicenter of clean energy manufacturing.”
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