Officials: Eastern Washington could be clean energy hub
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 years, 6 months AGO
U.S Secretary of Energy Jennifer Franholm speaks at Group14 in Moses Lake Feb. 22.
Courtesy photo/U.S. Department of Energy
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | April 7, 2024 1:00 AM
MOSES LAKE — Eastern Washington could be ground zero for clean energy, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, said Feb. 22.
“I think there’s going to be a corridor, from Moses Lake all the way over to Coeur d’Alene,” Cantwell said. “That’s what I think is gonna happen. And this corridor is also going to connect from Moses Lake to the Tri-Cities.”
Cantwell was speaking at Group14’s BAM-2 facility in Moses Lake, which is under construction and expected to be the largest advanced silicon battery material factory in the world when it opens later this year, according to company-supplied materials. Group14 manufactures silicon battery materials that can increase the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries like those found in both electric vehicles and smartphones, replacing less-efficient graphite, which must be imported from China.
“This new battery technology can power emission-free vehicles that will go farther, that will be the nation’s cheapest. If you think about our electricity supply here and the huge benefit that we have in Washington, it costs about the same to fully charge an EV in our state as it does to just buy one gallon of gasoline. And that’s even before the technology that’s going to come out of this facility. So that means you’re going to help deliver something that’s going to be even faster, and even more economical.”
Cantwell was joined by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who stressed the importance of American-made materials in battery technology.
“Although Moses Lake is creating this ecosystem where you have all of these battery companies coming, there’s others happening across the country,” Granholm said. You guys are making anodes, but we’re making cathodes in Tennessee. We’re making separator material in Indiana … We want all of the pieces in the United States, to be able to make sure that we are not relying upon countries whose values we may not share for a key component of our electricity energy source.”
Earlier that day, Cantwell and Granholm had joined Gov. Jay Inslee for a round table discussion with local leaders.
“Former Vice President Gore wrote ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’” Inslee said at the round table. “But there’s (also) a convenient truth, which is that our efforts to defeat climate change are creating jobs by the thousands. And to see this happening in Central Washington is such a joy. We’re now witnessing the largest industrial revolution since the transition from the horse to the automobile.”
“Vehicles now are becoming (able) to have a two-way conversation with the electric grid,” Granholm said. “So when you have a battery on your car and you can plug it in and it’s bidirectional charging, that means that battery can also give energy to your home or maybe to the grid, as well as pull energy from the grid. That is another form of resilience, that the technology that you are building here will enable the country to move forward.”
The technology is still in its infancy, Cantwell said.
“All of you are really becoming a testbed for next-generation energy technologies that are going to help our nation be competitive in the future of all sorts of innovation, but clearly the next opportunities in battery technology. So thank you for being pioneers.”
“We used to be, in the earlier part of the century, a nation that watched all of these manufacturing jobs go away,” Granholm said. “China bigfooted us on a lot of this technology, including on batteries and critical materials and processing of that. China processes 90% of the materials for batteries. And so the fact that we are bringing this capability back to the United States makes us a stronger nation … The U.S. is back, baby.”
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”