MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake has what it takes to be the hub of the Northwest’s clean energy technology, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, said at a press conference Thursday.

“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. What you're seeing is, in this whole area, guess what we have? We have ... a manufacturing workforce, we have a lot of land, we have cheap hydro and we have people who really understand energy technology.”

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.

“You guys were in the first wave of battery companies that we are seeing,” Granholm told the crowd. “But I have to tell you, although Moses Lake is creating this ecosystem where you have all of these battery companies coming, there's others happening across the country. 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 at Sila Nanotechnologies’ plant a few miles away for a round table discussion with local leaders. Both Sila and Group14 are the beneficiaries of $100 million grants from the US. Department of Energy to develop battery technology. 

The technology is still in its infancy, Cantwell told the Columbia Basin Herald after the conference, and the Moses Lake facilities are still a work in progress.

“We want Moses Lake to help the whole nation change the game in electric battery manufacturing,” she said. “We want to say it's not all about Chinese battery technology, and that the United States can innovate faster, implement it faster and get it to customers. That level of innovation is our competitive edge because we can innovate on those anodes and make them more effective. So if we're right about that, and DOE is right about that and Group14 and Sila are right about that, that will be a game changer in the United States. There will be more jobs here in Moses Lake than we can fill.”

“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.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at [email protected].

    Group14 CEO Rick Lubbe, right, talks with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on a tour of Group14’s facility Thursday.