Report Offers Ways to Expand Mass. Battery Storage Innovation

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AMHERST, Mass. - A new report from UMass Amherst’s Clean Energy Extension, released on July 8, sees significant potential to accelerate Massachusetts’s emerging energy and battery energy storage (BES) innovation ecosystem. The report attributes much of the potential to the connections between the Commonwealth’s academic and private sectors.

Clean Energy Extension (CEE) produced the report, Creating Opportunity: Building a Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage Innovation Ecosystem, for the Mass. Clean Energy Center and the Mass. Department of Energy Resources. The authors analyzed a selection of academic institutions and industry groups and provide recommendations for fostering connections that will position the state as a global center of BES innovation, commercialization, and jobs creation.

The report is an outgrowth of a special Legislative Commission established in 2017 to consider means to enhance the success of energy storage entrepreneurship and business creation in Massachusetts. On behalf of the Commission, CEE surveyed Massachusetts energy storage stakeholders and national battery testing facilities. Researchers at six state colleges and universities and 13 commercial ventures were interviewed.

Among other recommendations, the report suggests the creation of a state leadership consortium for battery energy storage, networking opportunities, and the creation of a Massachusetts BES innovation ecosystem brand.

A longer article on the report is available online. The full report can be downloaded on the Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment website.