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His company is working on technology to increase battery storage and life while decreasing cost and weight. Research at the Testbeds will revolutionize e-transportation as we know it, said Jerry Schwartz (no relation to the CEI director), CEO of battery materials startup Ecellix. It’s a kind of open-access Willy Wonka factory that transforms ideas and innovations into next generation, clean-energy commodities. And a printing press can produce battery parts and solar panel arrays, thousands in a minute. A supercomputer can simulate a power grid. Inside the Clean Energy Testbeds there are devices that replicate the power of the sun. “They can come through and can scale more quickly, and reach the marketplace and partners more quickly,” said Daniel Schwartz, the CEI director. Housed inside a plain, former manufacturing plant next to University Village, the Clean Energy Testbeds give clients laboratory, computing and manufacturing capabilities, supported by UW experts.ĭaniel Schwartz is the CEI director, the Boeing-Sutter Professor of Chemical Engineering and an adjunct professor of materials science and engineering at the UW. “The Testbeds provide the bridge for those technologies to get over that first chasm from lab experiments to pilot demonstration,” said Rick Luebbe, CEO of Group14 Technologies, a battery materials company that continues to use the facility’s equipment to expand its technology platform. In 2013, as a complement to Inslee’s Clean Energy Fund, the UW established the Clean Energy Institute, a collaborative, interdisciplinary academic hub aimed at discovering new ways to harness clean, scalable and equitable energy solutions and to help industry partners bring these solutions to the marketplace.Īnd, with direct Clean Energy Fund investment in 2017, the UW opened the CEI’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds, a high-tech lab that has become a portal for researchers and industry partners to collaborate on clean energy solutions through cutting-edge technology, state-of-the-art materials development and scalable production techniques. Inslee has advocated for moving away from fossil fuels since he served in Congress, and pushed for investments in clean energy throughout his tenure as governor. This fertile ground for economic development and growth has been nurtured for more than two decades. “We are on the radar, both nationally and internationally,” Young said.

Young, who works for the state Department of Commerce, travels the world encouraging businesses large and small to learn what Washington has to offer: manufacturing capacity, advanced technology solutions, a skilled workforce and a history of leading-edge research and development anchored by the UW, Washington State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Jay Inslee’s evangelist for clean energy technologies.

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“The drivers of a modern economy are clean technologies,” said Brian Young, Gov. With abundant hydroelectricity, manufacturing capacity and a supportive state government, Washington’s economic future is staked, in part, to clean energy. Dennis Wise/University of WashingtonĪ clean energy revolution is under way in Washington state, and the University of Washington is well positioned to be its epicenter.įueled by increasing demand for new generations of solar cells and batteries - buoyed by investments from the Biden and Inslee administrations as part of efforts to reduce carbon emissions - the marketplace for these industries is being measured in the billions and trillions of dollars, experts say. Researchers from Ecellix are shown here conducting laboratory work in the UW’s Washington Clean Energy Testbed facility. Work happening at the UW’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds is revolutionizing battery technologies.

Wrise speakers bureau