James Greenberger – NAATBatt

NAATBatt Restarts PowerTrip Programs at Rockwell Automation

Jim Greenberger — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 00:17:42 +0000

Last Thursday, NAATBatt revived its Member Site Visit Programs (now called PowerTrips) with a visit to the headquarters of Platinum member Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At PowerTrip programs, a NAATBatt member firm opens a manufacturing facility for tour by other NAATBatt members. During the tour, NAATBatt members have the opportunity to see exactly what the host member does and learn about its expertise.

Of course, networking is a big part of PowerTrips programs. Each PowerTrip features a networking lunch or dinner sponsored by the host member. These meals and breaks during the program allow attendees to get to know the host’s personnel and the personnel of other attendees and explore areas of common business interest. There is something about meeting industry colleagues during a hands-on manufacturing demonstration that spurs a lot more productive discussion than what occurs at a trade show exhibit booth. An amazing amount of business gets done during NAATBatt PowerTrip programs, both among attendees and the host and among attendees themselves.

The Rockwell PowerTrip program set a high bar for NAATBatt’s relaunch of the PowerTrip series. More than 40 NAATBatt member attendees toured several demonstration manufacturing lines and learned how Rockwell Automation technology improves the speed and efficiency of manufacturing processes. Attendees also heard presentations by senior Rockwell executives, including Rockwell Chairman and CEO, Blake Moret. The executive presentations covered a wide range of Rockwell interests from emerging manufacturing technology to workforce training. It was a very interesting and productive day.

Other highlights of the tour included a visit to Rockwell’s 71,800 square foot green roof and a reception atop Rockwell’s landmark Clock Tower, with a truly stunning view of Milwaukee and Lake Michigan. The reception was punctuated by what appeared to me to be numerous discussions and new business deals being formulated among NAATBatt member attendees.

The success and productivity of the Rockwell PowerTrip virtually ensures that NAATBatt will continue this program. If you did not join us in Milwaukee, you really missed something special. Don’t miss the next one.

If you are a Platinum level NAATBatt member and are interested in hosting a NAATBatt PowerTrip program, please contact Paula Szyper or Jim Greenberger. We hope to announce the next PowerTrip meeting soon.

In Defense of US Fuel Economy Standards

Jim Greenberger — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:04:40 +0000

I had dinner recently with a friend who is a money manager. He told me that he planned to buy stock in a major automobile company. He said that the stock had earnings of $2.00 per share. But that was because the company was making $3.00 per share on its sale of gasoline-powered cars and losing $1.00 per share on its sales of electric vehicles. With the incoming Trump administration set to loosen or eliminate the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, he figured that the company would soon be out of the EV manufacturing business and back to the $3.00 per share stock he thought it should be.

My friend may get his wish. Current CAFE standards require U.S. automakers to achieve an average fuel economy standard across their respective fleets of more than 50 miles per gallon by 2031. This requirement has been a major force in driving automobile company investment into electric vehicles. The CAFE standards essentially force automakers to invest in and produce electric vehicles in order to comply with the ever-tightening standard. During his campaign, President-Elect Trump referred to this as the “electric vehicle mandate” and vowed to end it.

The President-Elect’s desire to loosen or end the fuel economy standards is likely driven by his perception that fuel economy standards are intended to fight the problem of climate change, a marque issue of his political opponents. His assumption is correct, but only in part. The real problem the fuel economy standards address is not climate change–it is my friend the money manager.

Auto company executives are divided in their support of the fuel economy standards. They recognize that their companies would be more profitable if they were not investing in electric vehicles. But they also recognize that the electrification of most transportation is inevitable. It is where vehicle technology is headed for many reasons. Whether it will take three, five, ten or fifteen years to address the challenges of this new technology and produce profitable mass-market EV’s is as yet unknown. But those executives know where the technology is headed and know that the companies that dominate that technology will be the ones that dominate the automobile industry of the future.

The problem is that my money manager friend does not care. What he cares about, and what his clients care about, is what the price of the automobile company stock is this quarter. Whether earnings this quarter are $2.00 per share or $3.00 per share makes a big difference. This focus on short-term performance is not evil; my friend is a nice guy. It is a quirk–a defect–in the way capital markets are structured in the United States and much of the Western world. Capital markets if left on their own will overemphasize short-term business performance and underemphasize long-term business performance.

The most important purpose of the fuel economy standards is to address this defect in the capital markets. Properly understood, the billions of dollars that automobile companies are currently investing, and losing, in electric vehicles are a research and development expense. The point of the fuel economy standard is to force all companies to fund this R&D in next-generation automobile technology equally rather than engage in a race to the bottom to meet my money manager friend’s siren call for better short-term performance.

Electric vehicles are the future of the automobile industry. The companies that make the necessary, and to be sure expensive, R&D investments in electric vehicle technology today will own that industry tomorrow. My money manager friend will be quite content ten years from now to be investing in dominant Chinese automobile companies. But the 1.1 million Americans who work in the automobile industry today and their children cannot afford to be so dispassionate. If America wants to keep a domestic automobile industry, our companies must make the necessary R&D investments to keep it.

The US fuel economy standard is not an electric vehicle mandate. It is an R&D mandate. If the next administration believes that America will be better off cutting corporate R&D in the automobile industry rather than stimulating it, that administration might make my money manager friend a happy man. But it will ultimately make America and the American economy weaker.

Remarks of Jim Greenberger, Executive Director of NAATBatt, to the Korea-U.S. Advanced Industry & Clean Energy Partnership Meeting, April 25, 2023

Jim Greenberger — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 17:52:39 +0000

Good afternoon, Minister Lee, dear colleagues and new friends. My name is Jim Greenberger and I am the Executive Director of NAATBatt International. NAATBatt is an association of more than 300 companies and research institutions working to support the development, commercialization and manufacture of advanced battery technology in the North American market.

I am pleased to report that earlier this morning NAATBatt entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with three distinguished organizations from the Republic of Korea: the Korea Battery Industry Association, the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology and the Korea Electronics Technology Institute.

Under the Memorandum, all four organizations pledge to work together to promote friendly and profitable business relationships among our members. This cooperation will include facilitating meetings and networking among our member companies, cooperating in pre-competitive research for next-generation battery technologies, battery reuse and battery recycling, and developing common standards for battery safety.

The signing of the Memorandum is an important and positive step in relations between the United States and the Republic of Korea. But it is important to remember that it is but a small part of a much larger picture.

We meet today at the dawn of a new age of energy: The Age of the Electron. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, heat-based fuels have powered human society. For many reasons that is changing. In the future, human society will increasingly be powered by electrons not by heat. This transition is already taking place in vehicle technologies, aviation, medicine, computers, communications, consumer devices and even high energy weapons systems.

Battery technology will play a critical role in this new energy age. Properly understood, battery technology is simply a way to deliver an electron to any point in space, at any point in time.

As we are at the very beginning of this new age, we really do not know where this new electron-based technology will lead mankind. It is probably not for our generation to know. But our grandchildren will know better than we do, and our great-grandchildren will know better still.

The Memorandum we signed this morning and our meeting here today will not be long remembered. But what our grandchildren will remember is that at the beginning of the Age of the Electron their grandparents in the United States and their grandparents in Korea stood shoulder-to-shoulder and worked together to turn this new technology of electrochemical energy storage to the benefit of all their grandchildren. And much better legacy than that, none of us can hope for.

My thanks, again, Minister Lee, for your leadership in bringing us here together. NAATBatt looks forward to working with all our new friends in Korea for many years to come.

Testimony to Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling

Jim Greenberger — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 23:48:15 +0000

I had the honor of testifying on July 17 before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the subject of lithium-ion battery recycling in the United States. The Senate’s interest in the topic is timely, given NAATBatt’s just ended workshop on the same subject in Buffalo, New York. A copy of my oral testimony is reproduced below. The longer and more detailed written version of my testimony can be seen by clicking here:

Oral Remarks

Good morning Chairman Barrasso, Ranking Member Carper, and members of the Committee. My name is James Greenberger. I am the Executive Director of NAATBatt International, a trade association of about 120 corporations and research institutions working to promote advanced battery technology and the industries it will power in North America.

The subject of my testimony is the important role that recycling of lithium-ion batteries can play in developing new industry and supporting reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Advanced battery technology will be one of the most important technologies of the 21^st Century. Lithium-ion battery chemistry, which was invented in the United States, represents the most powerful new battery technology widely used in commerce today. Lithium-ion batteries not only power but enable electric vehicles, wearable and implantable medical devices, mobile robotics, consumer electronic devices, drones, the Internet of Things, high energy weapons and a variety of other, new electric devices.

Several new technologies will shape human society in the 21^st Century. Advanced battery technology will be but one of them. But advanced battery technology is unique in that it will enable many of those other technologies. Nations wanting leadership in those technologies will need a vibrant advanced battery industry within their borders.

For the United States to have a vibrant lithium-ion battery industry, it needs to ensure that U.S.-based manufactures have access to the energy materials and compounds needed to manufacture batteries. Few of those energy materials, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, are found in great quantities in the United States and almost none of the chemicals into which those energy materials must be processed to make batteries are manufactured here.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries used in the United States offers a partial solution to this supply chain problem. Recycling batteries can create a strategic reserve of battery materials, which can provide supply and some assurance of price stability to domestic manufacturers. Building a strong lithium-ion industry in the United States is critically important. Few other industries have the potential to create more jobs, both upstream and downstream of their immediate products, than advanced battery manufacturing. As we have long pointed out at NAATBatt: He who makes the batteries will one day make the cars.

Recycling high voltage lithium-ion batteries is also important for the environment and for public safety. Making lithium-ion battery cathode materials from recycled batteries can use as little as 18% as much energy, 23% as much water, and produce only 9% as much SOx emissions as producing those compounds from virgin materials.

Recycling high voltage lithium-ion batteries at the end of their useful lives also removes them from potential contact with incautious adults and curious children. A high voltage battery no longer powerful enough to power a car is still powerful enough to electrocute a human being. Recycling lithium-ion batteries is a matter of public safety as well as good environmental stewardship.

But recycling lithium-ion batteries in the United States has a major problem: It is impossible using current recycling technology to make money from recycling most lithium-ion batteries. The costs of shipping, storing and recycling those batteries is simply greater than the revenues to be made from selling the recycled materials. As a consequence fewer than 5% of lithium-ion batteries reaching the end of useful life are recycled in the United States today.

New recycling technologies, such as the direct recycling technology being developed at the Department of Energy’s new ReCell Center, may in time change this dynamic. But unless and until it does, the only way to recycle lithium-ion batteries will be to require consumers, directly or indirectly, to pay for the costs of recycling.

Electric vehicles and stationary energy storage of renewably generated electricity are powerful tools in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions. Imposing recycling costs on consumers, on top of the still expensive cost of lithium-ion batteries, will inevitably impact market demand and greenhouse gas mitigation efforts. It is essential that recycling costs be kept as low as possible.

I would respectfully recommend that the Committee consider four actions to protect U.S. economic competitiveness and greenhouse gas reduction efforts:

First, ensure that any program requiring the recycling of high voltage lithium-ion batteries be implemented on a consistent, nationwide basis.

Second, encourage environmental and transportation regulations that differentiate between sophisticated, high voltage lithium-ion batteries of the kind used in electric vehicles and the smaller, far less consistent lithium-ion batteries used in consumer devices.

Third, limit the export of used lithium-ion batteries in order to ensure a steady supply of battery materials to U.S. manufacturers; and

Fourth, fund more research into next generation technologies that may make recycling lithium-ion batteries safer, cheaper and, in time, hopefully, profitable.

Thank you for your attention.