Ralph’s resume reads like a laundry list of positions and accomplishments.  He was a past President of the Electrochemical Society. He was an advisor to most of the national laboratories working on advanced battery technology.  He published more than 110 articles and was awarded five patents.  And that barely scratches the surface.  Yet he was also one of the kindest, most decent and most humble men you could ever hope to meet.

Ralph’s most enduring impact on U.S. industry grew out of his article “Factors Affecting U.S. Production Decisions: Why Are There No Volume Lithium-Ion Battery Manufactures in the United States?” published in December 2006.  In that article, Ralph was the first to sound the alarm about the loss of lithium-ion battery manufacturing capability in the United States and the long-term consequences of that loss.

Over the past few years, federal and state governments have made unprecedented investments in electric vehicles and supply chain projects to try to help U.S. manufacturers and U.S. workers regain the lead in lithium-ion battery manufacturing. The revised Section 30D tax credit will inject about $7.5 billion of investment into U.S.-made electric vehicles.  The Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit should generate tax credits of about $30.6 billion to U.S. manufacturers through 2031.  An additional $13.8 billion of subsidies has been awarded by states and localities to at least 51 electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery plants.  Every single one of those investments can trace its origin to Ralph Brodd and his 2006 article.

I first met Ralph in 2007.  It was Ralph who convinced me to found NAATBatt in order to address the looming crisis of lithium battery technology in the United States.  That effort in turn caught the attention of a first-term Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.  The rest is history.

Now Ralph belongs to history.  He had more impact on it than many realize.  Our sincere condolences to Dorothy and to the rest of the Brodd family.  Ralph will be sorely missed.

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.

The program of the meeting continues to develop.  Monday will be the golf and tennis tournaments and tournament dinner.  Tuesday will see meetings of the Battery Recycling Committee, the Manufacturing in North America Committee, the Second Life Battery Committee and the Zinc Battery Committee.  The program in chief will start on Tuesday with annual reports about the state of the science and the state of the technology of advanced batteries by Chief Science Officer and Nobel laureate Stanley Whittingham and by Chief Technology Officer and former CTO of CATL, Bob Galyen.  The day will continue with reports by leading analysts about the outlook for business development in various sectors of the advanced battery market, including EV’s, ESS, cell, pack and electrode manufacturing, micro-mobility and beyond lithium-ion technologies.

Wednesday will see a discussion about just how constrained the supply of energy materials might be for North American lithium-based battery manufacturers.  That will be followed by presentations by the finalists in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Battery Recycling Prize Phase III competition.  The program on Wednesday will conclude with presentations by the winners of this year’s Top 10 New Battery Companies competition.  The winners for 2022, just recently announced, are: AM Batteries, Battery Resourcers, Lyten, LiCAP Technologies, South 8 Technologies, C4V iM3NY, Intecells, Solid Power, Pure Lithium, and OnTo Technology.  The NAATBatt annual dinner will be held on Wednesday evening and include presentation of the 2022 NAATBatt Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Thursday will include a panel of financiers and investment bankers talking about the alternatives for early stage battery companies to raise money, though venture investment, private family offices, SPAC’s and IPO’s.  That panel will be followed by another looking at new approaches to controlling lithium battery fire propagation risk.  The day will end with a tour of an ESS project run by Salt River Project located near the Wigwam Resort followed by a Farewell Reception.

Interspersed with regular program sessions on all days will be the Member Update Presentations.  Member Update Presentations are the hallmark of NAATBatt annual meetings.  Each NAATBatt member is encouraged to give a short talk during the meeting describing exactly what it does and highlighting its most important products and technologies.  These short talks have historically generated a large number of new business opportunities for the members that give them from new customers, suppliers and partners who, prior to the talk, did not really understand what the presenting member did.  NAATBatt is all about maximizing transparency in the North American advanced battery market and encouraging our members to do business with each other.  The annual Member Update Presentations are an important and surprisingly effective way of doing just that.

Finally, a word about the elephant in the room: Covid.  The last two weeks have been worrisome as infection rates have risen sharply around the country.  We take encouragement in recent news reports from South Africa noting a sharp if inexplicable fall in the rate of infections following several weeks of sharp, omicron-fueled increases.  There is some speculation that the United States is just a couple weeks behind South Africa.  Omicron may be burning itself out.  We will know for sure by the time of NAATBatt 2022.

But one thing we know for sure is that NAATBatt has been lucky with Covid in the past.  NAATBatt 2020 was held just a few weeks before the first wave of Covid shut down all trade shows and a good part of the economy.  I am hopeful that NAATBatt 2022 will dodge the same bullet a second time.  NAATBatt is committed to going forward with an in-person meeting in Arizona next February.  We will take all precautions necessary to maximize the safety of those who attend.  Please stay tuned to this newsletter for updates on exactly what those precautions will be.  But I hope and expect that by February the worst of Covid will be behind us and that we will all have the pleasure of meeting again in person at the Wigwam in Arizona.