£246m investment aims to make United Kingdom world leader in electric battery technology

UK to power industrial strategy with battery funding 'revolution'
Business Secretary to establish UK as world leader in battery technology
Author

24 July, 2017

Mr Clarke is expected to say that the Government's co-ordinated programme of battery funding competitions, dubbed the Faraday Challenge, "will - quite literally - power the automotive and energy revolution".

Later today Ofgem is expected to present new rules to govern this new energy system, created to make it easier for the next wave of "smart" appliances that can respond to fluctuations in power prices to increase or reduce demand.

The government has set aside £246 million in total to try to improve battery technology in the United Kingdom over the next four years.

The Faraday Challenge forms one of six key challenge areas that the Government, together with business and academia, has identified through its flagship Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) as being one of the UK's core industrial challenges, where research and innovation can help unlock markets and industries of the future in which the United Kingdom can become world-leading.

Richard Parry-Jones, newly appointed Chair of the Faraday Challenge Advisory Board said: "The power of the Faraday Challenge derives from the joining-up of all three stages of research from the brilliant research in the university base, through innovation in commercial applications to scaling up for production". This group will be responsible for undertaking research looking to address the key industrial challenges in developing battery storage technology in the UK. "To deliver the UK's low carbon economy we must consolidate and grow our capabilities in novel battery technology".

As part of the four-year project, a £45m Battery Institute will "bring the best minds and facilities together" to establish a centre for battery research to make the technology more accessible and affordable. Speaking at the Resolution Foundation in Birmingham, Clark is expected to comment on how battery research is a key pillar of the Industrial Strategy, along with other areas such as robotics, AI and space technology.

The most promising research completed by the Institute will be moved closer to the market through industrial collaborations led by Innovate UK.

"If every part of Britain is to prosper in the future we need to ensure that we have the right policies and institutions in place to drive the productivity-which is to say, the earning power-of the economy, and the people and places that make it up", said pun-laden Clark.

A three-month consultation earlier this year on an industrial strategy to increase United Kingdom productivity and growth attracted more than 1,900 written responses from businesses and organisations.

Sir Mark Walport, the Government's chief scientific adviser, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the aim of the Government's investment was to improve battery technology.


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