Carolina Public Press - North Carolina is establishing itself as an indispensable loop on the so-called “battery belt” of southeastern states.
Forge Battery’s gigafactory in Morrisville was already under construction — and set to be operational by 2026 — when the company received a $100 million grant from the Department of Energy through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The company doesn’t expect that a Trump presidency will impact their access to that funding, Forge Battery spokesperson Will McKenna told Carolina Public Press on Friday.
The initial target for the lithium-ion batteries manufactured by Forge Battery in Morrisville was one gigawatt hour. The additional $100 million will allow the company to produce at three times that capacity.
“The Department of Energy saw that we have oversubscribed demand for the batteries that we’ll be producing here, and so they are funding an expansion to three gigawatt hours,” McKenna said.
“We had confidence in our ability to expand that facility to serve the US markets with a US-built lithium-ion battery coming out of North Carolina.”
According to Matt Abele, executive director of the NC Clean Energy Association, the transition to clean energy is creating a huge bump in domestic manufacturing. “The concern about losing jobs overseas is unfounded,” Abele told CPP. “We’re seeing sort of an opposite effect of the clean energy transition.”
The project is slated to create 280 permanent jobs. Two hundred of those will be manufacturing, while the other 80 will be highly skilled, technical positions.
According to McKenna, Colorado-based Forge Nano— Forge Battery’s parent company — is not sharing salary information for these jobs yet. Because the company received $3.2 million in incentive grants from the state, it has to pledge certain salary levels over a designated period.
“The Forge Battery facility is a really good example of a public-private partnerships,” McKenna said. “Significant private investments were made in this massive facility — a gigafactory — for new battery production.
“Those private funds being matched with federal and state funding helps further incentivize manufacturing here in the state of North Carolina, which is already top of the class in regional attractiveness.”
This federal investment in Wake County’s clean energy economy comes at time when another major battery storage project was just announced to the east in Edgecombe County. Toyota operates a battery manufacturing plant to the west in Randolph County as well. Facilities that produce the supplies used by these factories pepper the state as well, creating a kind of self-sufficient supply chain in North Carolina.
Abele cites the low cost of living, robust university systems, forward-thinking policies, and the “brain trust” of the Research Triangle as reasons why clean energy companies are flocking to North Carolina.
“The last piece of the puzzle is having elected officials here in the state (who) work incredibly hard and collaboratively between the governor’s office, legislative leadership and economic development partnerships,” Abele said.
“They are all focused on creating an environment that is conducive to recruiting new investments in clean energy manufacturing by providing the right incentives, and by marketing and promoting the state in a way that is attractive to these companies.”
US Rep. Deborah Ross, D-Raleigh, advocated for the DOE to send this money to Forge Nano. She, US Sen. Tom Tillis, R-Cornelius, and others wrote a letter to DOE in June asking them to approve the grant. According to Ross, the company wrote a very compelling grant application.
The company will be working with community colleges Wake Tech and NC Central on workforce development curriculum. They are dividing $700,000 of the $100 million grant amongst their 11 community partners in Wake and nearby companies.
“Forge has said that they would respect workers’ rights, which not everybody in North Carolina does,” Congresswoman Ross told CPP. “They will pledge neutrality in labor organizing, and pursue a community benefits agreement with local partners through the creation of a community advisory board.”
Construction of the facility will create 550 temporary jobs.
“Today, the building is a shell — just four walls,” McKenna said. “With the new funding, the facility will require additional construction to expand. We’re building a second floor and adding an adjacent building to accommodate the increase in production capacity.”
Electric vehicles like Teslas run on lithium-ion batteries, but those manufactured by Forge Battery in Morrisville will have non-consumer applications: aerospace, national defense, heavy trucking, and off-road vehicles. Think high-performance electric snowmobiles for government use.
“We do not in the US produce enough of these large-scale batteries,” Ross said. “The idea is that you produce energy through wind or solar — maybe at a time when it’s less expensive — and then store that electricity in a battery for use in an emergency or defense situation.”
The facility is set to be at full production capacity by 2030.
