New funding for the Faraday Battery Challenge announced

Photo courtesy of Possessed Photography

An additional £211 million in funding has been announced the Faraday Battery Challenge at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). It will be used to further develop a UK battery technology industry that is high tech, high value and high skill.

Run by Innovate UK for UKRI, the Faraday Battery Challenge combines research and capability development at the Faraday Institution to: reduce battery weight and cost; increase energy and power; ensure reliability and recyclability; promote collaborative business-led innovation in the UK battery sector, along with development of the wider network and skills needed to manufacture batteries through Innovate UK; and support manufacturing scale-up and skills development at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) — the national battery manufacturing development facility.

Through Innovate UK, the Challenge has already supported over 140 organisations working throughout the UK and attracted over £400 million in co-investment to produce batteries that are increasingly sustainable, resilient, safer, lighter in weight, lower in cost, and offer higher performance.

The Challenge has enabled the Faraday Institution to unite 500 researchers across more than 25 universities to improve current and develop future battery technologies; and by 2021, the world-class UKBIC in Coventry had been built and opened — three years ahead of its nearest European competition. The UKBIC’s research and development funding has so far supported over 140 UK battery developers, working on more than 80 research and innovation projects, to successfully scale their products to market.

Tony Harper, a Faraday Battery Challenge director, said: “This new funding allows us to strengthen the foundation we have created by consolidating and building on the UK’s position to become a battery science superpower. We now have an opportunity to ensure that our national industrialisation infrastructure remains world leading in this fast-evolving critical ‘net zero’ technology.”

Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, chief executive of UKRI, said: “Advanced battery technology will play a central role in our lives and the economy, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, creating new jobs and opening up new opportunities. The Faraday Battery Challenge is at the forefront of the clean technology revolution, catalysing collaboration and innovation that will benefit society.

“This exciting work and the further investment announced today underlines the ways in which research and innovation can help to create a sustainable future while driving economic growth.”