US gave Chicoms green battery tech
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) gave China the rights to a green battery capable of powering an entire house for decades which cost millions of tax dollars to develop, according to a new report.
Designed at a U.S. government lab near Seattle, the vanadium redox flow battery was manufactured by a company in Washington state called UniEnergy Technologies until last year, when a DOE license transfer effectively sealed its fate to a Chinese company.
The revelation comes from NPR, which investigated the matter in partnership with the Northwest News Network. They found that the DOE violated its own licensing policies.
“This is technology made from taxpayer dollars,” Joanne Skievaski, chief financial officer of Forever Energy, one of several U.S. companies that have been trying to obtain the license, told NPR. “It was invented in a national lab. [Now] it's deployed in China, and it's held in China. To say it's frustrating is an understatement.”
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This looks like a costly mistake. Those at the DOE responsible for this mistake should be held to account.
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