Creating Opportunity: Advancing the Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage Innovation Ecosystem

An Online Symposium: Creating Opportunity: Advancing the Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage Innovation Ecosystem

On December 9, 2020, Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage (BES) leaders participated in an online working symposium entitled Creating Opportunity: Advancing the Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage Innovation Ecosystem, during which they envisioned opportunities, identified challenges, and created an action plan to advance and promote the Commonwealth's BES Innovation Ecosystem as a global center of BES activity and opportunity. See the symposium agenda here and full presentation slides from the symposium here.

See the full Symposium report and proposed next steps here: Leading the Charge: Accelerating the Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage Innovation Ecosystem, July 2021

 

BES Symposium Report Cover

Symposium Goals

The Symposium advanced planning in the following areas:

  • Specific steps we can take to strengthen the BES Innovation Ecosystem
  • How to address bottlenecks
  • Finding and expanding opportunities

The Opportunity

Massachusetts is emerging as a global hub of BES innovation and commercialization. Its BES Innovation Ecosystem is gaining momentum, coalescing around a nationally unmatched cluster of university research and spin-out innovation, entrepreneurship and incubation, start-up ventures and investors, corporate R&D, and aligned policies and markets.

Background

The Symposium is an outgrowth of the findings and recommendations of a series of studies by the UMass Amherst Clean Energy Extension (CEE), published in the 2019 report “Creating Opportunity: Building a Massachusetts Battery Energy Storage Innovation Ecosystem”. This study began as an initiative of the MA Legislature, and was funded by the MassCEC and DOER.

Steering Committee

In the Spring of 2020 the CEE convened a BES Innovation Ecosystem Steering Committee of industry, academic, and policy stakeholders. The CEE worked in collaboration with the Steering Committee to develop the Symposium agenda and convene stakeholders. Members of the Steering Committee are:

  • Fikile Brushett, MIT
  • Mike Condon, MassCEC
  • Jessica Duston, UMass Lowell
  • Natasha George, SomEV
  • Katie Geusz, Greentown Labs
  • Michael Hoff, NEC Energy Systems
  • Judith Judson, Ameresco
  • Galen Nelson, MassCEC
  • Alistair Pim, NECEC
  • Kavita Ravi, BlueWave Solar
  • Jeffrey Roy, MA State Representative
  • Mitch Tyson, NECEC
  • Loren Walker, UMass Amherst
  • Yan Wang, WPI

For more information or questions, contact John Fabel at the UMass Clean Energy Extension at johnfabel@umass.edu.