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Bill Gates backs Battery Built for Clean Energy
By Emily Holt
May 21, 2011
TechFlash
Bill Gates has invested in an innovative battery company that could help replace wind and solar power's reliance on natural gas plants.
Gates learned about the company in a lecture by professor Donald Sadoway, the chemistry professor and co-founder of Liquid Metal Battery, whose lab produces the battery.
The company, a spin-off of work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopes to reduce energy storage costs by creating a battery with entirely liquid active materials. In lead acid and lithium ion batteries, the active materials are solid.
The change to liquid allows for the high flow of energy necessary for bulk grid storage. It is also cheaper.
Gates commended the lab's work in an appreciation he wrote for MIT's 150th anniversary.
He has invested in other battery-related companies, saying cheaper storage is a "tough problem (that) may not be solvable in any economic way."
Gates' support marks another move in his push for cleaner energy. Last year Gates, with venture capitalist John Doerr and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, founded the American Energy Innovation Council to lobby for $16 billion a year on renewable energy development.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation doesn't primarily focus on clean energy, which Gates has said is more suited to investment by venture capitalists. He has been outspoken about the federal government leading the way in research and development.
But he has invested in Vinod Khosla's green-tech fund, backed West Coast companies like biofuel maker Sapphire Energy and has helped raise money for the non-profit Climate Solutions.
Liquid Metal Battery's other funding includes a $4 million grant from the oil company Total and a three-year $6.9 million grant from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E research agency. They will announce series A funding next month.
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