The U.S. Department of Energy has announced it will invest $20.3 million into building a new, first-of-its-kind facility in Taylor to help repurpose and recycle electric vehicle batteries.
The facility will be run by Moment Energy, a Canada-based company that specializes in giving used EV batteries a second life.
"It turns out that 80% of these batteries have 80% of original capacity remaining, on average, when they retire from the car," one of the company's co-founders, Sumreen Rattan, told KUT. "So our goal is to make sure that these batteries are put through a full circular economy — that we're reusing them and utilizing them to their full potential."
She said her company typically focuses on repurposing batteries for off-grid energy generation projects — providing a sustainable backup power method that can be used during natural disasters and grid failures.
But Rattan said Moment Energy also plans to use the facility in Taylor to repurpose batteries, so they can help power other nearby manufacturing and industrial operations.
"We're able to help them ... have the power they need to run their manufacturing lines, and to install things like EV chargers for their employees or for their own customers outside the building," she said.
That's an exciting prospect for Dave Porter, who's the director of Williamson County's Economic Development Partnership.
"[The EV industry] is one of our key targets because of the proximity to Tesla ... to San Antonio, to Toyota and to Dallas," he said. "Being on the I-35 corridor, with SH 130 looping around Austin — it really puts Williamson County in a good position to land a few of these projects."
In fact, the Austin-area leads the state in EV adoption. Last year, data showed that 2.1% of registered vehicles in Travis County are battery-powered cars and trucks. Williamson County was not far behind, with 1.5% of the county's registered vehicles being electric.
Dave Tuttle, a researcher at UT Austin's Energy Institute, said finding ways to repurpose and recycle EV batteries is becoming increasingly important as more and more people adopt EVs.
"Sooner or later everything in an automobile eventually wears out," he said. "And so people are looking forward for when we have millions of EVs and they finally age out: … What do you do responsibly with those batteries?"
The design and development of Moment Energy's facility in Taylor is expected to begin early next year. More than 200 new jobs are expected to be created from the project.
