Dearborn — Biden administration officials, including U.S. Energy Secretary and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, used a visit to Michigan on Monday to highlight the launch of an initiative aimed at bolstering the electric-vehicle and grid storage battery workforce in the U.S.
The event at the Automotive Hall of Fame centered on the Battery Workforce Initiative, a program led by the Department of Energy with involvement from the Department of Labor. Its stated mission is to accelerate the development of training opportunities and to meet the workforce needs of the advanced battery manufacturing industry. The initiative includes employers, manufacturers, technical experts, workforce trainers and labor unions.
Granholm was joined by Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su, as well as by National Economic Council Deputy Director for Labor Celeste Drake, U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Ann Arbor, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, UAW President Ray Curry and John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.
The group participated in a closed-door roundtable on strategies to recruit and retain a skilled battery workforce, and then took questions from the media.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy on Monday also announced the closing of a $2.5 billion loan to Ultium Cells LLC, the battery-making joint-venture between General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solution. The previously-announced loan is to help Ultium help finance the construction of new lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing plants in Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan. The loan was provided from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office as part of its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program.
The projects that Ultium have announced to date are expected to create more than 11,000 jobs, DOE noted.
The closing of Ultium’s loan — the program’s first loan exclusively for a battery cell manufacturing project —follows President Joe Biden in October launching the American Battery Materials Initiative with $2.8 billion in grants from the Department of Energy to build out battery mineral and material supply chains in the U.S.
DOE reports that, as of the end of October, LPO’s programs have gotten 98 active applications for projects totaling more than $104 billion in requested loans and loan guarantees.
Granholm highlighted the loan closing during her remarks Monday. She also discussed new job opportunities that will accompany accelerating growth in the EV sector.
“We in the Biden-Harris administration believe all this growth will make the battery market a dominant force in the 21st century economy, creating hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of new jobs,” she said, according to prepared remarks. “The question is, who will get a stake in that market? Who will be working those jobs, and manufacturing those batteries? President Biden wants them made here, in America, by American workers.”
“In order to grow these sectors and the supply chains needed to sustain them — things like graphite for anodes, and lithium and nickel and cobalt for cathodes … we have to create new, high-quality jobs,” she added. “Jobs that workers want to pursue, that workers want to train for, and that workers can grow in. We need droves of skilled workers to meet this labor demand. But these are jobs that quite literally didn’t exist in this country before. There are parts of the battery supply chain that we’re building entirely from scratch. And we need to build a labor force alongside it.”
Granholm also cast the new job opportunities as opportunities for organized labor, noting the “historic vote” in Warren, Ohio, last week, where Ultium Cells workers overwhelmingly voted to be represented by the United Auto Workers — the Detroit-based union’s first time organizing an EV battery manufacturing plant even as additional opportunities loom. That vote means “we can say with confidence that many of these are going to be union jobs,” Granholm said.
jgrzelewski@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @JGrzelewski