On Friday the mayor, the governor, at least three members of Congress and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu formally announced that Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., a southwest Chicago suburb, will house a new $155-million battery research center.
Local officials hope the center will power the Chicago-area economy the way research at the institutions like Stanford University did for Silicon Valley.
The core news is that the feds selected Argonne to receive as much as $120 million in U.S. funds over the next five years to spark nationwide research efforts to leapfrog competitors in Japan and Korea and boost energy storage capacity fivefold, at one-fifth of the cost within that five years.
Read more in Crain’s Chicago Business.
