Sacramento business group challenges $28 million grant awarded to Bay Area firm
The head of Sacramento’s business attraction group this week requested a state audit of a $28 million grant that a California agency was poised to award to a Bay Area firm.
The California Energy Commission nonetheless approved the grant for Electochemistry Foundry at a meeting Wednesday, with a unanimous vote, though commissioners pledged to track any state audit that may materialize.
At the meeting, Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, requested that the commission set aside the proposed resolution to award the grant. Once a state audit is completed, he said, “we’ll accept whatever outcome exists.”
The grant was created to boost California’s battery industry, by funding the creation of a battery cell testing and manufacturing site. Electrochemistry Foundry proposed using the money to build a 20,000 square-foot plant in Hayward.
The economic council had for 18 months supported a Sacramento-based nonprofit, Cal EPIC, in its pursuit of the grant. Broome said Cal EPIC lost by one point out of 120, and that he believed Sacramento should have been more favorably scored on cost, compared to the Bay Area.
“The scoring’s in question,” Broome said.
In a letter dated Tuesday, addressed to the state auditor, an attorney for the economic council requested a review of the grant selection process. He also wrote that an official at Electrochemistry Foundry was given a tour of Cal EPIC’s facility, and received early information about the nonprofit’s findings.
Brenna Teigler, Electrochemistry Foundry’s incoming CEO, said she started with the nonprofit in February and wasn’t part of the earlier conversations. But to her understanding, Electrochemistry Foundry and Cal EPIC had at one point planned to partner on one joint proposal that would have included a Bay Area prototyping site and a Sacramento testing site. By the time she joined the company, she said, the groups had decided to apply separately.
Cal EPIC’s proposal contemplated a 36,000 square-foot battery pilot line in south Sacramento, said CEO Orville Thomas.
Thomas confirmed that the groups at one point explored a joint proposal. That ultimately wasn’t feasible, he said, because the commission’s grant called for one location.
“We were very close to winning $28 million to do that in our region,” Thomas said. “We heard from the energy commission that they want Sacramento to be involved in battery manufacturing, and hope that they get more money. We hope that if they get more money, they look at our project.”
In a statement following the meeting, California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild said the $28 million grant will expedite battery manufacturing in California, create jobs, lower costs, and improve safety and energy density.
