Dalhousie University will receive $10.15 million to establish a national research hub for battery technologies.

Dubbed the Canadian Battery Innovation Centre, or CBIC, the project is receiving about $8 million from Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program and $2 million from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The funds will complement the $1.98 million already committed by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

The centre wil also be part of a larger battery technology and electrification cluster emerging on the East Coast, led by companies like Halifax-based Zen Electric, BlueGrid and Glas Ocean. Entrevestor Live, our Sept. 17 conference focusing on the region's greatest innovation successes, will feature a session on the emerging battery cluster, sponsored by Emera. For more information and to buy tickets, click on this image:

The news comes in the wake of years of efforts by Dalhousie to establish itself as an international leader in the battery space — a quest that has already seen the institution partner with automotive giant Tesla. In a statement, Natural Resources Canada estimated the total project value at $20 million, which implies that about $8 million will have to come from Dalhousie or other sources.

The CBIC will be particularly focused on high-end prototyping efforts and on training skilled workers in the complex production processes required in modern battery manufacturing, according to the federal government statement, with the goal of producing between 25 and 50 new workers every year.

“The Canadian Battery Innovation Centre will provide our world-renowned battery scientists with a powerful tool, enabling them to rapidly envision, produce and test new batteries while collaborating with industry,” said Alice Aiken, Dalhousie’s vice president for research and innovation.

“This state-of-the-art facility will be a magnet for industry, fostering a research and development hub in Nova Scotia that promises to transform the science, the sector and the greening of our economy.”

The CBIC will be led by longtime Dalhousie battery researchers Michael Metzger and Chongyin Yang. Together with Jeff Dahn, one of the key researchers on the Tesla work, the two PhDs already run the Metzger, Yang, Dahn Research Group, which specializes in the same subject matter.

BloombergNEF, the financial software giant's commodities research arm, earlier this year awarded Canada the top spot on its Global Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain Ranking, displacing China. The rankings are based on Bloomberg's assessment of a country's "potential to build a secure, reliable, and sustainable lithium-ion battery supply chain."