Battery boss urges UK to close clean energy subsidies gap with EU and US

The head of one of Britain’s few surviving homegrown battery manufacturers has threatened to build its planned new factory overseas unless the UK closes the gap with subsidies offered by the EU and US.

Alan Hollis, chief executive of AMTE Power, said the government must offer more financial support to become competitive as the UK lags behind in the global clean energy subsidy race.

The EU has offered hundreds of billions of euros in response to the US administration providing $370bn of incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act.

“For gigafactory-scale production, we have to consider other options,” he said. “It’s well known that the incentives that are available in Europe and North America are significant.

“That is why I’m hopeful that . . . any gaps that exist between what is presented as being available from different regions whether that’s across the Atlantic or across the Channel can be closed.”

Although Hollis emphasised his strong desire to locate his flagship plant in Britain, he said without more UK help he planned to consider sites in Europe or the US.

This would mean ditching plans to build a £250mn facility in the company’s preferred site of Dundee to mass produce sodium-ion batteries.

It will still maintain its small site in Thurso, in the far north of Scotland, in a repurposed nuclear plant. This factory does not have the capacity for mass production and can only make battery cells on a small scale.

Following the collapse of start-up Britishvolt in January, AMTE is one of the few UK homegrown companies capable of producing batteries at scale.

The UK government is also trying to attract foreign investment for the battery sector. The country has only one gigafactory in Sunderland, run by Chinese-owned Envision AESC.

Hollis said AMTE, an industry minnow, needed government support as it tried to secure orders from customers for its battery technology — a pivotal step to locking in financing.

“You have the technology, you can see a path to commercialisation, but you’ve got a period with no revenues. This bit in the middle — there aren’t the mechanisms to support us or other companies.”

The company’s sodium-ion batteries are targeting the energy storage market that would help residences and the grid to soak up excess renewable power to discharge at times of high demand.

Hollis said it would take at least three years to start production at the “preferred” site in Dundee with fundraising for construction beginning in the middle of next year.

AMTE has also developed a non-rechargeable battery that would be used by the oil and gas sector and a specific lithium-ion battery that would be fitted in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to assist with acceleration.