eter Denoncourt of Saft America Inc. knows that half the battle has been won.
      Equipped with a US$95.5-million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, his company is set to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Jacksonville, Fla.
      The DOE funding clears the way for Saft to pursue its ambitious plans in the Sunshine State – one of 48 projects nationwide that received awards from U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Aug. 5.
      For these winning firms and the communities they will call home, hopes are high for a revived economy fueled by the vision of a nation of motorists driving hybrid-electric vehicles.
      For the companies and locations whose names Chu did not call last month, the goal may be the same, but the road to get there will be more challenging.
      For Denoncourt, the DOE award means a chance to expand quickly. Speaking from the Saft plant in Valdosta, Ga., Denoncourt says the company is eager to build across the state line in the North Florida MSA of more than 1.3 million people.
      A subsidiary of Saft Groupe SA of France, Saft America would create 279 full-time jobs paying an average annual wage of $44,807 in Duval County. In addition, Saft would invest about $122 million in private capital for facility construction, manufacturing equipment, furniture, fixtures and information technology infrastructure. The company says the plant will be its "LEED-certified factory of the future."
      The firm – which registered global sales of US$870 million in 2008 – considered locations in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia before selecting Florida.
      "We looked at locating this new plant a lot of places, especially in the South, where the cost of doing business tends to be fairly low," says Denoncourt, Saft's vice president of manufacturing and the Jacksonville project manager. "We chose the Cecil Commerce Center site in Jacksonville for a variety of reasons. The incentives package was nice and covered a lot of the bases, including cash that comes early in the program.
      "We also looked at Jacksonville from the standpoint of needing to hire several hundred people," he adds. "Jacksonville has a very good pool to draw from, with many people retiring from the Navy. Our workers have to be highly skilled, and we wanted to be in a city that would be an attractive place for people to go."
      The proposed deal, which as of press time was awaiting approval by the Jacksonville City Council, would locate the Saft battery plant in Cecil Commerce Center, a former master jet base for the U.S. Navy that was retired in the 1990s. The $5-million incentives package includes grants and land. The city plans to sell Saft a tract for $1.
      Saft has also applied for $15 million in incentives through Enterprise Florida Inc., the state agency responsible for economic development. EFI has indicated that, if the city passes its incentives package for Saft, the state will do the same.
      "As long as the city government enacts the ordinance, we are in pretty good shape," Denoncourt says. "It is pretty much the same situation with the state. There are still a few 'I's to dot and a few 'T's to cross."
      The Saft deal is a microcosm of what's happening around the country. Jumpstarted by subsidies from the federal government, state agencies and local jurisdictions, companies large and small are quickly ramping up to manufacture and deploy the next generation of American-made batteries and electric vehicles.
      Pressing the accelerator on this effort is the U.S. government. The administration of President Obama is releasing $2.4 billion in funds to launch the 48 advanced battery and electric drive projects at locations across the country.
      Part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the grants range from $500,000 for technical education at City College of San Francisco to $299.2 million for cell, battery and materials manufacturing at Johnson Controls Inc. plants in Holland, Mich., and Lebanon, Ore.       "This is the single largest investment ever made in advanced battery technology – anywhere in the world," Chu said while making the grant announcements at the Charlotte headquarters of Celgard LLC, which won $49.2 million from DOE to further production of polymer separator material for lithium-ion batteries. "Nationwide, the projects announced by President Obama are expected to create tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the battery and auto industries in the United States."
      Chu added that the projects "will help achieve the President's goal of putting one million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. And, most importantly, they will launch an advanced battery industry in America and make our auto industry cleaner and more competitive."
      The road to that destination is a long one, Chu admits. "Today, we lag in many areas," he said. "For example, 98 percent of the lithium-ion batteries that power personal electronics are made in Asia. Ninety-nine percent of the batteries that power America's hybrid cars are made in Japan. Rather than sending billions overseas to pay for clean technologies, we must start investing these dollars here in America – in America's workers, industries and innovations."
      While the grant recipients are located across the country in 25 different states, the big winner was the Midwest. Fifteen of the 48 recipients are based in Michigan, seven are in Indiana, and four are in Missouri. (See the map on p. 612.)
      President Obama visited Elkhart, Ind., to deliver the news at a site where Navistar International Corp. will receive $39.2 million to manufacture electric trucks. Overall, Indiana projects won grants totaling more than $400 million.
      Vice President Joe Biden visited Detroit to announce more than $1 billion in grants to companies and universities based in Michigan.
      Was the federal government sending a message? No, says Jen Stutsman, deputy press secretary for DOE in Washington. "The Department of Energy received proposals from a highly competitive pool of 250 applicants," she tells Site Selection. "Each of the applications went through a rigorous merit review and selection process by expert reviewers who evaluated the technical, business and manufacturing aspects of each application. After this process, the evaluations themselves were then reviewed by a panel of experts to achieve a consensus score."
      Among the most important criteria, says Stutsman, was the project's ability to create jobs quickly. "Well-defined criteria, including a project's technical capability, commercial viability, management team qualifications, and ability to provide cost-share funding to match the federal grant, were used by our merit review teams in making their final selections," she notes.
      Still, some applicants who failed to secure an award raised questions about DOE's decision-making process.
      Paul Beach, whose Quallion LLC had applied for $220 million to fund construction of a lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in Palmdale, Calif., said, "I was a little shocked that no battery manufacturing is being funded in California, which constitutes over 30 percent of the GDP in the nation. There is a large infrastructure here for lithium-ion battery research and production."
      Beach, who says he will pursue other funding options for his project, admits being "frustrated with the overall approach" of DOE. "There was a statement made that Michigan was the big benefactor. But it is what it is," he says. "Everyone competed well and Michigan ended up ahead of the game. Hats off to Michigan."
      Also left out was Orlando-based Planar Energy Devices, which had applied for $56 million to retrofit an old Energizer lithium-ion battery plant in Gainesville, Fla., for electric car battery production.
      When asked if he knew why Planar was denied its request for DOE funding, company founder and CEO Scott Faris says, "No. There has been no indication yet. They are preparing responses to all proposal reviews, and we hope to get ours soon."
      Planar's application included letters of support from Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, four members of Congress, two state representatives, and city and county officials from the Orlando and Gainesville areas, says Faris, who also plans to seek other financing.       Winners tended to be firms with ties to Ford, General Motors or Chrysler, Faris notes. The Big Three in Detroit all received big DOE awards, as did many of their top suppliers.
      GM received $105.9 million for production of high-volume battery packs for the Chevy Volt in Brownstown, Mich.; $105 million for production of a rear-wheel electric drive system in White Marsh, Md., and Wixom, Mich.; and $30.5 million for developing and testing extended-range electric vehicles in Michigan and elsewhere.
      Ford received $62.7 million for producing an electric drive transaxle with integrated power electronics in Sterling Heights, Mich., and $30 million for deploying up to 150 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles at various utility fleets around the country.
      Chrysler received $70 million for developing and testing 220 plug-in hybrids in Warren, Mich., and St. Louis, Mo.
      Other big winners were A123 Systems Inc. ($249.1 million) in Romulus and Brownstown, Mich.; KD ABG MI ($161 million) in Midland, Mich.; Compact Power Inc. ($151.4 million) in St. Clair, Pontiac and Holland, Mich.; EnerDel Inc. ($118.5 million) in Indianapolis, Ind.; and Electric Transportation Engineering Corp. ($99.8 million) at various testing and deployment operations in Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee.
      Saft was actually a double winner. In addition to its award for the planned Jacksonville operation, the company is a partner in the Johnson Controls project in Michigan. Johnson and Saft together supply batteries for electric vehicles made by Ford, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
      Denoncourt says logistics played a key role in Saft's decision to locate its next plant in Jacksonville. "They are constructing a new interchange off of Interstate 10 that will be two miles [3.2 km.] from our plant and very accessible," he says. "That will give us excellent access to both I-10 and I-95. Plus, there is good rail service and a nice seaport nearby. And the Jacksonville International Airport is significant also."
      Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton says the city began pursuing the battery maker shortly after he received a call from an old high school friend who now works for Saft in France. "He asked if Jacksonville would like to be in the running, and I said, 'Sure!' We put together a package in about a week, and then went through a very competitive process," the mayor says. "Within three months, we had a deal."
      The mayor credits two local officials – Jerry Mallot of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce and Ron Barton of the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission – with taking the lead on the project. "Ron and Jerry put the package together, and they did it very fast. We were very aggressive," says Peyton.
      The mayor traveled to Paris to meet with the company president. "I was in France just a few months ago. I went and toured the facility that is most similar to the one they will build here," he says. "I met their president, and we have become great friends."       Mallot, executive vice president of the chamber and president of the Cornerstone Regional Development Partnership, says that Saft "opens up a whole new category of business for us. This will be the largest single project since Cecil Field was turned over to the city."
      Located about a quarter-mile from the newly opened 1-million-sq.-ft. (92,900-sq.-m.) Bridgestone Firestone distribution center, the Saft plant will become part of a growing industrial park at the northern end of the Cecil Commerce Center.
      "This will be our first purely manufacturing project at Cecil," Mallot says. "That part is important. It is thrusting us into a new era of clean technology development."
      Mallot says several factors sealed the deal. "The company was familiar enough with the business climate in this area," he says. "They felt it was a positive climate in which to do business. The labor here was plentiful, and the site and incentives were competitive enough to make it happen."
      Mallot says he expects the deal to receive City Council approval by mid-September, after which the state is expected to approve its portion of the package. "It was a great team effort," Mallot adds.
      The project marks Saft's second expansion in 2009. In January, the company announced the expansion of its product line in Valdosta. The firm said it would begin producing the new Tel.X battery – an energy device that can keep telephones working even when the electricity goes out.
      There was no need for a phone call on Aug. 5, however, to get word from DOE. The White House dispatched EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to Florida to deliver the news of the Saft award in person.
      "President Obama has called for us to unleash American innovators, engineers, workers and entrepreneurs," she said. "We need to get into the global clean energy race, and today we're firing the starting gun."