At the end of November 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that Argonne's Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) proposal — a consortium of 14 institutions including national labs, universities and private companies — was selected for a five-year, $120 million Energy Innovation Hub to develop next-generation batteries beyond lithium ion. This award opens a new horizon of energy storage research with the promise of transforming the electricity grid and transportation.

JCESR sets aggressive goals: discovery science to understand the materials and phenomena governing beyond-lithium-ion batteries, and pre-commercial prototype batteries with five times the energy density and one-fifth the cost of today's lithium ion batteries. A critical feature of JCESR is a new paradigm for battery research, integrating discovery science, battery design and pre-commercial prototyping in one interactive organization. This talk presents the vision and strategy of JCESR and its place in Argonne's broad landscape of energy storage research.