UniEnergy Technologies planned to do it all — build the battery of the future, create good American jobs, crack the code for clean energy.
Powered by a new chemical recipe cooked up in a taxpayer-funded federal lab, the private company’s 40-ton batteries promised to bridge the gap for wind and solar. They were designed to last for decades without degrading, unlike your laptop or phone, and wouldn’t catch fire. Politicians and reporters lined up to laud the innovation, boasting that it’d transform electricity.
“We love clean energy not just because it’s clean, but because it is jobs,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told the local paper, The Everett Herald, when he toured the company’s Mukilteo headquarters in 2017.
But despite millions in public funding, UniEnergy suddenly went dark last year, laid off its last employees and was forced to seek Chapter 11 protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.
