Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and CalCEF, the California Clean Energy Fund, formed CalCharge, a consortium that aims to speed development of battery technology.

“The next decade will be critical for this industry and this region,” said Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos, in a press release. “With our highly regarded battery scientists and state-of-the-art equipment at Berkeley Lab, the CalCharge consortium will be able to leverage these resources to enable the development of battery solutions for electric transportation and other clean energy applications in California.”

The consortium is a public-private partnership that aims to connect the dozens of energy storage companies in the state working on battery technologies for computing, energy storage and electric vehicles, among other applications, with the brainpower and resources of the national labs as well as funding and company-building knowhow of CalCEF. The goal, the consortium said, is to accelerate the commercialization of new technologies, but also to ensure that domestic companies succeed in a competitive industry.

The Bay Area has more than 30 energy storage companies, according to the consortium and California files more energy storage patents than any other state.

“To broadly scale renewable energy requires tackling the challenges of energy storage, and no technical community is better suited to those challenges than California’s battery engineers and scientists,” said Dan Adler, CalCEF’s president.

Members of the consortium will have access to Berkeley Lab’s resources and scientists. And consortium members will be eligible for streamlined and cheaper research and development agreements with the Lab.