Revolutionary Lithium Ion battery research now funded by Saudis

Stan Beer
Friday, 18 April 2008 18:58

Opinion and Analysis

According to the Stanford report, the $10 million grant will be spread over a period of five years and Professor Cui will be expected to spend up to 3 months each year doing research at KAUST, which is about 80 km north of the Saudi capital Jedda.

"KAUST officials hope that further development of the technology will lead to incubation of new businesses in Saudi Arabia. The research fits with KAUST's focus on developing energy alternatives to oil," the Stanford report states.

While Professor Cui is jumping with excitement at the prospect of having deep pockets funding his research for the next five years, concerns are being raised in the blogosphere and on some sites devoted to electric transport about the young researcher's new benefactors.

Popular green transport site, Autoblog Green, has run a story titled "Saudis invest in silicon nanowires, trying to bury battery breakthrough?", accompanied by a number of posts arguing over whether the Saudis are trying to bury the new battery technology or merely trying to diversify into new energy sources as the oil spiggots run dry.

Many posters are applauding the Saudi backing of new energy research and labelling the naysayers as tin foil hat conspiracy theorists. However, others point to the fact that there is still a lot of money to be made from oil and they are suspicious that an entity from the world's biggest oil producing nation is funding an energy storage system that could make oil redundant.

Perhaps the final irony, however, is that oil rich Saudi Arabia is also rich in another natural resource that would be used in any battery based storage system requiring large amounts of silicon - sand.