Green power revives defunct battery

plant
Clean power saved this battery plant
By Diane Mastrull
Inquirer Staff Writer

NEW CASTLE, Pa. - Just outside this town in the

western part of the state, famous for its chili dogs and
fireworks, a low-rise battery plant sits along a side
road named Clover Lane.

To miss it is to miss a back-from-the-dead story, one

that Gov. Rendell hopes will inspire a manufacturing
revival across Pennsylvania.
With a workforce of 59, Axion Power International is
no industrial giant. But its resurrection - from a
shuttered lead-acid battery plant to one now turning
out lead-carbon batteries for use in electric cars,
among other eco-friendly applications - is cited by
Rendell and his representatives as evidence of the
green economy's transformative powers.
At the Axion Power plant in New Castle, Pa., Bill Galbreath (left)
and James Cribbs prepare lead battery core elements. The plant
had closed in 2005, but a Canadian buyer, with $2 million in aid
from the Rendell administration, has retooled it to produce lead-
carbon batteries for electric-powered vehicles(Bob Donaldson /
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
players in the green economy, including Gamesa
Technology Corp. Inc., one of the world's largest
wind-turbine manufacturers, which has a plant in
Lower Bucks County, on a former U.S. Steel Corp. site.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration
announced $2.4 billion in grants to accelerate the
manufacture and deployment of the next generation
of U.S. batteries and electric cars.
Of that stimulus money, $34.3 million is to go to
Georgia-based battery giant Exide Technologies "with
Axion Power . . . for the production of advanced lead-
acid batteries, using lead-carbon electrodes for micro
and mild hybrid applications," according to a White
House statement. Axion said it was not sure what
portion, if any, of that grant it would receive under a
four-year supply agreement it entered into with Exide
in April.
Usually mentioned in the same sound bites as Axion
are nine other companies the state considers main
Yet just how significant a manufacturing game-
changer the green movement might be in
Pennsylvania is uncertain, economic experts say.
"The scale of the opportunity is uncertain as yet," said
Mark Muro, policy chief at the Metropolitan Policy
Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"But clearly this is a segment, a potentially large
segment, of manufacturing that actually has got
possibility."
That goes for many states, Muro was quick to add.
"It will require very serious concerted, strategic,
iterative work," said Muro, who has advised the
Rendell administration on how to make Pennsylvania
more competitive. "It's important to know that many,
many states are seeing the same opportunity."

At the Axion factory in New Castle, Pa., workers assemble
batteries suitable for electric-powered vehicles in the green
economy. Axion has revived the defunct plant, which couldn't
compete with the major players in the industry and the cheap
cost of labor abroad. (Bob Donaldson / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
They are chasing the same pool of stimulus dollars to
help attract manufacturers, or, if the plants are
already in their states, to stay and expand. Experts
agree that the green economy's potential impact
depends on investment of stimulus dollars as well as
government mandates on development and use of
alternative and renewable energy.
But just as critical, they contend, is a commitment in
the schools to implementing curriculums that will
yield graduates equipped for a new breed of blue-
collar jobs.
Green manufacturing jobs will require a solid aptitude
for math and science, largely because they will "utilize
technology, computers, intellect," said Mark Basla,
vice president of the Delaware Valley Industrial
Resource Center, a nonprofit agency that advises
manufacturers on staying competitive.
Green manufacturing will be a mix of blue- and white-
collar jobs, Basla said. Judging by the current
inventory, workers range from glass cutters and frame
assemblers at a plant that makes energy-efficient
windows and doors, to doctorate engineers who have
figured out how to use a carbon electrode to power a
car and store energy created by wind turbines and
solar panels.
Manufacturing still will be "the gateway to the middle
class," said Joe Houldin, chief executive officer of the
Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center. "But it's
not for uneducated people anymore."
The way of the world
Pennsylvania ended 2008 with 644,200
manufacturing jobs, down from 659,100 in 2007 - on
the way down from 1.65 million in 1953, its peak year,
according to records that go back to 1939.
The state attributes some of that to a change in
coding in the early 1990s. Before then, businesses
were classified by product; since then, by the activity
in which a company is primarily engaged.
But there is no disputing the overall trend has been
downward. Last year brought the 10th straight year-
over-year decline in manufacturing jobs, according to
data from Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and
Industry.
The picture was no better for New Jersey, which had
299,000 manufacturing jobs at the end of 2008, down
from 311,300 jobs in 2007. That also represented a
10th straight year of decline, according to the state
Labor Department.
With a gubernatorial election in New Jersey in
November, the green economy is getting considerable
campaign attention. Republican Christopher Christie's
platform includes urging companies to manufacture
solar panels and wind turbines, and extending them
tax credits if they do.
Gov. Corzine, the Democratic incumbent, is
supporting an effort to develop an offshore wind-

Figure 1 Thomas Granville, chief executive of Axion Power, says
the New Castle plant could employ several hundred if stimulus
funds came through and state support continued. (Bob
Donaldson / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
energy project and a plan that calls for 30 percent of
the state's energy to be renewable by 2020.
In Pennsylvania, Rendell has no campaign worries - he
is in the homestretch of his final term. His green-
related manufacturing agenda is more about building
a legacy.
Few states are considered better positioned for a
manufacturing renaissance.
Experts in labor and industry cite Pennsylvania's
storied industrial history, the work ethic that
characterized it, and an abundance of unused and
underused industrial space.
They also cite Rendell, who in six years has been
unrelenting when it comes to setting an aggressive
green agenda for a state long associated with another
hue - rust.
With considerable prodding of the legislature, Rendell
got his Alternative Energy Investment Act passed in
July 2008. It provides $650 million in funding and tax
credits to spur the development of alternative- and
renewable-energy technologies. Rendell has said the
money will create more than 11,000 jobs and
leverage more than $3.5 billion in private investment.
That and other energy-independence initiatives make
"Pennsylvania perhaps the No. 1 state in green energy
jobs east of the Mississippi," he said at a May news
conference in Roxborough marking the long-awaited
availability of state solar rebates.
"But we've got to go further," Rendell said.
Optimism about a green-driven manufacturing
resurgence is tempered by concerns that the
workforce to support it might not exist.
"In the old days, in the steel mills and coal mines, we
brought muscle," said George Cornelius,
Pennsylvania's secretary of community and economic
development. "In the new economy . . . what the
human brings is his mind much more than his brawn.
And that's why it's absolutely critical that we have a
much stronger focus . . . on education and technical
training."
With the White House pushing a national
commitment to renewable and alternative energy,
enhanced workforce-education efforts should not
stop at Pennsylvania's borders, said Houldin, of the
Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center.
"If there's going to be a national policy related to
revitalizing the manufacturing sector," he said, "what
has to be a key component . . . is revitalizing the
educational sector to support manufacturing."
Two days after that June interview, U.S. Education
Secretary Arne Duncan joined government, business,
labor, and education leaders to launch a national
effort to achieve higher levels of math and science
learning. Adding his endorsement was Vartan
Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corp. of New
York, a philanthropic group created by industrialist
Andrew Carnegie to promote education.
"The nation's capacity to innovate for economic
growth and the ability of American workers to thrive
in the global economy depend on a broad foundation
of math and science learning," Gregorian said.
The way ahead
Just four years ago, the harsh realities of a global
economy proved lights-out for the little factory
known then as New Castle Battery.
Unable to match the deep resources of large
competitors and the cheap cost of labor abroad, the
lead-acid battery plant, one of a rapidly shrinking
group of independent battery manufacturers, closed
in June 2005, the same year it turned 75.
Fires once used to melt lead ingots were
extinguished; assembly lines, shut down. The
employees, who numbered 144 in New Castle
Battery's heyday, were out of work with few
prospects.
Some were twice-cursed, having been sent to the
unemployment lines in the 1980s, when two Rockwell
International plants that made car axles and springs
left town.
A bank was readying the remains of the New Castle
Battery factory for auction when an unintended band
of rescuers arrived in early 2006.
Axion plant manager Joseph Cole explains the technology behind
the power storage for energy produced by wind and solar
energy. The Rendell administration considers Axion Power to be
a prime example of how the green economy can spur a
manufacturing revival and turn around the prospects for
communities that have lost their industries. They were
representatives of a Canadian company called Axion Power,
formed in 2003 to develop carbon-related technology. They had
come to New Castle Battery to buy equipment at bargain prices
and ship it north. (Bob Donaldson / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Instead, they bought the entire factory for less than
$800,000 and - thanks to nearly $2 million in
assistance from the Rendell administration and
building momentum for renewable and alternative
energy sources - are giving it a new lease on life.
That, in turn, made Timothy Holler feel alive again.
He grew up in New Castle, where Zambelli Fireworks
Internationale and Pyrotechnico gave the town
bragging rights as the "Fireworks Capital of America" -
or so say banners that hang from the streetlights.
In August 1980, Holler went straight to New Castle
Battery after high school. He started as a plate stacker
and had risen to vice president of manufacturing
when the nonunion plant closed.
With no prospects for other manufacturing work in
the region and a son in college, Holler enrolled in
nursing school. He was still there when longtime
friend Joe Cole called to tell him that the battery plant
was going to reopen and that he, Cole, had been hired
as plant manager.
Holler was skeptical about the viability of making
batteries for electric cars and to store power
generated by windmills and solar panels. So he stayed
in nursing school. But when nursing's "crazy" hours
got to him, he called Cole.
Now, Holler is assistant manager of a plant he thought
was gone for good.
It has a range of production jobs: grid casters, who
run the lead pot feeders; stackers, who stock the
formed battery plates; pasters, who paste the grids
with lead oxide, and line operators, who fill batteries
with acid, install covers, and run the welder.
Most of the jobs pay $25,000 to $30,000, plus health
benefits and paid vacation and holidays. Six-figure
salaries go to engineers and scientists who, among
other things, design electrical circuitry for battery-
management systems, work with carbon materials,
and develop and oversee testing.
applause of a few hundred who packed a lecture hall
for his talk on the "circle of green."
By that, he was referring to investments in Axion by
the state and others that have led to jobs, which have
led to the production of recyclable goods that are, in
turn, a boost for the environment.
From such turnarounds as the one at New Castle
Battery, Pennsylvanians should be optimistic, within
reason, said Cornelius, the state economic-
development director.
"We have to be careful not to generate unrealistic
expectations . . . that this is something that's a project
that will be done in a year or two and we're going to
have all these jobs," he said. "We've got some good
successes. Now, you've got to build on it."
Not that Cornelius wants the state to return to all of
its manufacturing past.

"We had coal miners with black-lung disease; multiple

In the year Rodney Stevens, a former commercial and
residential builder, has worked at Axion, he has fatalities at a steel plant were just assumed on a
advanced from laborer to supervisor in the "acid yearly basis; we had people who weren't living as long
because of the health consequences of some of those
room" - where batteries are filled and charged. And
though his pay is "not even half" what he made at his industries.
$28-an-hour construction job, he is content to work in "Will we return to that? No, and thank God."
a job that is not weather-dependent and "not as
insecure and stressful."

Stevens considers his green work pioneering: "We're

laying the foundation for our children to come.
Hopefully, the job market will be better for them
because of the route we're taking."

If stimulus funds come through and state support

(already about $2 million in grants) continues, Axion
chief executive Tom Granville said, "we could easily
be talking several hundred" employees.

At a recent panel discussion at Carnegie-Mellon

University, Granville earned rave reviews and the