Renewable materials build low-cost batteries to store wind energy

January 14, 2026 (AMES, Iowa) – Steve W. Martin, who has studied better materials for better batteries for four decades at Iowa State University, lists the cheap raw materials campus researchers are considering for one of their latest battery projects:

• Sodium. (“Sodium is 1,000 times cheaper than lithium,” he said. “And it’s everywhere.”)
• Waste glass. (Des Moines, where garbage is separated, is a good nearby source.)
• Biochar.  (It’s a charcoal-like co-product of heating biomass to produce bio-oil or synthesis gas, both renewable, alternative fuels. Several Iowa companies are creating the fuels and biochar, which has been used as a fertilizer.)
• Sulfur. (It’s a co-product of oil refining. The lone material on the list that can’t be sourced from Iowa, though Mississippi River barges move it along the state’s eastern border.)

These materials can be used to build the battery components that allow energy to be stored and discharged.

“The battery’s cathode will be sulfur, the anode will be biochar and the separator will be a sodium-ion conducting glass,” said Martin, an Iowa State Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, a University Professor in materials science and engineering and leader of the project. “And most of the materials can, in part or in whole, be sourced from renewable sources in Iowa.”

The big idea is to build “ultra-low-cost, ultra-high-performance” batteries using “all Iowa resources” to store “renewable Iowa wind energy,” according to the project’s title. 

The Iowa Energy Center is supporting the project with a three-year, $458,743 grant to Martin and Patrick Johnson, an Iowa State professor of materials science and engineering. The project builds on work launched by a 2019 Iowa Energy Center grant of $480,656.

Johnson, whose background includes searching for new, high-value uses for coal during a previous faculty post at the University of Wyoming, said the project’s aim is to add value to local materials by using them in batteries that can be scaled to industrial uses.

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Originally published by Iowa State University in January 2026.