Corporate Vision April 2017

44 CORPORATE VISION / April 2017 , California LithiumBattery’s motto is ‘Transforming theWay Battery Power is Stored’©. The company was founded in 2012 to commercialise a breakthrough high-specific capacity silicon- graphene composite Li-ion Battery anode material, originally developed at US DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory under an ARPA-E grant. We profile CEO of the Year – California award winner Phil Roberts to find out more about his current position and the company’s cost-effective high-energy density lithiumbatteries. The Quintessential American Cleantech Entrepreneur Phil Roberts is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer for California Lithium Battery, Inc. After graduating from Georgetown University, Phil started his professional career as an executive and quickly became the leading retail marketing representative for the Atlantic Richfield Company/ ARCO Petroleum Products company. After leaving ARCO - and over the past 25 years - Roberts has become known as the quintessential American cleantech entrepreneur, co- founding various companies focused on cost effective breakthrough products targeted to change society by improving air quality. Phil attributes his business foundation to growing up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, where he attended Holy Name Elementary School and Creighton Preparatory High School. Besides being the home of Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway, Phil believes that with his hard-working family oriented upbringing in Omaha, this gave him his sense of confidence that anyone with the passion and determination for what they are doing, along with some brains, could achieve absolutely anything no matter how far off the map their idea may appear. Jumping from the 1970’s, 1980’s and ‘90’s, Roberts shifted from selling fossil fuels for ARCO to developing clean and green transformational technologies. Phil began working on advanced biofuels and diesel emission control systems, where he developed a series of affordable fuels and emission control products that were taken on by various international distribution companies. Along the way, Phil spent much of his time validating different new advanced environmental technologies and products at multiple EPA/California Air Resources Board (‘CARB’) authorised testing laboratories. In 2001, Phil established Olsen Ecologic Engine Testing Laboratories in Fullerton, CA to empirically validate new clean technologies, including engines and fuels for himself and as a business. “Building an official EPA/CARB recognised laboratory from the ground up that was required to meet not only EPA and CARB, but also ISO requirements, 1704CV27 was no easy task” according to Roberts. It took Roberts nearly three years to put the business plan together, find the capital resources (several millions of dollars) and to obtain the permits approved and most importantly, to find the right people to do the day to day work of managing and growing a business. It took a few years - but eventually the lab became profitable - and over the years Roberts grew OE labs into one of the top engine and fuels testing laboratories in California and the US. As the co-founder of an EPA/ CARB/ISO testing lab, Phil saw many new devices and products that came through the lab for CARB proof of performance verification. He soon felt compelled to establish Extengine Transport Systems as a diesel retrofit emission control systems development company, focused on cleaning up emissions from older diesel trucks, buses, and construction equipment. In 2005, Extengine received CARB verification for the first California SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) diesel retrofit system designed to reduce NOx (Oxides of Nitrogen) in older diesel powered port cargo moving vehicles. In 2006, Phil was selected as Inc. magazine’s Top 50 Cleantech Entrepreneurs and the National Business Council’s California Businessman of the Year. In 2008, Phil sold OE Labs and focused on growing the Extengine line of diesel emission control products. Over the following years, Extengine sold millions of dollars in retrofit systems and have reduced tons of NOx emissions (the main precursor of smog) all the world. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times featured Phil and his company Extengine on the front page of the LA Times business section, telling the story of Phil’s vison to clean up smog in the Ports of Long Beach and LA. The Extengine emission control products were licensed to an EU company in 2010. Roberts read the writing on the wall and in 2011 saw a need and opportunity in affordable energy storage technologies. So, in 2011, he founded California Lithium Battery (‘CLB’) to produce a game-changing breakthrough high capacity silicon composite lithium ion anode battery material originally

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