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By Will Mbah
Candidate for Somerville City Councilor at Large

Since Congress passed the Infrastructure and Jobs Act in November 2022, economic development advocates and the business press have anticipated a flow of new investment into the sector of clean energy in the Boston region. To what extent is this flow of funding and resulting growth now reaching Somerville? Do we fully understand how our economic development policies and our spatial, urban systems and fiscal/financial planning are able to support and accommodate the needs of these enterprises and workforce as they grow?

The context of municipal powers and policies in support of the clean energy sub-sectors
For more than twenty years, Somerville leaders have encouraged energy-related enterprises to locate in the city.
For both start-up firms and for units of established firms, we have offered a location close to the universities and institutes where energy-related research is underway and with an available concentration of scientific talent and skilled technical workers. Two important Somerville organizations — Greentown Labs and the Northeast Clean Energy Council – have been able to attract to the city several hundred enterprises at their stages of start-up and “acceleration,” and as they continue to grow to maintain linkage to the city and its professional networks. In parallel, the city has taken supporting actions:
• Adjusting zoning, the building code, environmental regulations and traffic/parking rules allowing the laboratories and the testing, storage and supply facilities to function efficiently;
• Offering tax incentives and other subsidies for jobs creation;
• Providing workforce training programs and linking enterprises to the high school STEM and vocational programs; and
• Helping to expand the markets for clean energy products and services by incorporating clean energy components into city capital projects and procurements, and assisting residents and businesses to install energy-saving and carbon-free equipment.
How is the combination of public, private and non-profit investment working?
Back in 2021, I took part in an event at SomerNOVA on Dane Street and met folks from three typical Greentown companies that were working on additive-manufacturing techniques, which could minimize energy use and carbon emissions. When I first met them, the companies held new patents; they had received initial capital and had teams of 10 to 20 people working in the SomerNOVA facility.
Now just two years later, these three companies have moved quickly to the stage of expansion to full production and product/service marketing. This has required them to choose new locations and strategies of growth. Here’s a quick update report:
Form Energy has developed a long-lasting electric storage battery that combines iron pellets and air as its components. The electricity generating process, which essentially releases power from iron rust, does not pollute. The process of building the batteries is much cheaper and uses far less energy than building batteries from hard-to-mine lithium or other rare-earths.
Since its founding in 2017, Form Energy has received multiple rounds of venture funding and federal grants, totaling over $500 million. It has expanded to a local staff of about 200 and has leased over 90,000 ft2 of space at 200 Inner Belt Road. It will keep here in Somerville the headquarters, research and testing units. Meanwhile, it is building a one million square foot manufacturing plant on a 55 acre site in West Virginia, where the full production of batteries will take place.
Advent Technology has perfected a method of electro-chemistry to create hydrogen fuel cells that can replace diesel generators. Hydrogen produces power with no carbon emissions.
Advent has been outfitting a new research, development and manufacturing facility at Hood Park in Charlestown, where its research team from Greentown lab and some of its headquarters staff from downtown Boston are relocating. The company has taken 21,000 ft2. It now has about 150 employees in total, but the number in Charlestown has not been reported.
Alloy Enterprises has devised a method of laminated aluminum manufacturing that creates parts for electric vehicles. Its process is an alternative to 3d printing (which fuses heavier metal powders). The resulting light metal parts save fuel and power in normal use of the vehicles.
Alloy has been a very fast growing company. It was founded only in 2020 with a small research team at Greentown Labs. But it has moved through two rounds of venture capital funding, with the latest placement of $26 million in May 2023. The company is now hiring and expects to grow to 50 employees by end of the year. It is moving into about 17,000 ft2 in a suburban style manufacturing building in Burlington.
These are just three stories of Greentown companies that have outgrown the Dane Street facilities but are finding it possible to keep operations in the city and the Boston region.
What lessons do these success stories hold for Somerville economic development?
Somerville will not be able to provide space for any company to expand to a million square feet of manufacturing or to occupy facilities from which large volumes of products and services can be shipped. Nevertheless, companies can retain in the city important units of their on-going research, development, testing or prototyping.
To accommodate such units, Somerville should continue to plan for buildings with labs and flex manufacturing spaces, which can be leased in units of 10,000 to 20,000 ft2. These will not be the types of corporate showcase laboratories, such as the ones on Binney Street in Kendall Square; they will have lower rents and perhaps shared technical equipment and work spaces for small firms. They will need to be efficient, well-managed, and have a high standard of environmental performance. The zoning rules for these buildings should allow them to be built without unnecessary design flourishes and with the ability to change uses and interior spaces quickly and by right.
The city’s housing policies will also be of great importance, recognizing that the relocation of company workspaces usually takes place with new hiring. Having affordable and convenient housing – both to accommodate new employees and avoid disrupting existing employees will help keep companies in the city.
If you want to learn more or support my campaign, please visit my website at willmbah.com.