Mateo Jaramillo

Mateo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy, which is creating a new kind of battery that could change the power sector—and its using iron rather than lithium to do this. These batteries are expected to be among the longest-lasting and most affordable in the world, and would help reduce variability and reliability issues from using wind or solar power. In May 2023, Jaramillo broke ground on building the company’s first commercial battery factory, on the site of a former steel mill in West Virginia. The factory aims to create 750 jobs to manufacture batteries capable of providing 100 hours of energy per charge. As Jaramillo told TIME at the end of last year: “We’re going to be hitting the renewable targets sooner than expected. [That means] the technology that Form is working on becomes relevant, much sooner, at a much larger scale. It’s a massive rising tide that’s lifting many boats.”

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