In early 2023, Energizer announced plans to wind down operations at a pair of battery manufacturing plants in Wisconsin. While the Teamsters union pressured the company, claiming Energizer planned to "deport" jobs, it ultimately bailed on Wisconsin, leaving hundreds of workers in Fennimore and Portage in the lurch.
But there was hope. A startup called Wisconsin Battery Co. offered the promise to make hemp batteries in the state and create a landing spot for those displaced Energizer workers. Then, Wisconsin Battery and CEO Jeff Greene fell "completely off the radar."
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According to the Telegraph Herald, Greene is MIA and his plans to make these new batteries appear to have gone up in smoke. IEN reached out to Greene, but he has not yet responded to our request for comment.
Local officials in both Portage and Fennimore say they haven't heard from Greene at all in 2025. According to LinkedIn, Greene appears to have ended his run as the head of Wisconsin Battery as of June 2025. The company's site is offline, and emails are bouncing back; it doesn't look good.
Everything started in June 2024 when Green visited Fennimore with ambitions of setting up a new packaging plant that he hoped to turn into a manufacturing hub for his hemp batteries eventually.
The company said it planned to use "science and technology to bring AI, hemp carbon, zinc air rechargeable and automation to the energy storage space." Wisconsin Battery claimed it was going to use hemp carbon to revolutionize standard household and hearing aid batteries, with aspirations of replacing lithium-ion batteries with a hemp carbon/lithium battery that reportedly used less lithium and lasted "up to 300% longer in charge and 800% longer in life."
According to the Telegraph Herald, it appears that Greene's biggest setback occurred when he was denied a $50 million grant from the Energy Department. At the time, he thought he could find private investors, but it appears that those efforts came up short.
However, not all was lost for the community, at least in Portage. Greene did perform some infrastructure improvement work that raised the value of a property still owned by the city.
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