The Future of Energy Storage - Towards A Perfect Battery with Global Scale

Great white paper describing where the energy storage market is at now and where it will be going over the next 30 years. Highly recommended.

Conclusion - its gonna be really hard for other technologies to beat out Lithium Ion.  Because of shear volume and cost declines it will control most of the energy storage market going forward. Other technologies will be relegated to niche applications.

 

Executive Summary

In the next 5 to 10 years, we will see a $50 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery cell that’s capable of fast charging, 10,000+ cycles, 1 million+ miles, a 30 year calendar life, and produced with abundant raw materials found all around the world and recycled

Although there are some claims of these attributes now, the challenge is putting it all together in a single cell, without the compromising trade-offs inherent in batteries (for example, a 1 million mile battery is no good if it costs $200/kWh). Achieving the combination will take 5 to 10 years of global innovation

• The most innovative period for energy storage technologies is just beginning and will run for the next 10 years

• From 2030 to mid-century, these new technologies will scale at a rate and to a size the world has rarely seen - we need tremendous scale to displace fossil fuels

• This transformation will be driven by the demands of electric vehicles (EVs), further accelerated by autonomous vehicles and storage for intermittent renewables. This will require a growth of global battery production from 20 GWh per year from pre-EV days to 2,000 GWh per year by 2030, and 30,000 GWh per year (over 1,000 times more!) for a world with All EVs and a Renewables-based global energy and transportation system by 2050

• Li-ion won't be everything, but Li-ion will be everything that matters. Non Li-ion chemistries may find niche applications, but will remain small on a relative scale to Li-ion technology

Solid state batteries are likely to be irrelevant to the revolution, a niche player at best

• The transformation of energy storage will be powered not by policy but by better technology, products, and economics. Strong national technology and manufacturing policies can help accelerate the change though, as well as create long term structural economic benefits

• The future of storage innovation will come in two main forms - new materials technologies and battery manufacturing process innovations

  • The first linchpin of Advanced Li-ion is the Silicon Anode. It’ll require a solution that uses:

    • A technology that can replace graphite entirely, even if it starts as a hybrid

    • Advanced engineered particle design to overcome key swelling challenges

    • Novel, bulk manufacturing technology to produce this design at industrial scale

    • Only global commodity inputs so it can be scaled to millions of tons at low cost

  • The silicon anode will enable leverage from other new material innovations:

    • Abundant iron and possibly copper will replace scarce nickel and cobalt in cathodes

    • Ceramic separators will replace today’s polymer separators

    • Advanced liquid electrolytes will extend cycle life and reliability

  • In addition to new materials and chemistry, new manufacturing processes will allow for:

    • Elimination of environmentally unfriendly organic solvents from use

    • Engineered electrode replacement of today’s randomly cast electrodes

    • Re-imagining of cell assembly, formation, aging, and pack integration

• New Li-ion technologies will greatly impact not only the automotive, but also the consumer electronics markets. The consumer market can adopt new technology sooner due to smaller scale, less demanding product requirements, and customers’ strong dissatisfaction with current battery performance. Technologies compatible with both markets have the best chance to succeed, since consumer electronics value the improvements more and create a path towards launching into the automotive market.

• The dominant automotive cell makers today (CATL, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and SK) may be shaken up by new entrants, but control their own destiny if they quickly adopt the technologies compatible with their existing Li-ion manufacturing processes. Some new cell makers will join their ranks, and can become leaders in the field if the incumbents take a slow approach to new technology

• With scaling of battery production to 2,000 GWh, there will be ~100 million EVs on the roads by 2030

• The rapid acceleration of electric vehicle adoption in the middle of this decade will cause major havoc for automakers who don’t go all-in on electrification now. It’s likely many won't move soon enough, and the half that try to join the EV revolution later will be at major risk of bankruptcy

• By mid-century, these breakthroughs in energy storage will pave the way for increased adoption of renewable energy generation and decarbonization of the world economy, transforming the transportation sector, and freeing countries to use domestic wind and solar resources to power their energy needs