Full Title: X-Change: Batteries
Author(s): Daan Walter, Kingsmill Bond, Sam Butler-Sloss, Laurens Speelman, Yuki Numata, and Will Atkinson
Publisher(s): Rocky Mountain Institute
Publication Date: December 10, 2023
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
In X-Change: Batteries, RMI highlights the remarkable, exponential growth of battery sales, which is driven by a domino effect of battery technology adoption that cascades from country to country and sector to sector. This battery domino effect is set to enable the phase out of over half of global fossil fuel demand, and be instrumental to abate transport and power emissions, propelling us over 60 percent of the way toward a zero-carbon energy system.
At the core of the success of batteries lies a reinforcing feedback loop between market scale, cost, and quality. As the battery market grows, unit cost keeps falling and quality keeps rising.
Once new battery technology is successful, it jumps geographies. The shift of batteries into the car market was started by early adopters — China is the largest domino to fall — and the transition is now shifting across the rest of the world, from Europe to the United States, from Southeast Asia to India. As the domino effect gains momentum, batteries will become the biggest global clean tech market — larger even than wind turbines or solar panels.